Cargill leans on regenerative agriculture and generative AI to feed the planet

When Jennifer Hartsock was growing up in rural Iowa, the sweeping farmlands she saw along the roadways each day inspired her seventh-grade science fair project on soil erosion.

It turned out to be a prognostic moment in Hartsock’s life. Since 2022, she has served as chief information and digital officer at agricultural giant Cargill.

“I wish I could say that at that age, I was like, ‘Someday I will get a chance to go work for Cargill, and then I will be able to marry my passion for technology with helping improve the lives of our farmers,’” jokes Hartsock.

But when an executive recruiter at Cargill called, her Midwestern childhood combined with decades of work in technology compelled Hartsock to answer.

For much of her career, Hartsock worked in the construction equipment and energy sectors, serving as chief information officer during two big mergers. She worked at equipment maker Cameron when it was bought by Schlumberger and at General Electric’s oil and gas equipment business when it merged with Baker Hughes. Hartsock grew accustomed to working with global manufacturing suppliers and long product lead times.

But Cargill, with annual sales of $177 billion, felt different not just because it produces food. Cargill works closely with farmers, a group Hartsock had never worked with before. As CIO, Hartsock needs to ensure that her company's tech tools and capabilities are serving this constituency as effectively as they serve company employees.

“If the farmers can’t win in whatever we want to deploy…then we feel like we’re not creating sustainable change,” she says.

Data is an important part of this mission. Cargill uses crop data and soil testing to bolster regenerative agriculture practices, which can help lift the profitability of a farm. Cargill’s satellite imagery systems provide alerts on deforestation issues. And a digital tool it developed called CocoaWise provides transparency of the cocoa bean supply chain to help customers determine if the chocolate they are buying aligns with their ESG goals.

“We have commitments that we make with our peers, around traceability and visibility of our data, whether it be sustainable or transparency in the supply chain itself,” says Hartsock.

Investments in artificial intelligence have changed how Cargill forecasts movements within the company’s supply chain, including timing when a shipment across the ocean will reach ports.

When it comes to generative AI, Hartsock sees three focus areas that will create meaningful value: research and development, knowledge management, and productivity.

For R&D, generative AI could help propel innovation, including ingredient formulation. For knowledge sharing, one early generative AI production case that Cargill is piloting is a chatbot called “CASC Me Anything,” which stands for “Cargill Agriculture Supply Chain.” “If only Cargill knew what Cargill already knows,” says Hartsock of the power of tapping into the company’s historical data.

Cargill is also experimenting with generative AI to bolster internal productivity—anything from generating computer code to creating the text for job postings—though it's still early days. The large language models that Cargill is testing include those offered from existing vendor relationships with cloud compute and data storage partners, as well as others outside that existing ecosystem.

“It’s going to be a catalog of partners, some of which we’ll experiment with and love, and some we will experiment with, learn something, and move on,” says Hartsock.

John Kell

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com