From predicting heatwaves to developing climate-resilient seeds, agritech can help farmers adapt to the climate crisis and transform global food systems.
- Farmers must produce 70% more food to feed the predicted 2050 global population of 9.1 billion, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
- As the world navigates the impact of the climate crisis on agricultural supply chains, AI and other technologies are becoming increasingly vital to meeting this demand.
- A new World Economic Forum insight report highlights the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies that will drive the next wave of transformation in the agriculture sector, and calls for public-private partnerships to build scalability.
As a young boy in northern India, Himanshu Gupta’s grandmother would often dilute the milk with water to ensure there was enough to feed their lower-middle-class family of sixteen. Rising prices for milk meant the family couldn’t afford to buy more.
“Back then, we didn’t have time to understand the nuances of why or what was happening,” he says. “But many of these problems, like food inflation… climate change is one of the significant factors playing into it.“
Fast-forward a few decades, and Gupta co-founded ClimateAi from his dormitory room at Stanford University, United States, one of the world’s most prestigious universities. He now wants to help more than 500,000 million farmers globally in just six years.
Leveraging today’s rapid advancements in ‘agritech’ – the use of digital tools and technology in farming – is crucial to helping farmers adapt to the climate crisis and strengthen global food security. It also makes good business sense, as Gupta says climate adaptation across all sectors is a $1 trillion opportunity.
“This year, we see an inflexion point in adaptation, going from a philanthropic agenda to a corporate agenda,” Gupta told the World Economic Forum.
ClimateAi works with more than 50 corporations in food, agriculture, and beverage supply chains. Companies are now more engaged because they “appreciate that today’s level of volatility in the value chains because of climate change is unprecedented.”
According to a recent report on the “Future Fit Food and Agriculture”, companies also stand to benefit by investing in cutting nine gigatons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or about half of all emissions from global food systems. Food systems currently account for 30% of all emissions.
How can AI in agritech help?
One-third of the Earth’s soils are already degraded, with the equivalent of one football pitch of soil being eroded every five seconds, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) points out.
Now consider that, amid soaring demand from a global population of 8.1 billion, it can take up to 1,000 years to produce just 2-3cm of soil. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to help relieve this pressure by reshaping the world’s $5 trillion agriculture business – for the better.
Firstly, timing in farming is essential. When will the heatwave end? How long until the next big storm? When will the floods start? Finding answers to these pressing questions determines farmers’ ability to know when to buy seed, what seed to buy and when to plant and harvest it.
Farmers need these answers several months in advance, sometimes even six months ahead, to guarantee their crops. This is even more important today as the severity of unpredictable weather patterns is accelerating. However, Gupta says most weather forecasts are still only two weeks ahead.
Farmers also need agritech to help them understand how viable their soil – the core of their livelihood – will be in decades’ time as climate patterns evolve faster than anticipated. Overall, farmers need far more notice, both for the ‘here and now’ and the ‘what’s next?’. AI-based technologies have the potential to provide that clarity, giving more accurate, detailed and frequent forecasts.
Secondly, AI and other agritech can increase the supply of urgently needed climate-resistant seeds, accelerating the time it takes to get from the laboratory to the soil. It currently takes 10 to 15 years to launch a new seed, but Gupta says weather patterns can shift significantly in that time. Seeds can become less resilient and crops can fail.
This puts considerable stress on the farming community, sometimes making it difficult to attract new talent. While working with the Government of India, Gupta “saw examples where a lot of cotton farmers either committed suicide, left cotton farming altogether or moved to work as labourers in big cities”. This is not an isolated problem, with 95% of young farmers saying poor mental health is the biggest hidden danger in farming today….
Read the entire piece on World Economic Forum.
Cover image from World Economic Forum.