Our global food system is under pressure like never before.
Climate change, geopolitical instability and a rapidly growing population are converging to create a perfect storm. Meanwhile, farming – one of the world’s oldest professions – still largely relies on methods and mental models rooted in the 20th century.
This disconnect has become impossible to ignore. Farmers today are navigating longer droughts, erratic rainfall, unpredictable pest patterns and rising input costs. And the stakes aren’t just agricultural, they’re existential. Agriculture doesn’t just feed people; it underpins peace, economic stability and the ability of communities to thrive.
We need a new operating system for agriculture – one that’s data-driven, adaptive and designed for the world we live in now. AI can be at the heart of that transformation.
Why climate change is a compounding threat to agriculture
Climate change isn’t some abstract future risk – it’s already reshaping agriculture worldwide. Longer dry seasons, unexpected floods and hotter temperatures are damaging yields and destabilizing growing cycles. In 2024, global natural disasters inflicted $417 billion in economic losses, with agriculture among the hardest-hit sectors.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that by 2030, maize yields – a staple for billions – could fall by up to 24% in parts of the world if emissions remain high.
But the damage isn’t just to crops. As temperatures shift, so do pests and diseases. Farmers in California have been reporting cases of red leaf blotch – previously rare in their climate – and Australia is seeing new virus threats that didn’t exist there a decade ago. Every year, new pathogens and insects cross into new geographies, creating cascading challenges with no playbook.
Smallholder farmers, who produce up to one third of food globally, are particularly vulnerable. Without the tools or capital to adapt, they risk being locked out of a food system that’s growing more fragile and uneven by the year.
How AI can catalyse the next agricultural revolution
This is where AI can change the equation. When paired with the right data, AI becomes a powerful tool for making agriculture less reactive — and more predictive.
Today, AI systems can monitor crops for early signs of stress, disease or pest outbreaks, weeks before those issues are visible to the human eye. They can map hotspots, analyse weather forecasts and recommend precisely when and where to intervene. And they learn over time, improving with every season and every region.
More importantly, AI can act as a “distributed brain” for agriculture. A disease spotted in Spain can trigger an alert for growers in China or Brazil. An effective approach tested in one geography can be recommended instantly in another. In this way, AI democratizes agricultural knowledge – not by replacing human expertise, but by scaling it.
At Fermata, we’ve seen AI-based pest detection outperform traditional scouting by as much as 3–5 weeks. In Brazil, where whitefly infestations are a growing concern, our models help growers detect issues earlier and intervene more effectively.
What makes this possible is our cross-regional learning: by training AI models on whitefly data from Spain and Canada — regions that have dealt with the pest for decades — we enable faster, more accurate detection in regions where the threat is just emerging.
Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture Market Size, Share and Growth
Empowering farmers through data-driven insights
But technology alone isn’t enough. We must make it work for the people who actually grow our food.
Most farmers still make decisions based on gut instinct or fragmented data. And it’s not because they lack expertise – it’s because the tools available to them are often expensive, complex or disconnected from their reality.
That’s where AI can help, if it’s implemented with deep understanding of the farmer’s needs. AI tools can guide when to irrigate, fertilize or release beneficial insects. They can reduce waste, save labour and help farmers meet sustainability standards. But these tools must be designed for simplicity, scalability and affordability – especially in resource-constrained settings.
One strong case is BeeHero, which uses in-hive sensors and AI to optimize pollination, delivering insights through a simple, farmer-friendly interface. Its plug-and-play model has enabled rapid adoption, with more than 300,000 hives monitored across the globe. It’s a clear example of how AI can be both effective and easy to use.
Digital inclusion matters. If we’re serious about making agriculture more resilient, then AI must be made accessible, not exclusive.
Building resilient agricultural systems
Achieving this transformation isn’t just a tech challenge — it’s a systems challenge. And it starts with infrastructure.
Many rural areas still lack reliable internet or digital literacy support, making AI deployment nearly impossible. Governments and private sector players need to invest in connectivity and training, not just software.
Public-private partnerships are essential to ensure that AI tools reflect diverse geographies, crops and grower needs. This includes localized language support, offline functionality and business models that don’t lock small farmers out.
A World Bank study of digital advisory services in West Africa documented how collaborations between governments, telecommunication providers and non-governmental organizations enabled personalized weather and crop advice via SMS, voice and radio. While not yet AI-powered, these systems laid critical groundwork for scalable, data-driven tools in low-resource settings.
We also need policy frameworks that support open data, fair technology standards and farmer-centric innovation. Otherwise, we risk repeating the same mistakes that led to today’s inequalities in access to land, inputs and markets.
The convergence of AI and agriculture offers one of the most powerful – and overlooked – opportunities to address climate change, food security and rural inequality at once.
But the clock is ticking. Every season we wait, more crops are lost, more farmers are squeezed and more communities fall behind. We can’t afford to think of this as just a sectoral issue. Agriculture is foundational – to everything from health and education to global stability and peace.
Let’s build a food system that’s smarter, fairer and more resilient. Not just for yield, but for people. Not just for profit, but for the planet. The next agricultural revolution isn’t coming — it’s already under way. It’s time we lead it.
