36Kr Global - Industry | Pinduoduo Joins Hands with Young Makers to Kick off a Global Experiment on Agriculture
Young entrepreneurs are trying to offer new solutions to the challenges facing global agriculture.
On August 29, the finals of the "2025 Global Young Agripreneurs Contest", jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Zhejiang University, and Pinduoduo, and supported by the Foreign Economic Cooperation Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the People's Government of Binjiang District, Hangzhou, concluded in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Three youth teams from Tanzania, China, and the United States won the gold, silver, and bronze awards respectively.
The Global Young Agripreneurs Contest is an agricultural science and innovation event for global youth jointly initiated by the FAO and Zhejiang University. It has grown into a flagship project of the FAO system, aiming to gather global youth forces and encourage young people to promote the sustainable development of agriculture and food systems through digital technology and innovation. Since its inception in 2020, the contest has been successfully held for five consecutive years, and Pinduoduo has also provided support and participated in it for five consecutive years.
Climate change has made the weather increasingly unpredictable, and the global population growth has driven up the demand for food. Agriculture, which is highly dependent on weather conditions, is facing multiple challenges that vary from time to time and place to place. However, the increasing maturity of technologies such as AI, IoT, and big data has also provided new possibilities for innovative agricultural solutions. What kind of technological solutions are needed for different geographical environments and economic conditions? And how can these solutions be commercially viable? From the winning and participating projects of this contest, we may be able to see the thinking and actions of young agricultural entrepreneurs.
How do global young agripreneurs think about and address the specific challenges facing global agriculture?
This year's Global Young Agripreneurs Contest attracted a total of 519 digital agricultural solutions from 97 countries around the world, setting new records in both the number of project applications and the scope of coverage. Through the online preliminary selection, nine youth-led innovative solutions from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, China, Thailand, Colombia, Hungary, and the United States successfully advanced to the finals.
Ultimately, the SafeSip team from Tanzania won the gold award with its innovative solution for safe water use in the poultry industry. The "Real-time Pig Monitoring Team" from China won the silver award with its AI-based pig farming solution, and the PlanPulse Patch team from the United States won the bronze award with its plant growth warning and monitoring solution. The top three finalists will receive "seed funds for project promotion" funded by Pinduoduo. The leaders of the gold and silver award-winning teams will also be invited to participate in the 2025 FAO Science and Innovation Forum in Rome to showcase their agricultural science and innovation achievements on the world stage.
Among the nine projects that advanced to the finals, targeted solutions were proposed for the specific environmental and agricultural problems faced in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and other regions, as well as the difficulties and needs of small farmers, including women and youth:
The SafeSip team from Tanzania, which won the gold award, focused on the poultry drinking water safety issues in seven countries, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, and launched a one-stop solution of "five-level bionic ultrafiltration system + solar IoT monitoring + graded subscription". In this region, where the mortality rate of poultry caused by waterborne pathogens is as high as 58%, small farmers can simply insert a card into the digital system to detect the pathogen content in water or purify poultry drinking water on a "pay-as-you-go" basis. During the pilot phase, the incidence of poultry infectious diseases decreased by 67%, and the mortality rate decreased by 58%. To enable more small farmers to use this solution, the team adopted environmentally friendly and cost-effective solar IoT technology, allowing the system to monitor in real-time and issue early warnings even without electricity. According to team leader Faith Sebastian Kuya, the monthly subscription price for this solution is only $6, and small farmers can recoup their costs within four or five months.
Representatives of the SafeSip team, the gold award winner of the 2025 Global Young Agripreneurs Contest
The Real-time Pig Monitoring Team from China, which won the silver award in this contest, collected and processed more than 200,000 pieces of pig farming data to achieve "disease diagnosis through sound". By analyzing the deep coughs, shallow coughs, dry coughs, and other sounds of pigs, the team can determine the health status of pigs and issue early warnings for pig respiratory diseases up to seven days in advance. The team also developed a set of intelligent equipment that combines 24/7 AI visual recognition and multi-sensor fusion to replace traditional manual inspections. This equipment can capture subtle changes in pigs' body temperature, feeding, and movement in real-time, identify abnormalities such as fever and coughing, and send out early warnings. Through this technology, not only has the early warning and monitoring ability been improved, but also labor efficiency has been enhanced. Currently, during the fattening stage, one breeder can raise 10,000 pigs per year.
The Real-time Pig Monitoring Team from China, the silver award winner of this contest
The PlantPulse Patch team from the United States provides a "plant-level early warning system" for high-value crops in enclosed environments. The team attaches nanomaterial VOC sensors near the leaves to capture the extremely trace gases released by plants before they get sick in real-time. By combining with an AI model, the system can issue an alarm two to three days before symptoms appear, thereby helping to reduce pests and diseases. It is reported that the system can achieve non-invasive and continuous monitoring, filling the gap between existing environmental sensors and lagging PCR tests. It is expected to reduce disease losses by 50% and save more than $100 billion in global annual losses. The first batch of products will serve CEA tomato greenhouses, and will be extended to other greenhouse crops and open-field cultivation in the future. A low-cost version will also be available to benefit small farmers with limited resources.
