Driving Digital Innovation for Sustainable Agriculture: Insights from FAO’s IDASF 2025

Author: Lesly Goh. On September 5, 2025, I had the privilege of speaking at the FAO Inter-Regional Digital Agriculture Solutions Forum (IDASF 2025) in Bangkok. This global event brought together policymakers, researchers, and innovators to explore how digital technologies can accelerate rural transformation and bridge the digital divide in agrifood systems.

The Role of Academia in Digital Inclusion

My panel, “Role of academia in powering digital innovations and enhancing digital inclusion,” focused on how universities and research institutions can drive impactful change through cross-sector partnerships. Academia plays a critical role in translating cutting-edge research into practical solutions that empower rural communities, strengthen food security, and promote sustainability.

The Vision Behind SIGMA

The inspiration for my talk came from my experience at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Residency in September 2023. That experience helped me crystallize the concept of developing a multi-stakeholder rice ecosystem. Over the past year, I’ve been collaborating with top scientists at the University of Illinois and University of Arkansas to operationalize this concept, moving beyond research to translate technology directly into local communities in Southeast Asia.

Introducing SIGMA: A Global Model for Agri-Food Systems

This effort led to the formation of the Southeast Asia Innovation Alliance for a Global Model of Agri-Food Systems (SIGMA). Co-led by the University of Illinois and the National University of Singapore (NUS), SIGMA is an academic research initiative that digitally captures plant growing systems, starting with rice. We leverage advanced sensing, modeling technology, and rich data to understand how crop systems respond to different conditions. SIGMA is designed to transform academic innovation into real-world solutions for economic development, improve farmers’ livelihoods, and promote environmental sustainability in Southeast Asia. Learn more about SIGMA: https://asc.illinois.edu/sigma/

A Solution for the Digital Divide: Our SYMFONI MRV Technology

During my presentation, I discussed the limitations of current Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) technologies, many of which require extensive data and are too costly or complex for smallholder farmers. These systems often work well for large, consolidated farms with strong digital infrastructure but pose a significant burden on smallholders in developing countries.

To address this, the SIGMA team developed a system-of-systems approach called SYMFONI, which is specifically designed to overcome these challenges. SYMFONI combines process-based modeling, ground data collection, remote sensing, and AI-empowered model-data fusion. This approach minimizes the need for extensive manual data input from farmers, making it far more accessible and cost-effective. The rapid adoption of SYMFONI on over one million hectares in the U.S. demonstrates its clear practical advantages over traditional methods.

The Vietnam Pilot Project: A Real-World Example

Vietnam offers an ideal context to pilot our sustainable practices. Rice is a big part of the economy, and it is a symbol of Vietnamese culture and the people’s staple food. Rice production contributes 30% of the country’s agricultural production value and provides food security for the nation. While grown across the country, about 50% of rice fields are concentrated in the Mekong Delta region which produces half of the nation’s rice and 90% of its exports.

With support from the World Bank between 2016 and 2022, the Viet Nam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Project (VNSAT) trained 155,000 rice farming households on climate resilient farming and helped cultivate 180,000 hectares of low-emission rice fields. Through the project, farmers’ profits have increased by 30-35% as a result of direct savings incurred from reduced fertilizer, pesticide and water consumption, in addition to income increases from higher yields and certain price premium due to quality improvement.

As a result, the Vietnamese government has taken bold new steps in the Mekong Delta to develop one million hectares of high-quality, low-emission rice –with higher yield, better quality, and up to 70% less methane emissions.

The SIGMA MRV solution can be a critical tool in this effort, helping to accurately monitor decarbonization progress, ensure carbon credit integrity, and maximize the program’s effectiveness.

Scaling Impact Through Collaboration

A key strength of the SIGMA alliance is its collaborative model. Academia provides research, philanthropy de-risks initial investments, and the private sector is essential for scaling solutions. Partners like multilateral development organizations and governments are crucial for ensuring that these tools reach and benefit smallholders.

The SIGMA team is actively developing an ecosystem, together with Global Methane Hub, working with strategic partners to expand the uptake of SYMFONI beyond the U.S. My hope is that by working together, we can transform advanced MRV systems into actionable solutions, promoting sustainable rice cultivation and delivering scalable climate impact across Southeast Asia. It was an honor to share this vision at IDASF2025 and to highlight how the University of Illinois is at the forefront of this critical research to bring the MRV solution to Southeast Asia, starting with Vietnam as the first pilot.

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