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By leveraging Snowflake AI Data Cloud, the Asian agri-food leader transforms its data into strategic drivers of performance and innovation, with real-time AI.
Data and Real-Time AI Driving the Future of Asia’s Food System
Asia’s demographic and economic growth is intensifying demand for affordable, safe protein. For a fully integrated agribusiness like Japfa—employing 38,000 people and supplying up to 25 % of staple proteins in some markets—this translates into immense pressure. Not only must it scale, but it must also ensure biosecurity, traceability, and sustainability across a fragmented landscape of farms and operations.
Japfa’s legacy processes relied heavily on manual data collection and slow consolidation. Reports took weeks to prepare. Technology was fragmented. The risks were real: delays in detecting anomalies in animal health or feed regimes could cascade into financial, reputational, and supply-chain disruption.
Chief Digital Officer at Japfa Eu Kwang Chin explained: “Our mission is to produce quality protein for Asia’s growing population. To do this sustainably, we need real-time visibility, traceability, and actionable insights across all our operations.”
Japfa worked with Snowflake partner SBI to:
- Co-innovate, extracting valuable insights from non-traditional data sources, such as images and videos,
- Create applications that deliver immediate insights for their farm-level staff.
How Japfa is Redefining Farming with Real-Time AI and Data
Japfa uses Snowflake's AI Data Cloud to consolidate data across multiple systems, providing a unified view of business operations from the company level down to individual operating units. By unifying its data, Japfa now produces monthly reports in a matter of days — versus weeks previously.
Capturing Data Where It Happens
Rather than forcing farmers to adopt unfamiliar tools, the solution embraces existing workflows. Farmers submit photos and daily inputs via Zalo, a widely used messaging app across Southeast Asia. This lowers friction and ensures consistent adoption.
From Field to Cloud, in Real Time
Images and structured data are ingested into Amazon S3 and streamed into Snowflake via Snowpipe. This architecture ensures that information is centrally available almost instantly, eliminating data latency.
Delivering AI-Powered Solutions
Japfa uses Snowflake AI features like Cortex AI to build new applications that provide staff with a better feel for operations, transforming data into short, actionable messages for on-the-ground employees.
Multimodal AI Analysis and Smart Alerts
The platform applies AI to images and data in concert:
- Images are classified (e.g. visitors, mortality, anomalies).
- Key metrics are extracted (e.g. counts, changes).
- Discrepancies between farmer-reported data and observed evidence are flagged.
- Through Snowflake Cortex AI, OCR and brief, actionable messages are generated, enabling technicians to respond immediately.
Consolidated Intelligence Across the Enterprise
Rather than keeping insights local to each farm, the platform aggregates, normalizes, and presents dashboards to management. What used to take weeks in ad hoc spreadsheets now emerges in corporate-level dashboards in just days.
The system is designed to be scalable, enabling future modules such as video quality control, defect detection, and process optimization.
Business Impact: Speed, Trust, Strategy
The results are meaningful both in operational terms and for strategic decision making:
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Accelerated response: Issues in animal health, feed, or hygiene are detected near-instantaneously. Reaction times shrink from weeks to days.
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Data confidence and traceability: Photo evidence, automated validation, and data cross-checks give stakeholders confidence in the numbers.
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Better executive oversight: Leadership now benefits from a unified view across business units, enabling faster, more informed decisions.
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Operational efficiency: Manual workloads are reduced, reporting is faster, and resource allocation improves.
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Support for sustainability goals: By optimizing resource use, reinforcing biosecurity, and enhancing traceability, Japfa strengthens its ESG credentials—critical as the company was among the first agribusiness players in Asia to issue a sustainability-linked bond.
Lessons for Leaders and Tech Executives
Japfa’s transformation pilote offers several strategic takeaways:
- Solve where users live: Adoption comes easier when new tools align with existing workflows (e.g. via Zalo rather than forcing new apps).
- Close the feedback loop: Real-time ingestion, AI inference, and immediate action loops turn data into responsiveness—not just postmortem analysis.
- Scale via modular architecture: A future-ready architecture enables incremental extension (video, process analytics, quality control).
- Embed trust in data systems: Matching evidence (images) with reports, cross-validation and transparency reinforce credibility across hierarchies.
- Tie innovation to business priorities: In sectors like agriculture, ESG, cost control, and food security are not separate — they’re intertwined.
By bridging technology, agriculture, and sustainability, Japfa is not just feeding Asia — it is building the blueprint for the future of farming.
This pioneering project showcases the power of the SBI x Snowflake x Japfa partnership. This collaboration earned SBI the title of ‘Innovation Partner of the Year’ for Southeast Asia in the Snowflake ecosystem.
