About three-quarters of the world’s impoverished population depends on agriculture for a living, and low-income families on every continent struggle to access nutritious food. We help governments, companies, donors, development banks, and civil society address complex challenges such as hunger, poverty, and malnutrition. We also partner with the McKinsey Center for Agricultural Transformation to accelerate successful agricultural transformations.
We help improve agri-food systems around the world by combining innovative thinking, multidisciplinary expertise, a nuanced understanding of the private sector, and world-class analytics.
What We Do
Transform rural economies
Planning and delivering transformations in rural economies and helping raise smallholder farmers out of poverty.
Expand food access and security
Strengthening food banks and pantry services to improve reliable access to nutritious food.
Improve nutrition
Addressing an epidemic of obesity and fighting childhood stunting.
Build climate and environmental resilience
Tackling the impacts of climate change and deforestation.
Examples of our work
Designing an agricultural transformation
Supported an Eastern European public authority in developing a new agricultural subsidy model, achieving a 30 percent return on subsidy investments and a $600 million boost in farmgate revenue.
Realizing a digital transformation for an African bank
Supported an East African bank in delivering a digital transformation by co-creating a mobile wallet and agro-dealer app for supply and stock management. The initiative registered 3.3 million farming households, with a potential impact on GDP growth of 6 percent per year.
Navigating climate change and agri-food systems
Forecasted near-term changes in crop-yield volatility driven by precipitation trends in sub-Saharan African countries.
Optimizing data and analytics
Built a digital food balance sheet for an African government to track the stocks, production, trade, and consumption of maize.
Featured Experts
Nicolas Denis
Partner
Advises government institutions on sustainable economic development and serves leading companies in agribusiness, fisheries, forestry, and biotech
Gillian Pais
Managing Partner
Leads McKinsey’s work in nature and agriculture in Africa and advises governments, development partners, and private companies on sustainable economic development topics
Featured Capabilities
McKinsey Center for Agricultural Transformation
McKinsey Center for Agricultural Transformation helps reduce poverty, build climate resilience, create jobs, improve nutrition, and support economic growth through successful agricultural transformations.
ACRE
ACRE combines proprietary market outlooks, pricing data, and expert insights to help food companies, governments, investors, and agriculture players make better pricing, crop selection, and sales and marketing decisions.
Featured insights
Report
Value creation in Indian agriculture
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Indian agriculture is thriving. Understanding its complexities—and its areas of opportunity—is critical for agribusinesses...
Blog Post
Next-generation agriculture: Safeguarding the world’s food systems
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By 2050, the world will need new, scalable solutions to feed the growing population. Biotech and other next-generation agriculture...
Case Study
Accelerating decarbonization across the farming supply chain
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Agriculture equipment manufacturer AGCO worked with McKinsey to automate decarbonization cost curve building and planning efforts...