Why Are Digital Agriculture and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation Important for the Transformation of Agrifood Systems?
Digital technologies and artificial intelligence are providing unprecedented opportunities to transform agrifood systems worldwide. From precision farming to climate-friendly agriculture, and from supply chain optimisation to market access, digital innovation is making more efficient, sustainable and resilient agrifood systems possible. The Digital Agriculture Unit within FAO's Office of Innovation leads the organisation's efforts to harness these transformative technologies for global food security. Working in alignment with the Digital Agriculture Programme Priority Area of FAO's Strategic Framework 2022-31, the Unit promotes digital solutions that empower farmers, strengthen value chains and support evidence-based policymaking. By bridging the triple (digital, rural, gender) divide and ensuring inclusive access to innovation, it enables FAO Members to use Digital Agriculture and AI as powerful tools to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and build better agrifood systems for all, leaving no one behind.
How Does FAO Harness Digital Agriculture and AI Innovation?
FAO adopts a comprehensive and inclusive approach to advancing digital agriculture and AI innovation.
Capacity Development and Knowledge Sharing: Building technical capabilities and creating enabling environments through training programmes, knowledge platforms and peer-learning networks that enable stakeholders at all levels to adopt and scale digital solutions.
Policy and Governance Frameworks: Supporting countries in developing robust regulatory frameworks, data governance policies and ethical principles that ensure responsible AI deployment while protecting farmers' rights and data sovereignty.
Technology Promotion and Scaling: Facilitating the adoption of proven digital agriculture solutions by creating pathways for strategic partnerships, the piloting of innovative technologies and the scaling of successful innovations across diverse contexts.
Innovation Ecosystem Building: Fostering collaboration among governments, the private sector, research institutions, start-ups and farming communities to create vibrant ecosystems that drive continuous innovation and sustainable transformation.
Evidence Generation and Impact Assessment: Conducting rigorous research and monitoring to demonstrate the effectiveness of digital interventions, identify best practices and ensure that innovation efforts deliver measurable improvements in productivity, sustainability and livelihoods.
Serving agrifood innovation systems: working with the Digital Agriculture and Artificial Intelligence Innovation Roadmap
Agrifood systems have reached a crossroads that demands more than incremental change. Climate shocks, conflict and economic instability are colliding with the need to feed an estimated 9.7 billion people by 2050. The agricultural sector already produces roughly one third of global greenhouse gases and withdraws about 70% of the world's freshwater, yet it still leaves more than 638 million people chronically undernourished. Smallholders farming less than two hectares of land, which represents 12% of all farmland, still produce roughly one third of the world's food, yet they are the most exposed to unpredictable, extreme weather events, volatile prices and digital exclusion. Simply put, the system that feeds humanity is long overdue for an update.
The Digital Agriculture Unit in the Office of Innovation took the initiative to organise a Digital Agriculture and AI Innovation Dialogue in April 2025. Giving rise to the Roadmap, this dialogue offers a federated, decentralised framework for digital agrifood data and AI innovation that takes ideas from problem definition through testing, prototyping and deployment to scale. It sets out a living, voluntary, open framework that democratises data and AI in agrifood systems and defines the principles, partnerships and financing pathways for validating, piloting and scaling responsible AI products.
Implementation of the Framework begins with four shared Services that safeguard deployment so that speed does not outpace responsibility. Drawing on FAO's normative work and inspired by the Rome Call for AI Ethics as an ethical north star, these Services translate high-level principles into everyday practice.
Assess Your AI Governance. Oversight must protect integrity without stifling innovation. The ecosystem adopts an adaptive governance framework that is anchored in FAO's normative guidance but designed to evolve through rapid feedback loops. Key elements include an ethics charter that will guide all actors in the federation architecture described below in directing their resources towards the same intentions. Annual Dialogues serve as a formal checkpoint at which missions, metrics and standards are renewed to incorporate new evidence and stakeholder feedback. This dynamic approach keeps the ecosystem agile, inclusive and focused on measurable impact by maintaining guardrails that are robust enough to build trust yet flexible enough to learn.
Experiment and Build in the AI Sandbox. The AI Sandbox is an innovation and experiment management tool that provides a safe space to test ideas and draw inspiration from what has already been developed. It can validate innovative hypotheses, test market fit and turn ideas into concrete ventures and solutions. The Sandbox offers open toolkits and reusable resources that accelerate AI innovation in agrifood and digital agriculture, preparing solutions for lasting, future-oriented scaling. It streamlines the AI innovation process by assessing the quality of ideas and moving them from hypothesis testing to product and service prototyping and market validation. The Sandbox is seamlessly connected to the rest of the Framework: mentors and evaluators are channelled through the STI Portal and Network; field validation is linked through the Innovation Hubs; safeguards follow the Governance practices and the Toolkit. The intent is simple: faster learning cycles, reliable comparability across contexts and smoother pathways to piloting, procurement and scaling.
Explore and Network on the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Portal. An on-demand advisory service and network that connects countries and partners with trusted AI and digital agriculture expertise, so that decisions flow faster, designs are stronger and solutions are aligned with evidence and standards. By providing a searchable map of innovations and actors, the STI Portal and Network enables innovators to register themselves and their solutions, so that the community can find and connect with people, products and partners to build together rather than starting from zero.
Match and Validate at the Innovation Hubs. Innovation Hubs are national and regional nodes offering matchmaking, deployment and value chain strengthening services that bring together innovators, policymakers and investors to turn tested concepts into real-world applications. Supported by initiatives such as the MAINSTREAM Regional Innovation Scaling Hubs, the Digital Agriculture Innovation Hubs and the Digital Villages Initiatives, these hubs organise local demand, host validation pilots, manage partnerships and create reliable pathways from prototype to procurement and scale.
In Action: Digital Agriculture and Artificial Intelligence Innovation on the Ground
Digital Agriculture Innovation Hubs: FAO is establishing regional and national Digital Agriculture Innovation Hubs that serve as collaborative spaces where farmers, entrepreneurs, researchers and policymakers come together to create, test and scale digital solutions tailored to local contexts and challenges.
Implementation of the Digital Agriculture and AI Innovation Roadmap: Numerous partners are currently working with FAO to develop and implement use cases and products in a coordinated manner, harnessing digital technologies and AI innovations for the transformation of agrifood systems.
Global Agricultural Innovation Challenge: This innovation challenge connects agricultural innovators around the world, providing entrepreneurs and start-ups with platforms to showcase their latest solutions, access mentoring and finance, and scale their impact in developing countries.
Reboot the Earth: A ground-breaking digital innovation initiative that mobilises the global technology community to tackle critical sustainability challenges in agriculture, promoting the development of AI-powered solutions for climate adaptation, resource efficiency and ecosystem restoration in agrifood systems.
