LocationsOur agritech work, one year on
December 24, 2020
By Kok Min Ai
With the global population set to grow from 7.8 billion to about 9.7 billion people by 2050, we urgently need to rethink the food value chain and make sure we have enough to feed everyone. The COVID-19 pandemic has showed us that we not only need to increase the efficiency and sustainability of food production, but also the resilience of our food systems.
With this in mind, the Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development – in collaboration with the Government of Singapore and other multi-sector stakeholders – has embarked on multiple initiatives to leverage technological solutions that can help ensure that people around the world will have access to safe, stable, and affordable supplies of food. Below is a snapshot of our work this past year.
Cultiv@te, our global innovation challenge
Investments in agritech startups have been steadily rising in the last decade, with an estimated USD 12.6 billion invested globally in 2019. These start-ups have demonstrated tremendous success in being able to help farmers adopt sustainable agricultural practices, increase efficiency of farming, and improve food resilience.
To leverage on the innovative tech solutions and bright minds of agritech entrepreneurs, we launched a global innovation challenge – Cultiv@te – and called for solutions that could address 13 challenges in the agriculture sector, identified by UNDP Country Offices across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Upon the closing of submissions in February, we received 202 applications from 674 participants across 114 countries.
We were excited to see the range of solutions they offer, ranging digital platforms for data-driven agriculture using IoT, machine learning, blockchain and geospatial data, to novel and sustainable farming methods that can reduce and adapt to the impact of climate change. From March to April this year, we worked with experts from agri- and food-tech venture capital firms AgFunder and Big Idea Ventures to evaluate these applications and selected 31 finalists for the programme to work in 11 countries – Armenia, Bhutan, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Gabon, Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, Singapore, Uruguay, and Uzbekistan.
Watch this short clip for a snapshot of why we created this programme ➡️
We delivered virtual workshops to the finalist teams through our mini accelerator and learning programme, made possible by our global tech partners that include PALO IT, Microsoft, Accenture, and Metabolic. We also gave an opportunity to a few of these teams to present their solutions at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s Digital Innovation Dialogue, the first such dialogue jointly organised with UNDP.
For Singapore’s Cultiv@te challenge, we also partnered with Microsoft for the 2020 Azure Virtual Hackathon, where we awarded team AgroVision the winner of the UNDP challenge. Their solution is an integrated farm health management tool that uses machine learning and IoT to improve the yield and quality of crops from urban farms in high-density cities.
Read more about the Microsoft Azure Virtual Hackathon from their Press Release.
At the same time, we connected the teams with ten UNDP field offices and the Singapore Food Agency, as well as with other local stakeholders – including governments, research institutes, and international organisations – to collaborate and further discuss how their solutions could be implemented in country and meet the identified local needs.
In December, we further narrowed down to selecting one team per challenge country to pilot their solution on the ground. The selected teams are aiming to begin field trials next year, kicking off with field visits through which they will meet local stakeholders, test their prototypes, and prepare plans to scale up. These pilots will help demonstrate how technological solutions such as data analytics, artificial intelligence and digital platforms can help address the challenges smallholder farmers face. These can include low productivity and resource efficiency, and lack of access to information, credit, markets, and agricultural inputs.
An exciting example is the startup Convergence.tech, which is working with UNDP Ecuador and the PROAmazonía initiative to test their solution in the local context. Their goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s productive sectors by reducing deforestation and promoting sustainable management of natural resources. You can read more about it here.
Through Cultiv@te, we are also contributing to UNDP’s support to governments across the world to respond to COVID-19 impact by providing digital tools for improving food security and resilience. For example, by connecting the Bhutan field office with a technology provider with the experience working in rural smallholder farm contexts, we are supporting their COVID-19 response strategy by strengthening the climate resilience of Bhutan’s agricultural sector. This will complement their existing efforts to commercialise farming locally.
In December, we also partnered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) at the Singapore FinTech Festival to help small and medium-sized enterprises to leverage digital technologies to access global value chains. This will involve connecting Cultiv@te’s innovators on MAS’s Business Sans Borders global platform.
A food traceability solution, our report on blockchain systems for food supply chains
Outside of Cultiv@te, we are also exploring emerging technologies that can transform food systems globally to become more transparent and efficient. One of the biggest challenges in food supply chains is the lack of transparency and the risk of food fraud. Blockchain technology provides a solution to this challenge.
Yet, policymakers lack an understanding of how the technology works and can be applied. We have developed a report to help them understand blockchain: what it means, how it can be applied for food traceability, and what are the enablers (e.g., technology standards) necessary for building a blockchain-based traceability system. The full report, which will be available early 2021, also includes successful case studies of different types of blockchain-based systems. Read the summary report here.
The Digital Feed, our deep dive interview series
In October, we launched The Digital Feed, a multi-episode series in collaboration with SGInnovate that features developments and trends across various stages of food value chains — from food production and supply to consumption and food science. Agri-food tech is a rapidly evolving sector and investments in this space are steadily growing. We wanted to bring together industry experts from different areas of the agri-food ecosystem to discuss key trending topics in this space, to help the general audience understand these developments and how they will impact them in the future.
We have released six episodes in which we spoke with international experts on topics including blockchain, agri-tech investments, alternative proteins, agri-food tech innovation and data-driven agriculture.
Watch this short clip for a snapshot of the series ➡️
Read more about the series and the recap of each episode here. Each episode is also available as a podcast here.
Thought leadership
Finally, we have also been actively participating in global and regional events to promote sustainable and digital agriculture as an enabler for food security and sustainability, and also a means for smallholder farmers to grow and scale their businesses. At the beginning of the year, we hosted a panel discussion on ‘The Future of Food’ as part of the SDG Innovate series with SGInnovate.
In August, our Programme Analyst Kok Min Ai addressed young people at the Tzuchi ACTion Seminar, on the effects of COVID-19 on food security. In September, we partnered with the GROW Accelerators' Singapore Food Bowl programme to conduct workshops for their cohort of agri-food tech start-ups. Catch their Digital Demo Day here featuring our team.
Meanwhile, our Senior Advisor, Armen Harutyunyan, also moderated a panel at the AgriFood Innovation Webinar on the digitalisation of food systems in the post-pandemic period, organised by the governments of Singapore, Norway and Israel on 24 September. In addition, he hosted a roundtable discussion at the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit on the future of farming on 18 November.
Finally, more recently, we curated a panel on the Digital Transformation of Agriculture at the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology, together with guests from Microsoft, AgFunder and the FAO.
This year has been an eventful one, albeit challenging. We have had to postpone the country visits for Cultiv@te – a key part of the programme – and streamline our work but have been able to channel these road bumps into new opportunities. We are very grateful to have worked with many valued partners who have provided their time and support for our work. Without the partnerships and collaborations, we have had in the past year, none of it would have been possible.
Please reach out to registry.sg@undp.org if you would like to get in touch.
Kok Min Ai is a Programme Analyst, Sustainable and Digital Agriculture at the UNDP Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development.
