UN agriculture fund bets big on innovation to improve food security

Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and Web3 are some of the technologies that the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development is banking on to help farmers and improve food security by 2030. For smallholder farmers in low-income countries, innovation could be a lifeline with the potential to reshape their lives and the future of agriculture. That was the message at this week’s annual meeting of the IFAD’s Governing Council, which focused on “Innovation for a Food-Secure Future.” IFAD is a Rome-based international financial institution that provides grants and low-interest loans to support food security and resilience. Heads of state and other representatives from its 178 member states gathered in Rome to approve the strategic direction of the fund’s work during its next replenishment window for 2025 to 2027. Innovation is not always about cutting-edge technologies, as the fund’s President Álvaro Lario told representatives in his opening remarks Wednesday. Rather, it can come in many forms and be found in many places — including in rural communities and among farmers and producers themselves. “Many innovations are developed in collaboration with the people we work with on the ground,” he said. “Agri-entrepreneurs in developing countries are some of the most innovative and dynamic entrepreneurs in the world. We don’t bring innovations to them — they bring innovations to us.” The meeting took place amid weeks-long protests by farmers in India and Europe over rising costs, eroding profit margins, and new rules to reduce agriculture’s impact on climate change. Several of the event’s speakers noted that smallholder farmers — usually defined as those whose farms span 10 hectares or fewer — are often left to bear the brunt of crises such as climate change, conflicts, and economic turmoil, but receive only 0.3% of climate finance. During one of the meeting’s sessions, IFAD members welcomed Serbia as a new member state. Countries including Germany, Peru, Algeria, Tonga, and Canada announced pledges to IFAD’s record-breaking 13th replenishing round, bringing the total to $1.34 billion. IFAD expects more pledges in the coming months as it works to reach its $2 billion target. The potential of ‘small AI’ While conversations around artificial intelligence often focus on its potential dangers and the inequalities it could generate, IFAD’s speakers said its uptake could also significantly improve the future of smallholder farmers. “Our role is to ensure that those frontier technologies are being developed with and for rural people and vulnerable groups,” Gladys Morales, the global head of innovation of IFAD's innovation unit, told Devex. Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School within Tufts University, told delegates to think about “small AI” — or cheap, easily acquirable, and easy-to-use AI-powered tools — rather than the generative language and image processors that burst into public view in 2023. As examples, he mentioned easy-to-adopt technology such as reliable weather forecasts, early warning systems, or irrigation and plant treatment tips. Chakravorti cited the development of Plantix, an AI-powered smartphone app to which farmers can upload pictures of pest-infected crops via their smartphones and receive information about possible locally available treatments. In Tanzania, the app helped increase farmer revenues by an average of $37 per year — for a total farmer revenue increase of $25 million per year, he said. Small AI could easily revolutionize agriculture given the ubiquity of the smartphone, Chakravorti said. He encouraged low-income countries to invest in digital public infrastructure such as reliable internet and electricity to ensure smallholder farmers can benefit. Some 3.4 billion people live in rural parts of lower-income countries, and the majority of them work in small-scale farming, according to estimates provided by Lario during a press event. Lario has previously said that investing in them “is the only path to a food-secure future.” With minimal resources, their problems can be as fundamental as a lack of weather data, according to Elizabeth Nsimadala, a smallholder farmer and agricultural entrepreneur from Uganda who is also president of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation. “The small-scale farmer has to look up to the sky and pray to God it’s going to rain,” she told journalists. One of the ways IFAD funds innovations is through open innovation challenges — sometimes in partnership with other IFIs or agencies. The focus is solving a problem, not showcasing new technology, Morales explained. IFAD then provides core financing and coaching on the aspects most needed by the selected projects, then helps projects to scale by directing them to more sources of funding. She said AI, blockchain, and Web3 were some of the coming technologies the fund saw the most potential in. Web3’s proponents describe it as the fledgling, decentralized next version of the internet. “The development of those technologies is running really, really fast,” she told Devex. “And it’s important for IFAD to have a seat at those design tables where these technologies are being developed to make sure that they will be developed to serve also the populations that participate in our IFAD-funded projects.” Bringing innovation to farmers The meeting featured a “marketplace of innovation” featuring some of the technologies funded by IFAD and its partners. For example, LandMonitor, a project started in the Philippines to address a lack of official data on land tenure and co-led by the International Land Coalition and IFAD’s Land Tenure Desk. The lack of data hindered rural development and better land policies. The project went on to influence policymaking: The information was included in the national negotiations around land rights and was incorporated into the Philippines’ national strategy, contributing to improving land rights for women. IFAD, which invested $110,000 in the project, now aims to replicate it in other countries, an IFAD spokesperson told Devex via email. Another project highlighted was AgroWeb3, which will create a universal protocol, common standards, and an integration system for digital wallets for smallholder farmers, enabling them to make and receive digital payments while improving security and making transactions cheaper and more traceable. Attendees could also learn about AI projects such as Farmer Lifeline Technologies and Viamo’s Voice Companion for Farmers, which can keep smallholder farmers abreast of changing weather patterns and provide pest detection and prediction, and agriculture information. Morales told Devex IFAD’s belief in the need for more investment in innovation for rural communities in lower-income countries has its roots in the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was through the investments in science and in technology that were already taking place […] that we were able to face the pandemic effectively and we are almost back to normal from what it was before.” The world will need to be able to think creatively to solve future crises, too — from climate change to migration to inflation, she added: “We cannot address those challenges with the solutions that we had in the past. They call for innovative solutions.”