Servicing agrifood innovation systems: Engaging with the Digital Agriculture and AI Innovation Roadmap 

Agrifood systems have reached a crossroads that demands more than incremental change. Climate shocks, conflict and economic volatility now collide with the need to feed a projected 9.7 billion people by 2050. The agricultural sector already generates about one-third of global greenhouse gas and withdraws roughly 70 percent of the world’s freshwater, yet it still leaves more than 638 million people chronically undernourished. Smallholders working on fewer than two hectares (representing 12 percent of all farmlands) still produce roughly one-third of the world’s food, but they remain the most exposed to unpredictable, extreme weather events, volatile prices and digital exclusion. Put simply, the system that feeds humanity is overdue for an upgrade. 

The Digital Agriculture Unit in the Office of Innovation took the initiative to convene a Digital Agriculture and AI Innovation Dialogue in April 2025, leading toward the Roadmap, offering a federated, decentralized framework for digital agrifood data and AI innovation that moves ideas from problem definition, to testing, prototyping, deployment and scale. It lays out a living, voluntary, open framework that democratizes data and AI across agrifood systems, and defines the principles, partnerships and financing paths to validate, experiment with and scale responsible AI products. 

Operationalizing the Framework begins with four shared Services that partners can use to design, test and scale solutions, pairing speed with safeguards to ensure delivery does not outrun responsibility. Guided by FAO’s normative work and inspired by the Rome Call for AI Ethics as an ethical north star, these Services turn high-level principles into day-to-day practice. 

Assess your AI Governance. Oversight must protect integrity without stifling innovation. The ecosystem adopts an adaptive governance framework anchored in FAO’s normative guidance but is designed to evolve through rapid feedback loops. The core elements include an ethics charter that will guide all actors in the federated architecture, described below, to aim their resources towards the same intentions. Annual Dialogues act as a formal checkpoint where missions, metrics and standards are refreshed incorporating new evidence and stakeholder feedback. This dynamic approach keeps guardrails firm enough to build trust yet flexible enough to learn, ensuring that the ecosystem stays agile, inclusive and relentlessly focused on measurable impact. 

Experiment and build in the AI Sandbox. The AI Sandbox is an innovation and experimentation management tool, a safe space to try ideas, get inspired by what has been already developed. It can validate innovative hypothesis, test market-fit and transform ideas into tangible initiatives and solutions. The Sandbox offers open toolkits and reusable resources that accelerate AI innovation in agrifood and digital agriculture, preparing solutions for durable, future-proof scale-up. This space streamlines the AI innovation process by identifying viable ideas and Use Cases moving them from ideas qualification and hypothesis testing to product and service prototyping and market validation. The Sandbox links seamlessly with the rest of the Framework: mentors and reviewers' route via the STI Portal and Network; field validation connects through Innovation Hubs; safeguards follow the Governance practices and Toolkit. The intent is simple: faster learning cycles, credible comparability across contexts, and smoother paths to piloting, procurement and scale. 

Explore and network in the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Portal. An on-demand advisory service and network that connects countries and partners to trusted AI and digital agriculture expertise, so decisions flow faster, designs are stronger, and solutions align with evidence and standards. The STI Portal and Network provides a searchable map of innovations and actors, letting innovators register themselves and their solutions so the community can find and connect with people, products and partners to co-create with, rather than starting from a blank slate. 

Matchmake and validate in the Innovation Hubs. Innovation Hubs are a matchmaking, deployment and value chain strengthening service – national and regional nodes that connect innovators, policymakers and investors to turn tested concepts into real implementations. Anchored by initiatives such as MAINSTREAM Regional Innovation Scaling Hubs, Digital Agriculture Innovation Hubs and Digital Villages Initiatives, they curate local demand, host validation pilots, broker partnerships and create credible pathways from prototype to procurement and scale.