AI and agriculture: how to turn innovation into impact on the ground

On 16 October 2025, at the FAO Science and Innovation Forum in Rome, one simple idea was brought back to centre stage: artificial intelligence is only as valuable as how we organise it, evaluate it and put it to work for farmers.

This is a critical issue at a time when only 1% of global AI investment benefits the sector that feeds the planet.

This imbalance exposes a stark disconnect between the scale of food security challenges we face and the resources mobilised to address them.

And yet, the transformative potential of AI for this sector is considerable. The priority now is not to produce new technology “demos”, but to turn data into decisions and ambitions into measurable impact on the resilience of food systems and equitable access to innovation.

A collaborative roadmap presented in Rome

Aymeric Thiollet, Technology Ethics Analyst at the Human Technology Foundation, presented the AI Innovation Roadmap for agrifood systems during the session “AI-Driven Transformation: Redirecting and Shaping Sustainable Investments in Agriculture”. This strategic framework was developed with the FAO and its international expert network to better connect innovation with realities on the ground.

The roadmap builds on the work of the Digital Agriculture and AI Innovation Dialogue 2025, which brought together 90 experts around a shared objective: making agrifood investment more transparent, inclusive and results-driven, supported by better-governed AI.

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