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You know MillerKnoll as one of the few great American design brands. Or perhaps, a mega brand of design brands including Design Within Reach, Hay, and Muuto. But the furniture manufacturer is still shaking off a difficult few years. Its revenue dropped nearly half a billion dollars as COVID closed offices. And while margins are up since Herman Miller and Knoll joined forces in 2021, the company is still facing headwinds from global uncertainty around the economy, future of work, and tariffs. But when I spoke to CEO Andi Owen earlier this week, she was primed with energyand dare I say, real enthusiasm. Our conversation was pegged to the appointment of MillerKnolls new Board ChairJohn Hoke, the former chief innovation officer at Nike. But the frank, 45-minute discussion that followed touched upon every aspect of the MillerKnoll business and brand, including a spirited debate about RTO, why Herman Miller and DWR are central to her strategy to make up the $400 million in revenue lost thanks to COVID, and why she won’t try to sell you a new Eames Lounge to replace your old one. For anyone nervous about running a business in our current climate, Owens POV offers a masterclass in staying grounded. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. So John Hoke recently left his role of Head of Innovation at Nikeone of the other few great American design brands. And hes just taken the role of Board Chair at MillerKnoll. It feels like you want to put the pedal to the metal on innovation. John’s been on the board for 25 years, almost, which is kind of hard to believe. He brings this incredible, enthusiastic, creative, sort of big thinking design vision to an environment which typically leans financial results oriented. When Mike Volkema [the former board chair] retiredwhich is very sad, he’s an amazing human being, but I think it’s the right time for him in his lifeJohn was just a natural choice for so many reasons. Because if I think about the journey we’ve been on in the last four or five years, MillerKnoll coming together as two companies and going through all the integration processwere at that stage where we can really lean in to sort of the fruits of our labor post integration, and really lean into all of our 15 brands and who they are and what they can do best. I’m really excited about his leadership at this time. I think what he’s done in the past helps us to think differently, helps us to look outside of our industry and what we’re doing and think more expansively. [Photo: courtesy MillerKnoll] Since the Knoll acquisition in 2021, its been what I assume is a massive amount of work around mass consolidation of brands. You closed two major production facilities. Youve joined offices. Obviously, there were layoffs. Do you feel like the merger is finally done? Yeah, I would say it felt like a gorilla off my back, and I think off all of our backs. So things that you just illustratedfinancially, the facilities, consolidationall of those things, those are hard but easier decisions. They’re sometimes very black and white. The harder things are understanding where you’re not going to encroach and what you’re not going to damage. So for us, as we went through this process, which took the better part of the last three and a half four years, it was really about, how do we keep each one of our brands, identity and creative juices intact? How do we keep the soul of each brand, while we find a way to build a culture that is all of us together? The good news is the heavy lift is behind us, which is why this time is so important because we feel like we can kind of lift up and look out we know who we are. Smooth sailing is the wrong word, but I think I would be remiss if I didnt mention, we’ve all been managing in a kind of perma-crisis mode for the last few years. [Photo: courtesy MillerKnoll] Perma-crisis seems like the perfect descriptor of our world today. I mean, it’s sort of been one thing after another thing after another thing. COVID was kind of the crisis that never stopped. That brought on a whole series of supply chain issues, and then you have changes in the administration and all these things. And I think at a certain point, as leaders in any business integration aside, you have to move past perma-crisis and just make your bets and manage a very uncertain environment. You have to steer clear and just be steady, because you can’t continue in crisis mode forever. It’s unhealthy, it’s difficult. What allowed you to get out from perma-crisis? Because you’re still dealing with a lot of these same problems you were a few years ago! Return-to-office not really happening. Supply chain uncertainty. Now tariffs. I think for me personally, and I think for the team, it was really more of a mindset shift. At first, there’s the surprise and shock and awe, and it’s one thing after another thing after another thing. And it’s very easy to get in your war room and start to plan everything you’re going to do, to react. And after a time, you realize you just can’t do that anymore. You’re exhausted. First of all, you lose sight of where you want to take the business, and you have to re-anchor on these are the bets we’re making. We can’t control the macroeconomic or the external environment. Things are going to happen. We just have to steer clear down the path that we feel is the right path, which is around product innovation, building culture, creating human centered environments, developing a really strong retail business, staying clear on our focus and our vision, and then we#8217;ll