Advancing Agriculture: How Ponsi Trivisvavet Helps Improve the Global Food System

At Eclectic Convergence 2024, a Cornell Entrepreneurship Summit held November 15, 2024, on the Cornell Tech Campus in New York City, Ponsi Trivisvavet, MBA ’99, CEO of Inari, shared her insights on leadership, innovation, and the complexities of improving agriculture. Her journey from engineering to agriculture is as unconventional as it is inspiring, grounded in her belief that asking the right questions and taking bold risks can drive meaningful change.

Trivisvavet’s career began in electrical engineering, working on ships that installed fiber optic cables under the ocean. While the work was technically engaging, it lacked the human connection she craved.

“You realize after being on a ship for 30 days without talking to anyone that it’s not the life you want to live,” she said. This realization prompted her to pivot, pursuing an MBA at Cornell’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management and later joining McKinsey & Company as a consultant.

It was during her time at McKinsey that she discovered her passion for agriculture. Her commitment deepened when she worked for a major agricultural input company and had a life-changing encounter with a farmer in Indonesia. The farmer explained how hybrid seed technology had increased his yield and allowed him to buy meat for his family for the first time. “That moment was a turning point,” Trivisvavet shared. “I realized how even small technological advances can make a huge difference in people’s lives, like whether a farmer’s family can send their grandkids to school or just make it through the day.”

Unlocking the potential of seeds with multiplex gene editing

As CEO of Inari, Trivisvavet is on a mission to tackle three interconnected challenges: food security, sustainability, and farmer profitability. “The agricultural industry takes up 38 percent of the world’s arable land, uses 70 percent of its freshwater, and is responsible for nearly 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions,” she explained. “We need to rethink the entire system to address these issues while still feeding a growing population.”

Despite the urgency of these challenges, innovation in seed technology has lagged. Annual yield increases have stagnated at 1 percent, and breakthroughs from previous technologies can take more than a decade to come to market. Trivisvavet posed a provocative question to the audience: “What if we could develop seeds in a third of the time, at a tenth of the cost, with ten times the performance? That’s the kind of thinking we embrace at Inari.”

Inari’s approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) and multiplex gene editing to accelerate seed innovation. Although it has been impactful, traditional breeding can be slow and expensive, relying on trial and error. In contrast, Inari uses AI-powered predictive design to model the genomes of crops like corn, soybeans, and wheat, identifying specific genes and gene networks that influence traits such as yield and resource efficiency.

The company’s multiplex gene editing technology goes beyond conventional CRISPR methods. “Think of it like tuning a dimmer switch rather than just only turning the light on or off,” Trivisvavet said. “We mimic nature’s complexity by adjusting gene expression and can make multiple improvements in one go.” Through this nuanced approach, Inari is working to produce seeds that require less water, fertilizer, and land while delivering significantly higher yields.

Trivisvavet emphasized the scale of the challenge. “The human genome has about 20,000 genes, and as a society, we’ve mapped most of them. Soybeans have 50,000 genes, and until recently, we only understood about 200,” she explained. “In just 18 months, our research has uncovered far more than what was previously known, demonstrating the power of bringing AI to this challenge.”

Balancing vision and execution as a leader

Inari’s business model reflects Trivisvavet’s strategic approach to scaling innovation. Instead of selling seeds directly to farmers, the company licenses parent seeds to seed companies, which then multiply and market them under their own brands. “We don’t sell seeds; we design them,” she clarified. “This asset-light model allows us to focus on innovation while leveraging the relationships seed companies already have with farmers.”

Trivisvavet’s leadership philosophy is deeply influenced by her diverse career experiences. Her time at McKinsey taught her the importance of logic and problem-solving, which she applies to both technical and strategic challenges. “For me, it’s always about asking the right questions,” she said. “If you can identify the right question, the path to the solution becomes much clearer.”

However, she also emphasized the importance of soft skills in leadership. “The hardest part isn’t managing the technology—it’s managing the team,” she noted. “You have to balance being pessimistic and optimistic, sometimes toggling between those mindsets within the same day.”

Trivisvavet encouraged aspiring entrepreneurs to embrace ambitious ideas, even if they seem unreasonable. “When we started working on multiplex gene editing, people told us it couldn’t be done,” she recalled. “But here we are, proving that what seemed impossible is achievable with the right team and the right mindset.”

Collaboration and ecosystem thinking is the future of agriculture

Trivisvavet believes that addressing the challenges of the food system requires collaboration across industries and sectors. Predictive tools, for example, could help farmers make more informed planting decisions, reducing waste and price volatility.

However, she stressed that these solutions require collective effort. “It would be naïve to think that one company can solve this alone,” she said. “We need an ecosystem approach that includes private companies, public-sector regulators, and academia.”

At Inari, the focus remains on tackling sustainability challenges at the very start of the food system—seeds. The company is initially targeting corn, soybeans, and wheat, which together represent about 70 percent of the global seed market but also approximately 90 percent of the industry’s sustainability challenges. “These crops are responsible for the largest environmental impact, but they’re also where we can make the biggest difference,” she explained.

Trivisvavet’s work at Inari is driven by a long-term vision of creating a more sustainable and equitable food system. She is confident that food security, sustainability, and farmer profitability can coexist. “I personally don’t think I can change the entire food system, but I do believe I can contribute to it,” she said. “And when you focus on the right problems with the right purpose, the impact can last for generations.”

At Eclectic Convergence, Trivisvavet’s message resonated as a call to action. Her commitment to tackling tough challenges and fostering collaboration offers a compelling example of how purpose-driven leadership can create lasting change. By combining science, technology, and vision, Trivisvavet and Inari are helping to shape the future of agriculture.

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