All Innovations

The Innovation Commission promotes innovation development and scaling at the intersection of climate change, food security, and agriculture. It identifies innovations with rigorous evidence of impact and cost-effectiveness, and a plausible pathway to scale. It also identifies earlier-stage innovations with high option value or potential for transformative impact.
Featured Innovation

Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Empower Farmers with Weather Information

Artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling a revolution in weather forecasting, creating the potential to empower farmers with information for agricultural decisions. Multiple randomized trials find that farmers adjust their behavior in response to weather forecasts, generating substantial benefits. These forecasts...
Late Stage Innovation

Digital Agriculture

Digital agriculture systems can provide farmers with timely, science-based information on weather, pests, soil conditions, and new technologies, helping them improve productivity and adapt to climate change. Advances in artificial intelligence and digital advisory platforms could substantially expand access to...
Late Stage Innovation

Financial Innovations

Financial and market innovations can help smallholder farmers invest in productivity improvements, manage climate risks, and smooth income across seasons. Innovations such as asset-collateralized loans, seasonal credit, financial planning tools, market innovations for inputs, and redesigned insurance products have rigorous...
Late Stage Innovation

Climate-Resilient Social Protection

Climate change increases the vulnerability of people living in extreme poverty, particularly smallholder farmers who are highly exposed to extreme weather events. Climate-resilient social protection programs can support sustained improvements in livelihoods while providing timely support in advance of predictable...
Late Stage Innovation

Training for Rainwater Harvesting

One-time trainings for smallholder farmers in arid regions can substantially increase adoption of on-farm rainwater harvesting techniques, increasing farmer revenue and reversing land degradation. In Niger, a simple training on constructing demi-lunes increased adoption by over 90 percentage points and...
Early Stage Innovation

Reducing Livestock Methane Emissions

Innovations such as feed additives, gene editing, and improved livestock management have the potential to significantly reduce methane emissions from livestock. Because livestock methane emissions are a major contributor to climate change and demand for livestock products is expected to...
Early Stage Innovation

Alternative proteins

Alternative proteins have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production while expanding access to affordable and climate-resilient sources of protein. Innovations in plant-based foods, fermentation technologies, and cultivated meat could provide lower-emissions substitutes for conventional animal proteins....
Early Stage Innovation

Microbial Fertilizer

Microbial fertilizers use bacteria to facilitate crops’ absorption of nutrients, improving yields and reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers. Replacing synthetic nitrogen fertilizer with microbial nitrogen fixation could substantially reduce emissions and generate billions in social benefits. Further testing and...