PlantVillage+

About Us

PlantVillage+ Inc. is an agri-food system company dedicated to eradicating poverty and reversing climate change. We blend AI, our patented hardware, and community trust to develop scalable circular economy solutions that help people grow more food, eat better food, while protecting our planet via the conversion of waste plant material and food into durable stored carbon. That carbon, in the form of biochar, can be stored for in the soil, increasing soil health and promoting biodiversity.

Our Journey

PlantVillage began at Penn State University when our founder, Dr. David Hughes, recognized a profound inequality in access to agricultural knowledge. The future with its wonderful technology has arrived for farmers in developed regions but has not yet arrived for farmers in Africa and other developing regions.

Recognizing the catalyzing power of cloud systems and AI, PlantVillage at Penn State turned an initial investment of $120,000 from The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State into a global platform that has attracted over $42 million in public funding.

Via partnerships with the USAID, UN, Norad, The Gates Foundation, Hopper-Dean Foundation, and many more we've expanded to provide knowledge and advise to more than 15 million farmers across 65+ countries in 35 languages.

But public funding to empower smallholder farmers is broken so we have evolved to PlantVillage+ Inc. While PlantVillage at Penn State remains and will continue our goal with PlantVillage+ is to to scale out solutions via the private sector. But true to where we started from (Penn State) we remain committed to public good knowledge, applied research and inventing a better future.

What We Do

Agentic AI empowering farmers at scale

In the ongoing AI revolution we have arrived to the age of agentic AI. By leveraging free, public data, AI can know weeks and months in advance the various risks farmers face. The problem for smallholder farmers has been the labor shortage with too few extension officers available to offer practical advice. Agentic AI can change this. We are building a system of human agents (themselves successful farmers) that are armed with agentic AI able to identify stressors and sell solutions that re-risk farmers and create community wealth and abundant jobs. Now a farmer can be roaming Land Grant University capable of answering any question her neighboring farmers ask. For us AI is a job creator, not a job destroyer.

Nutritional Intelligence

Once the food is grown the next step is eating it. PlantVillage at Penn State, together with IFPRI and partners like the University of Ghana, UC Davis and many others have developed AI technology that can accurately determine the nutritional composition of meals from simple photographs. This solution is as accurate as experts but 500 times more cost-effective, making nutritional analysis accessible to schools, communities, and families worldwide. As a farm to fork agri-food systems company we link the farm to the kitchen to maximize benefits for both, reducing rent seeking behavior by middlemen, promote healthy eating and working on ways to reduce food loss and waste.

Carbon Capture Innovation

Not all the crop that is grown is harvested, or food that is served, is eaten. A lot ends up as waste. Besides the loss of money the other problem with waste food is the carbon within it easily returns to the atmosphere which we can all agree is not good. Using our patented pyrolysis system we turn that waste into black gold, biochar. This is geological stage storage of carbon that not only benefits the planet but also catalyzes further carbon removal by improving the quality of the soil and ability of plants to access water. When combined with our registered mycorrhizal fungi the growth is insanely positive. We track and trace our carbon via the Biochar App which has become the industry standard, used by over 40 companies in the biochar-based carbon credit sector.

Our Mission

Our mission is to eradicate poverty and reverse climate change. Quite the mission! But from first principles it is totally possible at this moment in time. Combining modern AI and ancient trust we see a world of superabundance where vibrant rural communities grow vast quantities of food and feed schools and city dwellers with their healthy produce. And the waste from fields and plates is scooped up to be permanently locked away in the soil turbocharging plant growth for a runaway circular economy that scales globally with AI.