By April Toler
The Agricultural Innovation Mechanism for Scale (AIM for Scale), part of the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, has received a $10 million grant from the OpenAI Foundation to help governments bring AI-powered weather services to millions of farmers across South and Southeast Asia and East Africa. The initiative connects agricultural innovation with funding to help millions of smallholder farmers adapt to climate change.
The initiative is led by Paul Winters, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Notre Dame and executive director of AIM for Scale. AIM for Scale is a global initiative that has previously received support from the International Affairs Office of the UAE Presidential Court and the Gates Foundation.
The funding is part of a broader $60 million investment from the OpenAI Foundation that brings together AIM for Scale; the University of Chicago; the University of California, Berkeley; Precision Development; Digital Green and CIMMYT. Together, the organizations aim to expand access to AI-powered weather and crop disease forecasting tools for 100 million smallholder farmers over the next three years.
For Winters, the funding represents an opportunity to tackle a challenge that has long confronted the development community: how to move evidence-based innovations beyond successful pilots and into sustainable initiatives capable of reaching millions of people.
Source : nd.edu