AI Applications for Climate Smart Agriculture, Advisory Services & Value Chains in Agrifood Systems
This webinar was the third session in the Regional AI Dialogue for Agrifood Systems in the Near East and North Africa region, focusing on "AI Applications for Climate Smart Agriculture, Advisory Services and Value Chains." The session featured five distinguished speakers discussing practical implementations of AI technologies in agriculture across the NENA region. Dr. Jawoo Koo presented Agri-LLM, an agriculture-focused large language model developed by IFPRI to provide localized and accurate advisory services to smallholder farmers through a back-office knowledge system rather than direct chatbot interaction. El Mahdi Aboulmanadel from Deepleaf demonstrated their AI-powered crop advisory platform that combines satellite intelligence, weather data, and farmer observations to provide practical agronomic support through trusted channels like WhatsApp and voice calls, emphasizing the importance of connecting AI with validated local protocols. Javier Mateo-Sagasta from the International Water Management Institute shared how AI and remote sensing are being used to automatically detect wastewater treatment plants and characterize agricultural water demands, helping to identify safe and economically viable opportunities for treated water reuse in the region. Sanjay Borkar from Farm ERP presented their comprehensive AI platform connecting farm operations with procurement, logistics, and finance, demonstrating how climate risk alerts, yield forecasting, irrigation optimization, and traceability can create value across the entire agrifood value chain. Nadim Al Ala Khoury from Alicom discussed their AI-based market intelligence system that helps small producers and cooperatives make better production and marketing decisions to reduce food loss in perishable value chains, particularly focusing on harmonizing production with demand through integrated supply chain optimization. The Q&A session revealed key concerns about AI adoption, including the importance of trusted channels for farmer engagement, the need for human oversight to validate AI recommendations, and questions about accountability when AI advisory leads to financial losses for farmers.
07/09/2026