EP 60: Feeding the World with AI: Inside Syngenta's Data Playbook

Agriculture is the oldest industry in the world — and one of the least represented at AI conferences. In this episode, Sam talks with Jeremy Groeteke, CIO of Syngenta's vegetable division, about how a company operating in 90+ countries with 50,000 employees is building AI infrastructure to help feed the world. Topics covered: Syngenta's approach to merging AI, data science, and physical science in agriculture Using computer vision for early disease and pest detection in crops Why general-purpose LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude give farmers overly generic recommendations — and why domain fine-tuning matters The shift from data lakes to data mesh at Syngenta Single-agent vs. multi-agent AI architectures — and why accuracy often favors single agents right now The "metadata problem": why having data isn't enough without context about how it was collected Cropwise AI — Syngenta's tool for turning insight into actionable recommendations Why agriculture's long biological cycles make it a poor fit for typical VC/tech timelines Advice for technologists looking to break into agtech Guest Bio: Jeremy Groeteke is CIO for Syngenta's vegetable division, overseeing digital strategy for an organization that provides crop protection, biologicals, digital tools, and genetics to growers in over 90 countries. Connect: Find Jeremy on LinkedIn to learn more about Syngenta's work in AI and agriculture.