Cargill, the U.S. food conglomerate, is doing its part as the lead company in TRANSFORM, a project funded by the United States Agency of International Development (USAID). TRANSFORM aims to reduce the spread of infectious diseases among livestock, in part by training farmers in better, more judicious use of antibiotics and antimicrobial drugs. (One aim is to combat the global rise of drug-resistant “superbugs.”) The Cargill-led program has helped train 82,000 farmers in Kenya and India; 96% of them reported reduced mortality among their animals.
Thailand-based East-West Seed focuses on the vegetable world. Over the past decade it has helped smallholder farmers buy seeds they might otherwise struggle to obtain or afford; it also teaches them farming techniques that help preserve soil health and reduce water use. Since 2015, East-West Seed has trained more than 840,000 farmers, predominantly in Southeast Asia; it’s now reaching people at a faster pace thanks in part to its GrowHow digital-instruction platform, and it estimates it has reached millions more farmers through Facebook and YouTube.
ICL, an Israeli maker of fertilizer, is pulling together data from across the agricultural world to help farmers adopt best practices more quickly. Its Agmatix data division has built an AI-driven data platform designed to help big food and beverage companies coach their suppliers on the most environmentally friendly crop strategies—especially in regenerative agriculture, which stresses improving soil and water health. Agmatix users oversee some 15 million acres of land worldwide; the company’s new RegenIQ platform, unveiled in early September, will allow those users to get real-time data about what is and isn’t working.