Gilberto Tomazoni, CEO JBS: AI helps to produce more food with fewer resources
Artificial intelligence (AI) plays an essential role in increasing food production in a sustainable way, by favoring the use of fewer resources, argued this week, the Global CEO of JBS, Gilberto Tomazoni, during the panel “Business and the Global Economy: Driving Growth and Innovation” at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference 2025. The event brings together global leaders in Los Angeles.
For Tomazoni, innovation, which goes beyond technology and encompasses new forms of production and consumption, is crucial to boosting food security. The executive defended the thesis that “being sustainable means producing more with less”, and that “the combination of biotechnology with AI can really accelerate productivity and boost everything”. He mentioned regenerative agriculture as an example of a practice that improves soil health, fixes carbon and increases biodiversity.
In his speech, Tomazoni emphasized the need to place the food sector at the center of the sustainable growth agenda, especially in light of the world's growing population and the growing global demand for proteins. He highlighted that agriculture has enormous growth potential, not only to meet this demand, but also to address climate change. " I believe we can emphasize the food security agenda", said the CEO, recalling UN data that 2.3 billion people face moderate or severe food insecurity.
A central point of the discussion was the need to support small farmers, who are responsible for at least 30% of global food production. Tomazoni argued that it is essential to allow these producers to have access to technologies such as AI and biotechnology, while also offering adequate technical and financial support to address investment risks.
During the panel at the Milken Conference, World Bank President Ajay Banga agreed: " On agriculture as a business, as Gilberto mentioned, the biggest problem in emerging markets is small farmers, their children don't want to go into agriculture." For Banga, it is necessary to "keep these people on their land, seeing agriculture as a viable future. The best way to do this is through cooperatives, technology, better fertilizers, efficient marketing, better prices and AI tools, which, for example, allow farmers to identify a disease in the crop with their cell phone and know which product to look for in the cooperative to treat it."
Tomazoni shared practical examples of how JBS uses AI in its operations, from connecting directly with consumers to understand their needs to forecasting demand to avoid waste in the industry and retail, as well as achieving the best production performance in factories and farms.
In addition to Gilberto Tomazoni and Ajay Banga, the panel featured Mariam bint Mohammed AlMheiri (Group CEO, 2PointZero) and Rich Lesser (Global Chair at BCG). The moderator was Gerard Baker (special reporter for the Wall Street Journal).
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