The leader of the PlantPulse Patch team from the United States
"The judges of this contest reached a high degree of consensus. We have been looking for projects that are both innovative and inclusive, and can truly benefit small farmers in more regions," said Wei Longbao, the judge of this year's Global Young Agripreneurs Contest, the head of the preparation team, and the director of the Institute of Food Economics and Rural Business Management at Zhejiang University, when commenting on the contest.
The solutions of other finalist teams also focus on empowering agriculture with emerging technologies and providing innovative solutions to the challenges faced by agriculture and farmers around the world:
For example, the SiloSense project in Kenya focuses on small farmers in East Africa. In response to the post-harvest grain loss rate of up to 40%, it designed a solution of "SmartSilo intelligent granary + digital platform + grain storage as a service" to help small farmers reduce losses, increase income, and enhance food security and climate resilience;
The Solafam project in Uganda targets small farmers, women, and youth in Uganda and sub-Saharan Africa who own less than two hectares of land. It launched a "zero-down-payment, local-language, climate-smart" value chain solution, covering aspects such as intelligent assistants, solar irrigation systems, and solar cold storage warehouses, to address the pain points of small farmers who rely on weather conditions;
The Hanhai Miracle Team from China proposed an AI-based sustainable agricultural solution for biological deserts, which has been verified in projects in the northwestern deserts of China and the United Arab Emirates. It has achieved a 30 - 50% reduction in water consumption, a 42 - 58% reduction in pesticide use, and a significant increase in the yield per mu of cash crops. At the same time, it has promoted local employment and rural revitalization.
These young entrepreneur teams not only focus on transforming complex technologies into simple and easy-to-use services so that small farmers without a technical background can also benefit from technological dividends, but also have systematic thinking and a sense of sustainable development, striving to build a complete agricultural ecological closed-loop.
From the Young Agripreneurs Contest to the World Stage, Pinduoduo Continues to Increase Investment in the "First Mile" of Agricultural Research and Innovation
"Currently, challenges such as global warming and resource depletion threaten the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and rural communities. Youth-led innovative solutions are the key to solving these problems," said Marvin Otieno, the director of the FAO Innovation Office, in his speech. "This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Global Young Agripreneurs Contest. Since the FAO and Zhejiang University jointly organized the Global Young Agripreneurs Contest for the first time in 2020, our goal has been clear: to find, support, and promote youth-led innovative business models and digital solutions to unleash the transformative potential of agriculture."
Hou Kaidi, the vice president of Pinduoduo, said that compared with previous years, the 2025 Global Young Agripreneurs Contest had highlights in terms of scale, innovation of participating projects, and event organization. The contest not only attracted more teams from different countries and regions around the world, but also the participating projects demonstrated more cutting-edge technologies and broader application scenarios. The off-contest activities were also further enriched.
For example, in May this year, Pinduoduo, in collaboration with the FAO and Zhejiang University, organized the "2025 Digital Agriculture Innovation Training Camp". It invited 18 young agricultural entrepreneurs from eight countries, including Peru, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, and China, to exchange ideas on technologies for promoting agriculture and rural development with students from the Gusheng Village Science and Technology Small Courtyard in Dali, Yunnan, to continuously deepen digital agriculture innovation.
As a comprehensive e-commerce platform that started with agriculture, Pinduoduo has always regarded agriculture as its long-term core strategy. It is committed to smoothing the "last mile" of agricultural product distribution and continuously increasing investment in the "first mile" of agricultural research and innovation, injecting new impetus into rural revitalization and agricultural and rural modernization.
It is understood that since 2020, Pinduoduo has been investing in the Global Young Agripreneurs Contest for five years. The first four editions of the contest have collectively discovered more than 600 agricultural innovation solutions, covering 74 countries across five continents. Pinduoduo has also hosted the "Duoduo Agricultural Research Science and Technology Contest" for five consecutive years and supported the "National Science and Technology Small Courtyard Contest" for three editions, encouraging and promoting cutting-edge technology research and the cultivation of interdisciplinary talents.
Hou Kaidi said that through the platform of the Global Young Agripreneurs Contest, "firstly, we can access cutting-edge technologies and innovative solutions to directly boost industrial upgrading and address systematic challenges; secondly, we can connect with the global innovation network and resources to accelerate the international layout of agricultural-related enterprises. The team from Peru in the previous edition took advantage of the contest's influence to step onto the United Nations stage and found supply chain cooperation resources in China. This is an efficient springboard for internationalization; at the same time, the contest is an excellent platform to showcase China's agricultural science and technology strength and promote the export of China's advanced agricultural solutions."
From the Young Agripreneurs Contest to the world stage, from concept and pilot to implementation and popularization, global young entrepreneurs are sowing new possibilities for the future of agriculture.
Images | Unsplash, provided by enterprises
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