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Presseinformation: Can AI improve farmers’ resilience to climate change?
Nr. 83 - 11.06.2026
Collaboration led by Göttingen University awarded Climate Change AI Innovation grant
An international team of researchers led by Göttingen University in Germany has been awarded a Climate Change AI Innovation grant for the project “Can AI technologies increase farmer’s resilience to climate change? Impact evaluation of Croppie.” The award is worth 150,000 US dollars over 1 year and it was one of only twelve applications out of 400 from 78 countries that were successful. Together with academics from EAFIT University and CIAT in Colombia, South America, the funding will enable researchers to explore ways to support small-holder coffee farmers who are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of global warming.
The project examines whether “machine vision” – technology to automatically provide information based on images – can help farmers predict future income more accurately and strengthen their financial planning. By running a randomized controlled trial in Colombia, the project will evaluate whether using the Croppie App can increase farmers’ resilience to climate-related shocks. By providing estimates of coffee yields, Croppie can support farmers to respond earlier to anticipated income losses. The project will also generate a unique dataset to assess the potential for scaling up digital tools in low-income settings. In addition, regular crop monitoring will offer new insights into how climate affects coffee productivity and help identify the producers most at risk, thereby improving how to target support and roll out services in the future.
Marcela Ibañez-Diaz, Project Coordinator and Professor in Behavioral and Developmental Economics at Göttingen University, explains: “AI has enormous potential to support climate adaptation in agriculture. At the same time, we still have limited evidence on the practical obstacles and real-world conditions that determine whether small-scale farmers in developing countries can adopt and benefit from these technologies. We need more evidence about the barriers – connectivity, costs, skills, and trust – and the conditions under which AI tools can deliver reliable benefits.” Her team uses experimental and field methods to generate evidence on how policy can better address persistent social and economic inequalities and support more effective interventions.
Climate Change AI is a nonprofit organization whose AI Innovation Grants programme supports projects that address research challenges in climate change mitigation, adaptation, and climate science by leveraging AI and machine learning, while also creating publicly available datasets and tools to catalyze further work.
Contact:
Professor Marcela Ibañez-Diaz
University of Göttingen
Faculty of Business and Economics
37073 Göttingen, Germany
www.uni-goettingen.de/de/prof.++marcela+ibanez+ph.d./631752.html