Assessing Current and Future Climate Risks–at a Fraction of the Time and Cost

The customer is a large multinational corporation with 11 divisions, including agricultural solutions. The company was facing challenges due to increasing climate volatility, particularly extreme weather events and persistent drought conditions. These challenges were raising new concerns and creating difficulties for strategic planning. The company was in search of better tools and a partnership that would jointly inform strategic decision-making. The company was also looking to increase the resilience of the supply of seeds and crops for buyers while improving the efficiency of producing new crop varieties at scale. They were also keen on evaluating how the climate is expected to change over the next 10-20 years for two chosen crop locations and identifying alternative expansion sites.

A large multinational corporation with 11 divisions, including agricultural solutions, was grappling with the increasing climate volatility, particularly extreme weather events and persistent drought conditions. These were raising new concerns and creating challenges for strategic planning. The company was seeking better tools for a more uncertain world and a partnership that would jointly inform strategic decision-making. The first challenge was to increase the resilience of the supply of seeds and crops for buyers while improving the efficiency of producing new crop varieties at scale. The second challenge was to evaluate how the climate is expected to change over the next 10-20 years for two chosen crop locations, the India tomato seed and the Italy leek seed — and identifying alternative expansion sites. The third challenge was to identify “tipping points” for the company’s portfolio.

ClimateAi was engaged to help the company overcome these challenges. For the first challenge, ClimateAi’s Climate Analogs Tool identified two optimal locations in India for one specific seed variety. This tool was able to accomplish in a few hours what the company had worked on for several years, at 10% of the cost. For the second challenge, ClimateAi conducted two pilots with the company to assess climate risk exposure in these locations for the two crops. They used this information to vet long-term investment strategies in the region. For leeks, they understood that this region of production was still expected to be suitable for 20 years even though risks like pest and frost were emerging, and decided to continue its investment in the region. In addition, they were able to leverage these insights to adjust production planning with more resilient seed varieties and better timing for planting, while supporting growers to deliver optimal quality. Additionally, ClimateAi’s Climate Analogs Tool identified potential alternatives for expansion for both the tomato seed and the leek. For the third challenge, ClimateAi’s Climate Lens- Assess tool was able to evaluate the company’s country-level exposure to future climate shifts. The platform can identify tipping points: when an uncommon event (with a 25% probability) becomes a common occurrence (with a 75% probability).

• The company was able to secure the stability of the company’s supply to its customers — and even reduce its time to market for new varieties. The company assessed climate risk for two seed crops to inform decisions on long-term investment in these regions, as well as discovered alternative production regions for them to enable climate-smart geographic diversification. It also could understand portfolio-wide climate risk to build confidence in long-term investment strategy by identifying “tipping points” with tangible information about risks and dates to manage this risk by. Overall, ClimateAi reduced the costs of trials, lowered production losses (by finding more suitable locations more quickly), and enabled higher margins by finding locations that are more efficient for productions.

• ClimateAi’s Climate Analogs Tool was able to accomplish in a few hours what the company had worked on for several years, at 10% of the cost.
• ClimateAi found that a major risk, rising temperatures, would lead to an approximately 30% output decrease in the region within 20 years.
• ClimateAi was able to determine what percentage of their production costs would be at risk — determining that the shift begins for half of locations within 4 years.