The AI revolution is finally reaching some of the world’s poorest farmers.
Via chatbots and smartphone apps, artificial intelligence is now helping them improve their crop yields, identify pests, and diagnose diseases in their livestock — even if they can’t read and don’t own smartphones.
“We have seen that they can help increase agricultural productivity threefold. Farmers’ incomes can increase as much as five times,” Gladys Morales, the global head of innovation at the International Fund for Agricultural Development, tells Devex contributor Alessio Perrone.
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Take Ulangizi, an AI chatbot from Chicago-based nonprofit Opportunity International that answers Malawian farmers’ real-time questions. When Christina Matsenga’s goat stopped eating recently, she was able to use the app despite not having a smartphone. She turned to an in-person farmer support agent who opened WhatsApp on her own phone, took photos of the goat, and sent them to a number linked to the Ulangizi chatbot. Within seconds, the chatbot replied with recommendations on how to treat the animal in Chichewa, the local language, which the agent read aloud to Matsenga.
Ulangizi, which means “advice” in Chichewa, pulls information from the Malawian government’s 700-page, English-language agricultural manual on good agricultural practices. And the app saved Matsenga from having to make a 25-mile trip to meet her local government agricultural extension officer in the capital of Lilongwe.
Alessio took a look at some other promising AI-based apps, too. One is Tumaini, which helps banana farmers identify diseases and pests. Scientists with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture trained Tumaini’s AI model on more than 50,000 images of banana plants all over the world. And in India, an app called Meghdoot — whose name means “messenger from the sky” in Hindi — is piloting the use of large language models to provide targeted, crop-specific information to farmers at the district level by also examining weather data and forecasts.
Of course, the technology is no panacea — climate change, after all, still affects the world’s poorest more than anyone, and language barriers will not be easy to overcome. But a technology that takes into account some of the challenges facing its users is putting these farmers on steadier ground.
Read: The AI apps helping the world’s low-income farmers work smarter (Pro)
Related: UN agriculture fund bets big on innovation to improve food security
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The United Nations’ latest annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report is out, and the figures are not looking good: The number of hungry people in the world, which rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, has remained stagnant for another year — meaning we are even more off track in terms of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 of eliminating hunger by 2030.
The major drivers of hunger — climate change, conflict, and economic shocks — are occurring more often and at higher intensity, the report says. And climate change was the biggest reason for food insecurity and malnutrition in 2023.
Here are the numbers you should know:
• Around 733 million people may have experienced hunger in 2023, amounting to 152 million more people than in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
• More than one-third of the global population, or 2.8 billion people, was unable to afford a healthy diet.
• Levels of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life have risen from 37.1% in 2012 to 48% in 2022, though the world is off-track to reach the 2030 target of 70%. There has also been progress in reducing stunting for children under 5 years old, though 2030 targets remain unachievable at current rates.
• While 1 out of 11 people on the planet faced hunger in 2023, that figure is 1 out of every 5 in Africa, where hunger levels are still on the rise.
• Latin America — and particularly South America — is a bright spot that has reduced hunger numbers to pre-pandemic levels. In Asia, the figures mainly held steady.
• The report projects that 582 million people will be chronically undernourished at the end of the decade — and more than half of them will be in Africa.
But the story of South America shows that an increase in hunger is not inevitable, Food and Agriculture Organization Chief Economist Máximo Torero tells me. He credited the region’s relatively high social expenditures per person with allowing it to keep people out of hunger despite price inflation pressures and the pandemic’s effects.
“The progress that we see in South America and some subregions of Asia tell us that we have that capacity,” he says. “If we keep this rate of 5 million less people [experiencing] hunger in two years, it’s possible that South America will achieve SDG2.”
Read: More than 700 million people went hungry last year, says UN report
Hunger levels won’t budge without more financing — whether that’s public spending by governments, official development assistance, or private-sector money.
At the moment it’s hard to know just how much financing is out there. The U.N. food security report calls for a universal adoption of what counts as financing for food security and nutrition, as well as the mapping and tracking of that finance in order to identify problem areas, ensure accountability, and track the money’s impact.
Most of the countries losing ground or not making progress on SDG 2 are low-income or lower-middle-income, and they have seen unsustainable levels of debt since the pandemic and the rise of food and fuel prices as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, says Asma Lateef, policy and advocacy lead at the SDG2 Advocacy Hub.
“So you have a situation where the countries that are needing financing the most are in the more challenging position to actually access financing from the private sector,” says Lateef, who worked on the U.N. report.
Going forward, there’s a need for more concessional and grant financing from multilateral development banks and development finance institutions, the report says. Investments in agriculture and food security in lower-income countries will also need to be de-risked for the private sector to step in. Still, Lateef says, all the focus on risk can distract from the cost of doing too little.
“The risk of climate change is way greater than the risk of not doing anything,” she says. “One thing that's clear is the level of acute food insecurity is higher than it’s ever been. That should be a warning sign. And if we don't get ahead of the climate crisis, and that number, then it becomes much harder and much more expensive to address.”
Meanwhile, there are many opportunities for global alignment on food and nutrition financing this year. The World Bank’s fund for the lowest-income countries, IDA, is in a replenishment period this year, as is CGIAR, the world’s largest agricultural research and innovation network.
And just today, a new Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty is being formalized at this week’s Group of 20 major economies’ ministerial meetings in Rio de Janeiro, where Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has made “zero hunger” a major domestic — and now international — priority. The alliance, which will officially launch at the G20 Summit in November, seeks to secure common financial resources to combat world hunger and replicate successful programs that have worked locally. At least 100 countries are expected to join.
Background reading: Global food systems need over $200B funding boost, foundations say
Related: Who is funding food aid, and why should we be keeping track? (Pro)
The COP 29 presidency has released its first letter outlining its plans for the global climate summit. Here’s what to expect on food and agriculture. [Forbes]
The World Bank eyes its first “drought” bond in the next 12-18 months, as part of a category of bonds paying out in case of natural disasters. [Reuters]
Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, the new head of ONE, one of the world’s most influential advocacy organizations, brings a background in the food business rooted in her days growing up in Nigeria. [Devex Pro]