Keith Shepherd is Chief Scientist and co-founder of Innovative Solutions for Decision Agriculture (iSDA), developing AI-assisted digital advisory services for smallholder farmers across Africa.
With over 45 years’ experience in international agricultural research and development he has led major CGIAR programmes on sustainable land, crop and soil management. He pioneered global advances in soil-plant diagnostics using infrared spectroscopy and co-founded the Africa Soil Information Service, which produced the first digital soil map of Africa. He has intergrated concepts from public health surveillance and decison science into agricultural decision support systems.
Previously, he developed science-based agronomic recommendations for Southern Darfur in the Sudan; dryland cropping systems in rice-based systems at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines; Mediterranean areas at the International Centre for Research in the Dry Areas in Syria; and dryland tillage systems for the Government of Swaziland (now Eswatini).
Dr Shepherd research achievements have been recognised with the Deep Dive Groundbreaker prize of Foodshot – Innovating Soil 3 and the IFA Norman Borlaug Plant Nutrition Award (2025). He holds a BSc in Soil Science and PhD in Agricultural Botany from the University of Reading, UK and holds an Honorary Scientist position at Rothamsted Research in the UK.