manage the day-to -day crisis as it comes. Its just too difficult to stay in reaction mode. You’re right, [the environment] hasn’t changed. But ultimately, that’s the only way I think you can really be healthy right now. I do want to get into some of the ongoing challenges of the business. Your profit margins are up post consolidations, but your revenue is still down about $400 million since COVID. How do you buck this trend in declining revenue? I think the downward trend in revenue can be attributed to a variety of things, right? You can say macroeconomic COVID. Ultimately, if you look at the industry in two buckets, there’s the commercial interior (office furniture) contract side of the business, and theres the retail side. The contract furniture side of the business was due for consolidation. Number one, it has never really consolidated in the history of the business. And secondarily, when COVID struck, people found a new way to work. So that drop in revenue, the bulk of that came immediately, when it was like, we’re all working from home and who needs to be in an office? I don’t think the industry has fully recovered, which I actually think is good news, because we’re starting to see that trend reverse. We’re starting to see the return to office debates become less of a debate. We’re starting to see people realize the value of human connection in a workspace and otherwise. So I think that trend is on an upward curve. And I also think the industry has consolidated in a very healthy way. So if you start with Miller and Knoll coming together, and then you look at the latest consolidation of Steelcase and HNIthat’s good for us, that’s good for the industry, that’s good for competition, that’s good for margins, it’s good for all the things. So I think we’ve right-sized to what demand should be in the future to how people are working today. The industry was due for a step-down. And then if you think about the residential side of the business, that’s where we see a huge amount of growth for us. Our business is very nascent. It’s smaller. We’re under-stored. We’re under-assorted. We have a huge advantage from a design perspectivean advantage in that we manufacture many of our own products. We have no real international footprint. So on the retail side of the business, opening 10 to 15 stores every year and continuing to build both of those brandsDWR and Herman Millerwe think is a top line and bottom line grower. And then if I take everything I just said about the contract side of the business, and I say that was mostly North America. If you look at the rest of the world from a commercial interior standpoint, we have a very small market share. It’s a very profitable business for us. So there’s a lot of opportunity for us to grow internationally. Jeff Stutz, our new COO [promoted from CFO], has a really critical understanding of the contract businesses, and as we grow the international contract businesshis financial expertise is going to be huge. So I think the worst has passed, and we’re in a growth mode now, which is really nice. [Photo: courtesy MillerKnoll] I think the return to office debate is still raging. You know, it was, though, not as much. I mean, every year, Im asked to moderate another panel on will we return to office? Isnt it old now? Aren’t you done with the conversation? [Photo: MillerKnoll] Oh, I’m so sick of it! Yet still, nobody exactly knows how its going to land. Offices have recovered a bit. The hybrid thing is here to say. I think a trend we do know now is that office footprints are shrinking. We have seen cutbacks in terms of overall square footage as companies re-invest in offices. And that doesn’t seem like it will be changing anytime soon. And so I wonder, do you accommodate that differently? Do you design differentlylike you did with the modular OE1 line? It doesn’t feel like a company of your size can just count on the office coming back to the substantial numbers people expect. I think what you’re saying, Mark, is absolutely right on. I don’t think anybody in this industry is banking on the days when there were rows and rows of cubicles and tons and tons of office space, because we don’t live that way anymore. When I think about whats cool about our company is that whether you’re downsizing, whether you’re moving, whether you have less people in the office, those are all opportunities to think differently about your space. And what’s interesting is that people are looking at smaller spaces nownot everyone, but many companies are looking at smaller spaces that are actually more enticing and more geared towards what they do. There are very few people that are sort of stamping out the same desk in the same chair for everybody. So that opportunity to really uniquely think about space, to innovate around products that might suit an engineer versus a marketer versus a CEO, those are things we do really well. We think about the entire space. That’s all business opportunity. Less space is not necessarily a bad thing. We’re not sitting here banking on the days of yore in the 80s, when it was Action Office everywhere. What we’re banking on is that people will understand that a premium space thats geared to your employeesa place where people actually want to come, whether they’re coming for two days or three dayslike, I don’t care. Whatever your tenets are around being together, people want that space t be compelling. I’m just so bored by the conversation. But [back to office] mandates don’t work. Like whatever, you can try to do a mandate if you want to, but what works is people wanting to see each