Farm Organic Syngenta Opens Cropwise Platform to Developers to Bridge Agriculture’s Tech Divide
Syngenta, one of the world’s most influential agricultural technology and crop science companies, has taken a bold step toward reshaping the future of digital farming. The company announced that it is officially opening access to CROPWISE™, its flagship artificial intelligence–powered farm management platform, to third-party developers around the world. The move marks a major milestone in the evolution of agtech, as it aims to stimulate collaboration, accelerate innovation, and ensure that the benefits of digital transformation reach farmers of all scales and geographies.
A Global Platform Built on Five Years of Agricultural Digitalization
Since its introduction just five years ago, Cropwise has become a cornerstone of Syngenta’s digital agriculture strategy. The platform has rapidly grown into a comprehensive digital infrastructure that supports more than 70 million hectares of farmland across over 30 countries. Its tools enable farmers to manage fields with precision, derive insights from satellite imagery, make agronomic decisions using AI, and streamline operations — all in one connected ecosystem.
With the official launch of the Cropwise Open Platform, Syngenta is now expanding the ecosystem beyond its internal development teams. This new phase allows external developers — including independent software builders, universities, agtech startups, and research institutions — to integrate their tools and models directly into the Cropwise environment. Syngenta’s goal is to create a dynamic, developer-friendly world where innovation scales faster, solutions become more localized, and the digital divide across global agriculture is reduced.
Removing Access Barriers to Drive Agricultural Innovation
The company recognizes that one of the biggest obstacles to rapid digital transformation in agriculture has been the challenge of access — access to high-quality datasets, agronomic models, and scalable platforms capable of supporting millions of users. By opening its “digital foundation” to innovators worldwide, Syngenta is directly confronting this barrier.
Developers will now be able to plug into Cropwise’s powerful capabilities, including AI, machine learning, field-level data modeling, and aggregated agronomic insights. This structure enables the creation of applications tailored to specific crops, climatic conditions, regulatory environments, and local farming practices. It also eliminates the need for innovators to build entire digital infrastructures from scratch, accelerating time-to-market for new tools and allowing more experimentation at scale.
Syngenta emphasizes that this ecosystem is not simply a technology-sharing initiative — it is an effort to cultivate cross-industry collaboration at a time when agriculture faces mounting pressures. The company views the open platform as an engine for fresh ideas that can help farmers improve productivity, enhance sustainability, and adapt to rapidly changing conditions.
Research Highlights a Growing Digital Divide in Agriculture
Syngenta’s announcement comes against the backdrop of new research conducted with IPSOS, which offers a sobering look at global digital adoption trends in farming. The study reveals that the digital divide is widening, with larger commercial farms adopting AI and digital tools much faster than small- and medium-scale farmers. This discrepancy risks leaving millions of growers behind at a time when data-driven decision-making is becoming essential for coping with climate change, resource constraints, and rising market volatility.
The research further highlights generational differences in technology adoption. Younger farmers — many of whom have grown up using smartphones, drones, and remote sensing tools — tend to embrace AI-driven applications with ease. Conversely, many older farmers perceive AI as complicated or inaccessible, often unaware that they are already using AI-powered features embedded in technologies such as imaging systems, drone scouting tools, and digital sprayer monitors.
Perhaps most importantly, the study identifies trust, data control, and localized proof of performance as the most influential factors shaping farmer decisions about adopting digital technologies. Farmers want assurance that the tools they rely on are safe, transparent, proven, and respectful of their data rights.
A Turning Point for Global Agriculture
Feroz Sheikh, Syngenta’s Chief Information and Digital Officer, emphasized the urgency behind the company’s new initiative. “The agriculture sector stands at a tipping point,” he said. “Climate pressures, global market volatility, and the urgent need to promote sustainable farming practices mean that technology adoption can no longer be optional.”
Sheikh believes that the Cropwise Open Platform is well positioned to help bridge the growing inequity in technology adoption. By combining Syngenta’s deep agronomic knowledge with the creativity and expertise of global developers, the company aims to foster an ecosystem in which solutions can be tailored, tested, and delivered at scale — all while ensuring that farmers remain firmly in control of their data.
An Open Ecosystem With Farmers at the Center
Syngenta has designed the platform around a core principle: farmer empowerment. The open architecture allows farmers to select the applications that best meet their individual needs, from disease prediction models to soil health diagnostics, irrigation optimization tools, climate risk assessments, or financial planning tools. Regardless of which developer creates a given tool, farmers retain full ownership and control over their data.
For developers, the platform represents a rare opportunity — access to advanced agronomic datasets, AI capabilities, and deployment potential across millions of hectares. This combination could significantly accelerate innovation cycles, enabling solutions to be built more quickly, adapted more accurately to regional needs, and shared more widely across global agriculture.
Sheikh describes the platform as “a network with farmers at the center,” envisioning a collaborative model that ensures digital innovation is accessible, affordable, and trustworthy. “AI can be the great equalizer in agriculture,” he noted, “but only if it’s accessible, affordable, and trusted.”
Commitment to Data Privacy and Transparency
As part of its announcement, Syngenta reaffirmed its long-standing commitment to data privacy. The company stated clearly that it does not share or provide access to any individual grower’s data without explicit consent, and only in full compliance with applicable laws. This commitment directly addresses one of the primary concerns highlighted in the IPSOS research and reinforces trust as the foundation of the new developer ecosystem.
A Call to Innovators Across the Agricultural Value Chain
The launch of the Cropwise Open Platform represents more than a technical expansion — it signals Syngenta’s vision for a more inclusive and collaborative future in agriculture. By bringing together farmers, developers, agronomists, researchers, and industry partners, Syngenta hopes to nurture a global ecosystem where ideas can flourish and solutions can scale quickly enough to meet the challenges facing food systems worldwide.
Further details about Syngenta’s research with IPSOS, along with a full report and additional insights from Feroz Sheikh, are available through the article linked in Syngenta’s announcement.
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