Case Study: Food Ladder achieves scalable food security with IBM watsonx AI

Food Ladder and IBM empower populations with year-round access to fresh, nutritious produce

Food Ladder, an award-winning nonprofit focused on food security, needed a way to scale its school-based hydroponic greenhouse program without losing the personal support that had helped it grow. As demand rose to more than 400 schools, the team could no longer rely on traveling onsite to set up systems, train teachers, and handle service requests manually, so it turned to IBM for help.

IBM Client Engineering used IBM watsonx.ai, IBM watsonx Assistant, and IBM Granite models to automate service requests, streamline school onboarding, and generate curriculum-aligned lesson plans. The solution reduced request processing to less than an hour, eased support demands on staff, and saved teachers hours of preparation time. Food Ladder now aims to scale from 132,480 meals in 2024 to more than 25 million meals annually by 2030, with IBM helping make that growth possible.

Food Ladder

Kelly McJannett

CEO & Co-founder