The AI Revolution Comes for Farmers Growing a Third of Our Food
In its first test in Malawi, AI is helping smallholder farmers treat pigs and kill weevils that are destroying their crops
Small-scale agriculture provides livelihood to more than 80% of Malawi’s 21 million people.
Photographer: Chris de Bode/CGIAR/Panos/ReduxIn the village of Ndodo, 25 miles south of the Malawian capital Lilongwe, farmers gather in the shade of an acacia tree as a voice over a smartphone tells them how to get rid of a weevil that’s destroying their sweet potato crops.
The tips offered by the app in the local language Chichewa is one of the first examples of how Artificial Intelligence is being used to aid subsistence farmers in some of the poorest parts of the world. Piloted by a Chicago-based nonprofit organization Opportunity International, the app called Ulangizi — which translates as “Advice” — works on WhatsApp and uses data from ChatGPT and the Malawian government’s English-language agricultural manual to answer questions or diagnose crop and farm animal diseases.