other and wanting to work in a space thats compelling. [Photo: MillerKnoll] Its like psychological theory, right? Positive reinforcement works better than negative. Treat people like adults. Give them a space they want to come to, create a culture they want to be in, and the problem is solved. That’s not easy to do, but space plays into that, and that’s really good for us. When you talk about expanding your office contract business internationally, what does that involve? Does that really just involve stepping up the amount of people who are doing direct sales to these companies? Overseas manufacturing? We try, and mostly do, manufacture in the locations where we sell our products. So we manufacture in Asia for Asia. We manufacture in Europe for Europe. So it’s a matter of manufacturing facilities. It’s a matter of building up internal teams, and it’s also a matter of building up our external dealer partners. So what countries do we have enough dealers? What countries do we need to add dealers? You know, the Middle East right now is on fire. How do we support growth in those areas? Then additionally, what are the products we need that we have to develop for these countries? Because it’s not the same everywhere. You can probably take 80% of your product portfolio unchanged everywhere, but that other 20% you really do have to be uniquely developed for that country in some cases. It seems like tariffs have made a minimal impact on your business thus far. Will that change? Now, I would say tariff planning has had maximal impact! I mean, it’s a lot of money for everyone, but I think we’re in the place of sort of waiting to see how this all comes out. We have our worst case scenario and our best case scenario, and we’re sort of taking it a day at a time. I don’t think we have seen every tariff fully enacted going through the supply chain. There will be an impact, and we’ll try to be as efficient and effective as we can to offset costs, because the last thing we want to do is keep [increasing] prices to cover these costs. So right now, we’re in a wait-and-see mode. I will say it has been impactful, but we have not gotten to our worst case scenario yet. [Photo: courtesy MillerKnoll] You also talk about the domestic sector being this big area of growth for you. Does that include the home office sales that you had that incredible spike during COVID? Or is it really like me getting that Eames Lounger for my living room? I think that it’s both. When I came to the company, we said Herman Miller is one of those brands that’s able to live in five or six or seven different places with equal authority. So it can be in a doctor’s office, a healthcare institution, it can be in an office, it can be your home. It can be gaming. And it has relevance everywhere. With Herman Miller retail stores, we said what if we took that thing that we do really well, which is ergonomic task seating, and expanded that part of the brand and the lifestyle piece. It’s been an amazing retail concept for a variety of reasons. Part of it is we attract that small business owner that doesn’t really want to work with an office furniture dealer, but wants five, ten, twenty setups for a startup or whatever that might be. Plus for the residential buyer, we’re on a street that they can easily access. They can come and get fitted for a chair. DWR is more of our marketplace of modern design, and we have 38 stores now. We’re opening them so quickly. I lose count of how many we have. But if you compare that to other folks in the residential home furnishings business, it’s dramatically under where we [we should be]. We have a great digital storefront. But what we find is that people want to have both. In places where we have both the brick and mortar and the digital it’s a really magic formula. So again, it’s kind of both. We experienced a massive bump during COVID with home office because we had a path to market that many folks didn’t have in office furniture. We’re still growing it, because we have the opportunity to get market share in places where we’re not. And I think that opportunity will exist for the next five to seven years, because we just are so under-stored. [Photo: courtesy MillerKnoll] You bring up brick and mortar retail. I know that you’re aiming to double it over the coming years. Could you speak more specifically on why it is such an opportunity for you. Because while I know were both sick of talking about if the office is coming back, we could say the same thing about is physical retail coming back? Having been in retail for so much of my career, there have been limitless debates over the years. Stores are down! Stores are not dead! No one will ever shop online! Name the debate. I think what works really well for us is that the people that staff our stores tend to be architects and designers. So yu’re not necessarily just buying a piece of furniture. We can help you with a variety of things. So we can help you design your space if you want that. I think our secret sauce is the people that work in our stores. That’s number one. Secondarily, I think that what works well for us is that people do want to understand touch and feel. Our products tend to not be inexpensive products! They’re an investment for many people. I’ll give you a perfect example: When I joined the company, I was lucky enough to buy an Eames lounge and ottoman. My husband and I looked at it online forever, and I thought we were going to get the tall because my husband is taller than me. We went into a store. Sitting in both was what made the difference for us (and we didnt get the tall). Had we just done it online, we probably would have ended up with a very different decision. Unfortunately, I do have to bring up return-to-office one more time. Where we’re seeing investment in enterprise buildouts right now is actually in data centers. Every architecture firm we’re talking to is now designing data centers as their cash cow. How much is the data center an explorable market for you? You know, I would be lying if I said we weren’t thinking about how we play in this market, because it’s growing. I’m not sure yet how we can play in that. Theres probably a way, but not one I’m comfortable sharing at this point. Its interesting, though. Ive followed MillerKnolls efforts around incorporating recycled plastics, but I also just feel like what you do best is longevityif you just can convince people to stick with the products you built for a long time and for businesses not to throw them away. That’s what we hope. Where was I? I think I was in the La Jolla store, and a woman came in, and she brought the ottoman of her Eames Lounge that her father had. And she was an older woman, probably my age, and she’s like: I want it just like this, but I want a new one. And I was like, No, you don’t. I said, First of all, this is rosewood. You can’t get it anymore, and there was such a patina to the leathers. I said, Listen, keep this one. We can refurbish it. Well restuff it. We’ll do whatever you want, but hang on to this one. So anyway, I lost the sale, but on the other hand, that’s what we want. We want you to have something that’s an heirloom that you can keep for a very long time, that we can fix and repair. And if we can’t fix and repair it, let’s give it to another user, or recycle it. Something we really don’t want our products ending up in a landfill in any way, shape, or form. Old leather hits different. You bring up the Eames Lounge. So much of your brand storytelling is around archive pieces, archive releases, archive collaborations. How important is the archivethat sort of deeper mid century-plus archiveto your business versus the newer designs? Its hard to look at brands like Herman Miller and Knoll and not acknowledge that a big part of what we do is making sure that we honor that legacy, right? So I think if you look at everything from Eames Lounge and Ottoman to building our archives in West Michigan, to Hays latest collab with Emma Colemanlike we have both, right? And we just hired a new creative director for Herman Miller, Carlos Martinez. Because in my opinion, that’s amazing history. But we’re also at a point in time where we have to evolve into the future. So I think that’s one of the things that Carlos, who just joined us this week, will be really focused on. I think you make a good pointit’s hard when you have such an amazing history to make sure you’re moving quickly and effectively into the future. And I think with Knoll we’ve done a really nice job of that in the last three or four years. We’ve definitely done that with some of our newer brands, whether that’s Mutto, Hay, NaughtOne, CBS. With Herman Miller, we’re going to turn the corner. That’s interesting, because aesthetically, I don’t know how I would define Herman Miller today. Im a little historical storied out, and I feel like, well, what’s the future? Because I’m seeing the future everywhere else, and it’s depressing. We have to be the ones to make the future not depressing, right? And I think you’re right. I think the vision for Herman Miller is something we are in the process of evolving and unleashing. With all the things that are going on in the world, we have such an opportunity to be a force for good. Part of our goal [is]…how we do bring that human connection even in the darkest of times? [Photo: MillerKnoll]] An insider told me a while back that that your initial push into gamingthe Embody gaming chairwas actually a big disappointment: it had flopped and the sales had done poorly. No, actually, just just the opposite! I think our initial gaming chair was a huge success. Actually, it continues to be a huge success. So much so that we’ve invested pretty dramatically in this business…all the way to working with Esports teams and launching our second gaming chair. I would say our second gaming chair, which was really our attempt to do a lower cost chair, has been successful, but didn’t have all the bells and whistles that we really wanted for the either professional gamer as well as just the casual gamer. So we have two [new gaming chairs] in the works right now, and they take a long time to put together. But no, we believe in the business. We have not been disappointed by the business at all. I think if we’re disappointed in anything, it’s about the speedthe speed with which you can develop something like this, which, it takes time. Looking five years ahead as a customer or someone studying the company, what’s going to surprise me most? Oh, gosh, I think you’re going to be surprised most by how the brands have evolved and how much Herman Miller and DWR have grown. I think you’re going to be surprised by bottom line growth, too. Integration and all of that costs so much money and so much investmnt, and I think the years that we have ahead will be super profitable. You’re going to be surprised by how much noise we’re going to make and how many things we’re going to change in the world. I really do. I’m excited about it. I think our sustainability efforts will make a huge difference. And I think some of the people that we’ve brought on board have such unique and innovative perspectives that we’re thrilled where well be in five years.
