AI will play a key role in driving the future of agriculture, including facilitating the rollout of regenerative agriculture, Alexandra Brand, executive vice president of sustainability, corporate affairs, and transformation at Syngenta has told a summit in New York.
Speaking at the fifth annual US Sustainability Summit, hosted recently by The Economist, Brand said that AI needs to take centre stage if innovation is to move fast enough to secure the future of US agriculture.
‘Very concrete advice’
“When farmers input the data about their fields, the soil, the crops they grow, into their farm management system, we augment that with many layers of different satellite data,” Brand explained, adding that this data, combined with information on weather patterns and other variables, enables Syngenta to give farmers “very concrete advice” on actions to take.
“The AI algorithms are good enough to really be precise and not have the farmer wake up three days later and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, that’s all completely wrong!,” she added.
Regenerative agriculture commitment
When pressed by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, The Economist’s global energy and climate innovation editor, on whether Syngenta’s commitment to regenerative agriculture conflicted with its business model, Brand responded that it didn’t, citing the company’s long-standing commitment to innovation.
“There’s no tension, because we’re an innovative company,” she said. “We constantly bring new products to the market. And a few years ago we changed the design criteria for our R&D pipeline to include regenerative principles. We’ve put AI into the crop management program for better stewardship of the regenerative practices farmers are adopting.”
The summit, hosted by Economist Impact, welcomed some 432 sustainability executives, and sought to outline actionable strategies for sustainable, resilient, and financially sound business practices.
“Our purpose with all of these events that we run is helping businesses become sustainable faster,” said Harry Chapman, Economist Impact’s head of sustainability events. “It’s really high-quality content that isn’t greenwashing, that provides people with ideas they can take back to their businesses and implement.” Read more here.
