Food and Water Systems in the Intelligent Age

The report argues that food systems account for 72% of global water withdrawals and that current production trends are unsustainable. To address this, the World Economic Forum proposes a 'food-water stack'—a layered data integration framework (physical infrastructure, digital/data, innovation, and decision/intelligence layers) that leverages AI, IoT, and remote sensing to provide actionable insights for stakeholders. The document details the technical requirements for data readiness, such as ETL pipelines and synthetic data generation, and provides use cases from India, the Limpopo River Basin, and Costa Rica to demonstrate how the stack can increase crop yields and improve water allocation. It concludes with a roadmap for implementing the stack as a public good through multi-ministerial coordination and innovative financing.

• Global food production is projected to increase by 70%, which will intensify pressure on water resources that are already stressed, with food systems currently representing 72% of water withdrawals worldwide.
• The proposed 'food-water stack' is a structured layering of data sources that enables stakeholders to visualize and synthesize information across four levels: physical infrastructure, digital and data, innovation, and decision and intelligence.
• In India, the application of AI and IoT through the AgriPilot.ai platform in Baramati has resulted in a 20% increase in crop production and an 8% reduction in water use.
• A digital twin prototype for the Limpopo River Basin, spanning Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, uses a GPT-4 powered AI virtual assistant to help water managers and citizens visualize water dynamics and environmental flows.
• In Costa Rica's Limón province, where 76% of the workforce is employed in the banana industry, the food-water stack is proposed to help farmers manage increasing rainfall variability caused by climate change.
• To ensure data readiness and quality, the framework recommends using automated ETL (extract, transform, load) pipelines, cloud-based data lakes, and synthetic data generation to fill gaps in real-world datasets from remote regions.
• The Global Future Council recommends that the food-water stack be treated as a public good, managed by neutral platforms to prevent the monetization of data by a few and to ensure open access for smallholder farmers.

APA

World Economic Forum (2024). Food and Water Systems in the Intelligent Age. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Food_and_Water_Systems_in_the_Intelligent_Age_2024.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Food and Water Systems in the Intelligent Age. 2024. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Food_and_Water_Systems_in_the_Intelligent_Age_2024.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Food and Water Systems in the Intelligent Age |date=December 2024 |url=https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Food_and_Water_Systems_in_the_Intelligent_Age_2024.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2024food, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Food and Water Systems in the Intelligent Age}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2024}, month = dec, url = {https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Food_and_Water_Systems_in_the_Intelligent_Age_2024.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }