At the AI For Good Global Summit 2025, the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) launched a Global Initiative on AI for Food Systems. The GI, led by HHI expert Sebastian Bosse, aims to use artificial intelligence in agriculture to increase productivity, strengthen resilience, and promote global food security in a sustainable manner. Other parties involved include the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Urgent action needed to combat hunger
According to the FAO, over 700 million people worldwide suffer from hunger. This number will increase if the world population grows to 9.7 billion by 2050, as predicted. Food production must increase by 70 percent to prevent this.
However, food security is currently a multidimensional problem: One-third of the world's food is produced by small farmers in remote areas. Producers not only suffer from a lack of networking and limited access to capital but are also largely underrepresented in innovation systems. According to Pieternel Boogaard, Managing Director of Technical Delivery at IFAD, the use of technology makes it possible to provide this missing external support.
According to Dejan Jakovljevic, Director of the Digital FAO and Agricultural Informatics Division, artificial intelligence can serve as an important enabler and accelerator for the transformation of agricultural and food systems. Challenges remain in the standardization and responsible use of AI. Therefore, AI-based solutions must be developed together with and for farmers, integrated into public systems, and supported by sustainable financing.
AI as a tool and strategic necessity
“With this initiative, we will continue on our path and realize non-discriminatory, interoperable, and open systems in agriculture,” explains GI Chairman Sebastian Bosse, head of the Interactive and Cognitive Systems (ICS) research group at Fraunhofer HHI.
The Global Initiative is part of the World Food Programme (WFP)'s Global AI Strategy, which will run until 2027. It builds on the work of the ITU-FAO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) for Digital Agriculture, which was also led by Sebastian Bosse.
In particular, the internationally recognized reference architecture developed there plays an important role as the foundation of the Global Initiative: It was implemented by ICS at Fraunhofer HHI in the NaLamKI project as an open, decentralized, and scalable platform and has been successfully applied in various use cases in Germany. These include data collection by drones, the integration of satellite data, and disease detection and yield estimation in food stocks. In the ACRAT project funded by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Regional Identity, the platform is also being validated in the context of agroecological practices with smallholder farms in India and for soil mapping in the the GeoAI project by GIZ.
The core theme of the Global Initiative and previous projects is always the current technical fragmentation in digital agriculture. Standardization is intended to promote interoperability to overcome fragmentation in an open and non-discriminatory manner while ensuring user centricity. Specifically, the GI combines four areas of action to achieve this: First, researchers want to implement state-of-the-art AI and complementary digital technologies throughout the entire food value chain. This will be followed by knowledge exchange to share best practices and insights, thereby building a collective understanding and expertise in AI in food systems. Next, the initiative aims to build collaborative relationships between stakeholders. In this way, the researchers want to drive innovation and strengthen influence across the sector. Finally, the innovative AI applications will be developed and tested in real-world scenarios.
Seizo Onoe, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, says: “Through shared digital infrastructures, pilot projects, and standards, we want to enable governments and innovators to achieve real impact for resilient food systems. The results of this initiative will also feed into key ITU standardization workflows.”
In addition to the institutions mentioned above, Fraunhofer HHI collaborates with the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for the NaLamKI platform. Improved productivity and resource efficiency, as well as data-driven decisions, will thus strengthen global food security—ensuring that everyone has access to safe, nutritious food.
Find our more about the global initiative here.
