Industry News

10/09/2026

OpenAI Foundation backs $60m AI forecasting initiative targeting 100m smallholder farmers

The OpenAI Foundation is providing USD 60 million to an initiative aiming to bring AI-powered weather and crop disease forecasting to 100 million smallholder farmers across South and Southeast Asia and East Africa over the next three years.

The initiative brings together the University of Chicago’s Development Innovation Lab, UC Berkeley, CIMMYT, Precision Development, Digital Green and AIM for Scale. It will work with national meteorological agencies and governments to develop and distribute more localised weather forecasts and crop disease information.

The programme will use AI-based weather models that require substantially less computing capacity than conventional forecasting approaches, potentially reducing the cost of producing localised forecasts. CIMMYT will also use AI and NASA Earth-observation data to improve forecasting of wheat pathogen outbreaks.

For last-mile delivery, Precision Development will support the distribution of forecasts and agricultural advice through channels including text messages, voice calls and chatbots. Digital Green will integrate improved forecasts into FarmerChat, its AI-enabled advisory solution, which currently reaches more than 2.1 million farmers.

AIM for Scale, an initiative based at New York University Abu Dhabi and jointly funded by the UAE and the Gates Foundation, will work with governments and multilateral development banks to support larger-scale financing, building on AI-powered forecasting work that reached 38 million farmers in India in 2025.

Why it matters

At USD 60 million and a target of 100 million farmers, this is one of the largest investments to date in applying AI to smallholder agriculture. The programme will test whether the scale already achieved in India, where AI-powered forecasts reached 38 million farmers in 2025, can be replicated across countries in Asia and Africa.

03/09/26

Google upgrades WeatherNext AI weather forecasting with 5 km resolution

Google DeepMind and Google Research have launched WeatherNext 3, the latest version of Google’s AI-based weather forecasting technology, offering more frequent and higher-resolution forecasts.

WeatherNext 3 incorporates live satellite observations and generates new global forecasts every hour. Google says it can provide temperature and moisture forecasts at resolutions of up to 5 km, compared with 25 km for WeatherNext 2, while precipitation forecasts are up to 50% more accurate for forecasts one day or more ahead.

Google says the improvements are particularly significant in Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacific, where high-resolution forecasting has historically been constrained by the cost of running regional forecasting systems. The model is being made available through Google Earth Engine, BigQuery and Google Cloud and will also feed into Google products including Search, Maps and Gemini.

WeatherNext is already being used in digital agriculture. In Zambia, climatetech non-profit TomorrowNow is integrating WeatherNext models into the country’s national Digital Climate Advisory Service, which provides localised weather and agricultural advisories to smallholder farmers.

Why it matters

WeatherNext 3 could improve the quality and localisation of weather information available to digital agriculture services, particularly in countries with limited forecasting infrastructure. Higher-resolution and more frequently updated forecasts could support more locally relevant decisions around planting, irrigation and harvesting, while AI-based forecasting could reduce some of the computing costs associated with producing this information.

13/09/26

BRICS backs new Digital Agriculture Network at New Delhi summit

BRICS leaders have backed a new initiative to support cooperation in digital agriculture as part of a wider package of agricultural initiatives endorsed at the 18th BRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on 12–13 September.

The BRICS Network on Digital Agriculture identifies several areas of collaboration including AI-based decision-support tools, geospatial intelligence, satellite crop monitoring, IoT, agricultural data platforms, digital extension services and digital public infrastructure. It will also support joint research, demonstration projects and capacity building.

The initiative was originally agreed by BRICS agriculture ministers in June and will initially be coordinated by the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi), with member countries contributing technologies, experience and policy approaches. Rather than a single BRICS-wide digital platform, the network is intended as a framework through which individual projects and technologies can be developed and shared.

The New Delhi summit also backed wider agricultural cooperation on agroecology and regenerative agriculture, genetic resources and farmers’ rights in seed systems.

Why it matters

The network brings together major agricultural economies including India, China, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa around practical applications of AI, geospatial technologies and digital public infrastructure in agriculture. Its value will ultimately depend on whether this cooperation produces technologies, data infrastructure and approaches that can be deployed beyond individual countries.