Agrifood Systems

Digitalization and technology have the potential to increase agricultural productivity and food security while enhancing the environmental sustainability of agricultural practices and making the global agricultural sector more inclusive.

The current global policy environment does not sufficiently enable the agricultural sector to exploit the full potential of digitalization for the productivity, inclusivity, and sustainability of agriculture. To achieve food security, include smallholder farmers and disadvantaged groups, and make agriculture sustainable and resilient, an enabling global policy framework for widescale application of digital agriculture tools is needed.

The workshop series aimed to develop concrete policy recommendations for digitalization in agriculture to enhance productivity, inclusivity, and sustainability – in the spirit of recoupling economic, social and environmental wellbeing. These insights and concrete proposals culminated in various publications as well as a panel at the Global Solutions Summit 2023, addressing the Indian G20 Presidency and Japanese G7 presidency in 2023 and building on the work of G20 Indonesia in 2022.

This multistakeholder workshop series is part of the Global Solutions Initiative research program. The Global Solutions Initiative curated and coordinated the program and its content independently. Building on the network developed, GSI then extended its work in 2023/2024 to study economic empowerment among smallholder women agripreneurs. These insights and concrete proposals culminated in various publications as well as sessions at the Global Solutions Summit, addressing the various G7 and G20 presidencies. We thank our partner Bayer for facilitating this workshop series and for their financial support. We are also grateful for the support and advice of our Sounding Board experts.