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E-Commerce
Apple holds several events throughout the year, but none is as vital to the companys bottom line as its annual one in September. Thats when Apple unveils its new iPhone lineup, drawing our attention again to the device that accounted for just over half of the $391 billion the company brought in in fiscal 2024. Apples next iPhone event is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, September 9. The iPhone 17 event, taglined “Awe Dropping, represents a significant shift: Apple is expected to discontinue one of its current iPhone models and launch a new iPhone device in its place. The company is also likely to introduce several other hardware products. Heres what you can expect to see on Tuesday. iPhone 17 Air The star of the iPhone 17 event is expected to be a brand-new model of the iPhone, currently dubbed by tech pundits and analysts as the iPhone 17 Air (also sometimes referred to as the iPhone 17 Slim). As its name suggests, the iPhone 17 Air is expected to be a thin devicethe thinnest iPhone ever. Most rumors indicate that the iPhone 17 Air will have a thickness of between just 5.5mm and 6mm. (Its likely the 5.5mm thickness will be the device’s thinnest point, and the camera bump will add heft to the new iPhone near the top of the device.) Previously, the thinnest iPhone ever was the iPhone 6, released in 2014, measuring 6.9mm in thickness. (The thinnest iPhone 16 models are the iPhone 16, iPhone 16e, and iPhone 16 Pro, all of which have a thickness of 7.8mm.) In addition to a skinny form factor, the iPhone 17 Air is expected to feature a 6.6-inch display, an A19 chip, and a single-lens 48MP rear camera. The lack of a more advanced camera system suggests that the iPhone 17 Air will be for consumers who prioritize form and design over functionality. The new iPhone Air model will replace the current iPhone Plus model, which Apple is retiring this year. iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max Apple is also expected to upgrade the rest of its current iPhone lineup at the event on Tuesday. This includes the release of the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Maxsome of which may have a higher starting price than last year. If youre a fan of the entry-level iPhone, you may be disappointed to hear that the base iPhone 17 will likely get the fewest upgrades this year. Expect a display size bump from the current 6.1 inches to 6.3 inches. The iPhone 17 is also expected to get the A19 chip and a new 24MP front camera (up from the 12MP in the iPhone 16). But beyond thatand new colorsdont expect too many other significant feature improvements. The story is different when it comes to the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Expect significant design changes, including a rectangular rear camera bump, a new aluminum frame, a hybrid aluminum and glass backplate, and a new orange color option. The iPhone 17 Pro is expected to feature a display size increase to 6.3 inches (from the current 6.1 inches), and the iPhone 17 Pro Max is expected to have a display size of 6.9 inches. Both models are also likely to feature the A19 Pro chipset, a 24MP front camera, and a new 48MP lens in their rear telephoto camera (up from 24MP). All iPhone 17 models will ship with the new iOS 26 and its Liquid Glass software design. Apple Watch Ultra 3 Last year, Apple Watch fans were disappointed to learn that Apple did not release an updated Apple Watch Ultra. Instead, the company kept the same Apple Watch Ultra 2 modelfrom 2023on sale, only adding a new color option. But on Tuesday, the company is finally expected to introduce a new Apple Watch Ultra 3. However, dont expect a radical overhaul of the high-end smartwatch. Instead, it is likely to get iterative hardware improvements. As noted by 9to5Mac, those improvements include a slightly larger display (the Ultra 2 has a 49mm display), a new S11 chip, high blood pressure detection, 5G cellular support, and satellite connectivity for messaging. Apple Watch Series 11 Apple is also expected to debut the new Apple Watch Series 11. However, those hoping for a larger display, like the one coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3, will be disappointed. The Series 11 is expected to retain its current 42mm and 46mm options. Yet, the Apple Watch Series 11 is expected to gain many of the other features coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3, including a new S11 chip, high blood pressure detection, and 5G cellular support. Apple Watch SE 3 The Apple Watch SE is Apples budget Apple Watch product. The current Apple Watch SE 2 came out nearly three years ago, so its long overdue for an upgrade, which is expected on Tuesday. However, as a budget model, dont expect the Apple Watch SE 3 to feature significant improvements. Rumors suggest that it could feature a slightly larger display and that Apple may have opted to use a plastic, color body to keep costs down. AirPods Pro 3 Finally, Apple is also expected to introduce an updated AirPods Pro 3. However, rumors about what new changes we can expect are more opaque than with the other Apple products listed above. Signs point to the new AirPods Pro 3 having a tweaked, possibly smaller, design, improved Active Noise Cancellation and audio quality, as well as a new heart rate monitoring health feature. Apples iPhone 17 event kicks off on Tuesday, September 9, at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET.
