Amidst a host of socio-economic and humanitarian crises brought about by the greatest health crisis of the last century, the COVID-19 pandemic has added another dire problem to the planet’s unending human struggles: uncontrolled hunger.
The UN and its agencies reported that in 2022 alone, between 691 and 783 million people faced hunger, an increase of 122 million compared to 2019, before the pandemic. This rise in hunger stems from various factors, including job losses, displacement, geopolitical conflicts, food inflation, and a host of other economic challenges.
While these challenges are largely economic, there are alternative ways to tackle them through non-economic solutions. It is essential to recognise that economic challenges do not always require purely economic solutions. Socio-political and economic strategies are undoubtedly critical, but we must move beyond conventional thinking to embrace innovative approaches.
Africa, in particular, has been severely affected, with the UN estimating in 2024 that economic challenges such as currency devaluations, soaring inflation, stagnating production, and trade barriers have exacerbated the food crisis, impacting ordinary people across the region. However, Africa also holds tremendous potential for the future of agri-food production. For instance, wheat and maize are among the most critical agricultural crops in Africa and addressing the shortage of these crops alone can significantly alleviate the hunger crisis. What is required is a comprehensive picture of critical staple crops such as wheat and maize cultivation on a country scale.
Understanding the current food availability to feed the population and the factors that may influence future yields of critical staple crops will enable governments to take precautionary measures. These measures include defining social beneficiary policies, making informed import-export decisions, controlling domestic food prices, and ensuring policies aimed at eradicating hunger. However, achieving this is no easy task. This is where advanced Agtech tools come into play. There are state-of-the-art technologies readily available in the market that provide the necessary insights and foresight, empowering African nations and other vulnerable regions to combat hunger effectively and sustainably. By leveraging these tools, we can transform agricultural landscapes and secure a future free from hunger.
By 2050, the global population is projected to reach ten billion, necessitating a proportional increase in food production to meet the demand. Leveraging technology will be crucial in enhancing decision-making, managing risks and variability, and maximising per-acre yields. Moreover, climate change is exerting additional pressure, reducing historical yields across various regions. Agricultural productivity is being challenged by volatile weather, extreme events such as droughts and floods, limited water availability, soil erosion, declining biodiversity, impaired pollination, resistant pests, and weeds, as well as shifting growing seasons.
Advanced cloud platforms can harness contextual agricultural data, utilising machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and predictive analytics to generate valuable insights and best practices. These insights enable farmers to manage their operations efficiently, and assess risks. This approach helps farming communities and businesses determine the optimal combination of inputs and their proper application, leading to sustainable yield optimisation.
A major challenge lies in the growers’ lack of awareness and understanding of the benefits that advanced technology can provide. An effective and adaptable Agtech platform can significantly enhance farmer engagement by offering a digitalised Package of Practices (PoP) that includes timelines and alerts. It can also deliver intelligent, data-driven advisories, pest and disease warnings, and weather updates while fully digitising their agricultural processes.
Imagine a global food security insight dashboard—a powerful tool demonstrating that socio-economic challenges don’t solely require economic solutions. With such a dashboard, policymakers in Africa could gain a comprehensive view of their country’s anticipated wheat yield. This insight would enable them to determine the precise amount of wheat needed for import from countries like Brazil or India. Similarly, if a European nation faces a crop shortage due to climate change or geopolitical conflict, this food security intelligence platform could provide data-driven insights to accurately predict and plan imports from other regions.
Consider the recent orange harvest shortage in Brazil, which disrupted breakfast tables worldwide as orange juice is a staple for many. With access to a food security intelligence dashboard, this shortage could have been anticipated, allowing for shifts in sourcing strategies to mitigate the impact. Such a tool is even more crucial for staple crops like rice, wheat, corn, and potatoes. While seasonal fluctuations in the availability of horticultural or non-essential crops like cocoa or bananas are manageable, a shortage in staple crops can severely threaten global food security. This underscores the vital importance of such advanced predictive tools in maintaining stability and preventing crises.
One notable area of advancement to watch is the progress AI and allied technologies are making on humankind. I firmly believe that healthcare and agri-food systems are the sectors that most need maximum AI adoption. These two sectors are critical and essential for a sustainable future for humanity, and the potential of Generative AI is truly staggering. For instance, there are now solutions in the market that can predict future crop yields thanks to advancements in Generative AI. While it may sound straightforward, this is a highly complex area. Crop yield is determined by numerous factors, including weather variations, water availability, optimal agri-input applications, pest and disease outbreaks, and crop health conditions. Accurately predicting yield for a specific season has been nearly impossible—until now. This is where Agtech and innovations in Generative AI come into play, making the impossible possible. These cutting-edge technologies are not just beneficial for managing food security; they offer a giant leap in future-proofing the demand-supply dynamics for farming companies, CPG players, and food processors.
On the other hand, a host of Large Language Models (LLMs) and micro language models are addressing various challenges for growers and agri-food players alike. Climate change, for example, is a critical factor impacting growers’ operations. Imagine the potential of an LLM platform that offers daily support to farmers to mitigate risks by employing Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) applications. Even if farmers are unfamiliar with CSA principles, the LLM model can guide them in embracing this innovative way of producing crops, all through a mobile platform. This level of support was unimaginable a few years ago. But today, breakthroughs in AI are making it a reality.
Albert Einstein once said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change,” and this wisdom is critically relevant to today’s food systems. I urge food systems stakeholders to recognize that change is our most powerful weapon against the myriad challenges facing our industry. We must revolutionise age-old practices, embrace change to minimise agriculture’s environmental impact, adapt our cultivation approaches to mitigate climate change effects, and transform ourselves to future-proof this ancient yet vital industry.
Learning from the advancements other industries have made through science and technology is essential. We must also reflect on the current state of tech adoption in agriculture and understand how this low-tech approach is jeopardising the sector’s future. I call upon all industry stakeholders to embrace change before it’s too late. We are responsible for feeding millions of hungry mouths, and technology is the crucial pillar of the change we must welcome.
About the Author
Krishna Kumar is CEO & Co-Founder at Cropin. Founded in 2010, Cropin is a global Agtech pioneer who has built the world’s first purpose-built industry cloud for Agriculture – Cropin Cloud. Cropin Cloud enables various stakeholders in the agri-ecosystem to leverage digitization and predictive intelligence to make effective decisions that increase farming efficiency, scale productivity, manage risk and environmental changes and enhance sustainability. Cropin has partnered with over 250+ B2B customers and digitized 16 million acres of farmland, improving the livelihoods of more than 7 million farmers. Our work over the last decade has enabled us to spearhead a global ‘Ag-intelligence’ movement with a crop knowledge graph of 500+ crops and 10000+ crop varieties in 103 countries that powers the Cropin Cloud. Cropin Cloud’s Intelligence platform has already computed and provided predictive intelligence for over 0.2 billion acres of farmlands across the globe.
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