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E-Commerce
For farmers, every planting decision carries risks, and many of those risks are increasing with climate change. One of the most consequential is weather, which can damage crop yields and livelihoods. A delayed monsoon, for example, can force a rice farmer in South Asia to replant or switch crops altogether, losing both time and income. Access to reliable, timely weather forecasts can help farmers prepare for the weeks ahead, find the best time to plant or determine how much fertilizer will be needed, resulting in better crop yields and lower costs. Yet, in many low- and middle-income countries, accurate weather forecasts remain out of reach, limited by the high technology costs and infrastructure demands of traditional forecasting models. A new wave of AI-powered weather forecasting models has the potential to change that. By using artificial intelligence, these models can deliver accurate, localized predictions at a fraction of the computational cost of conventional physics-based models. This makes it possible for national meteorological agencies in developing countries to provide farmers with the timely, localized information about changing rainfall patterns that the farmers need. The challenge is getting this technology where its needed. Why AI forecasting matters now The physics-based weather prediction models used by major meteorological centers around the world are powerful but costly. They simulate atmospheric physics to forecast weather conditions ahead, but they require expensive computing infrastructure. The cost puts them out of reach for most developing countries. Moreover, these models have mainly been developed by and optimized for northern countries. They tend to focus on temperate, high-income regions and pay less attention to the tropics, where many low- and middle-income countries are located. A major shift in weather models began in 2022 as industry and university researchers developed deep learning models that could generate accurate short- and medium-range forecasts for locations around the globe up to two weeks ahead. These models worked at speeds several orders of magnitude faster than physics-based models, and they could run on laptops instead of supercomputers. Newer models, such as Pangu-Weather and GraphCast, have matched or even outperformed leading physics-based systems for some predictions, such as temperature. AI-driven models require dramatically less computing power than the traditional systems. While physics-based systems may need thousands of CPU hours to run a single forecast cycle, modern AI models can do so using a single GPU in minutes once the model has been trained. This is because the intensive part of the AI model training, which learns relationships in the climate from data, can use those learned relationships to produce a forecast without further extensive computationthats a major shortcut. In contrast, the physics-based models need to calculate the physics for each variable in each place and time for every forecast produced. While training these models from physics-based model data does require significant upfront investment, once the AI is trained, the model can generate large ensemble forecastssets of multiple forecast runsat a fraction of the computational cost of physics-based models. Even the expensive step of training an AI weather model shows considerable computational savings. One study found the early model FourCastNet could be trained in about an hour on a supercomputer. That made its time to presenting a forecast thousands of times faster than state-of-the-art, physics-based models. The result of all these advances: high-resolution forecasts globally within seconds on a single laptop or desktop computer. Research is also rapidly advancing to expand the use of AI for forecasts weeks to months ahead, which helps farmers in making planting choices. AI models are already being tested for improving extreme weather prediction, such as for extratropical cyclones and abnormal rainfall. Tailoring forecasts for real-world decisions While AI weather models offer impressive technical capabilities, they are not plug-and-play solutions. Their impact depends on how well they are calibrated to local weather, benchmarked against real-world agricultural conditions, and aligned with the actual decisions farmers need to make, such as what and when to plant, or when drought is likely. To unlock its full potential, AI forecasting must be connected to the people whose decisions its meant to guide. Thats why groups such as AIM for Scale, a collaboration we work with as researchers in public policy and sustainability, are helping governments to develop AI tools that meet real-world needs, including training users and tailoring forecasts to farmers needs. International development institutions and the World Meteorological Organization are also working to expand access to AI forecasting models in low- and middle-income countries. AI forecasts can be tailored to context-specific agricultural needs, such as identifying optimal planting windows, predicting dry spells, or planning pest management. Disseminating those forecasts through text messages, radio, extension agents or mobile apps can then help reach farmers who can benefit. This is especially true when the messages themselves are constantly tested and improved to ensure they meet the farmers needs. A recent study in India found that when farmers there received more accurate monsoon forecasts, they made more informed decisions about what and how much to plantor whether to plant at allresulting in better investment outcomes and reduced risk. A new era in climate adaptation AI weather forecasting has reached a pivotal moment. Tools that were experimental just five years ago are now being integrated into government weather forecasting systems. But technology alone wont change lives. With support, low- and middle-income countries can build the capacity o generate, evaluate, and act on their own forecasts, providing valuable information to farmers that has long been missing in weather services. Paul Winters is a professor of sustainable development at the University of Notre Dame. Amir Jina is an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Chicago. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
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