Financing food system resilience in APAC

The Asia-Pacific region feeds more than half the world’s population, yet currently attracts only around a quarter of agrifood investment.¹ As the region faces increasing pressure from climate change, population growth and supply chain disruption, resilience is becoming a strategic priority for governments, investors and industry alike.

Building and maintaining food systems that are robust and adaptable to changing conditions requires investment in two areas at the same time – infrastructure and innovation. Physical infrastructure provides the foundation that enables resilience, while innovation can drive forward efficiency, productivity and adaptability.

Financing both infrastructure and innovation requires a broad mix of capital sources. Alongside venture capital (VC) and corporate venture capital (CVC), food systems are increasingly drawing on capital from philanthropy, development finance, infrastructure funds and private equity. Together, this broader mix of funding across agrifood innovation can be referred to as the ‘new capital stack’.

Getting infrastructure right first

Resilient food systems rely on much of the same core infrastructure that underpins wider economic activity, namely water systems, energy grids, storage capacity, logistics and transport networks as well as food processing facilities and the digital infrastructure to enable and optimise all these functions.

Across Asia-Pacific, however, investment in these foundations remains inconsistent, resulting in differences in infrastructure quality, capacity and connectivity across markets. Smallholder farmers dominate production while fragmented supply chains, limited cold-chain coverage and uneven midstream infrastructure can create bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Digital adoption also varies widely between markets, limiting visibility across supply chains and making accurate forecasting difficult. As climate volatility increases, investors, governments and development organisations are calling for faster capital deployment into the infrastructure that underpins supply-chain resilience and food security.

While organisations such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) can support long-term projects, attracting capital at scale often depends on projects being able to demonstrate they are commercially viable, have good governance and clear economic and social value.

One country that has seen success in its food resilience planning is China. It has invested heavily in areas such as high-standard farmland, smart irrigation and biomanufacturing infrastructure, thereby shaping the speed at which agrifood innovation can move from concept to commercial scale.

“China’s infrastructure build-out has dramatically shortened the path from agricultural innovation to commercial scale,” says Matilda Ho, founder and managing director, Bits x Bites. “Look at agri digitalization: China must feed 20% of the global population with less than 7% of the world’s arable land. To address this, the government has spent decades executing its ‘High-Standard Farmland Initiative,’ consolidating fragmented plots into large-scale, modern farm fields.

“Today, over 52% of China’s arable land has been upgraded with automated irrigation, soil-monitoring sensors, and modern power grids,” she continues. “The physical infrastructure was standardized at scale, [which] created a foundation for rapid technology adoption. The national agricultural mechanization rate has reached 77%, and over 300,000 agricultural drones now service 30 million hectares of cropland annually.”

Infrastructure alone will not deliver resilience, rather it can be seen as the enabling factor that allows innovation to move from pilot to commercial scale.

“The real accelerator lies in how infrastructure interacts with policy and industrial ecosystems,” says Ho. “When food-security priorities align with manufacturing capability and digital initiatives, deep-tech solutions can achieve commercial viability and supply-chain integration much faster.”

Innovation outruns deployment

Innovation can help address food security and resilience challenges and continues unabated across Asia-Pacific. Start-ups are developing solutions spanning AI-powered forecasting tools and precision farming technologies, digital supply-chain platforms and resource-efficiency tools. Stakeholders argue that deployment has become more of a challenge than invention. Widespread adoption of a proof-of-concept or pilot relies on access to data, financing and procurement, as well as the aforementioned infrastructure that supports scale. Only then can these solutions deliver meaningful impact.

Recent PitchBook data shows that agrifood deal counts have fallen to a multi-year low.² In agtech, all 10 of Q2 2026’s largest rounds were late-stage rounds, reflecting a broader trend towards concentrating capital in derisked, already-scaled companies. For start-ups, demonstrating a credible pathway to achieving scale has never been more important.

As a result, attention is shifting towards the commercial and operational mechanisms needed to help promising technologies achieve widespread adoption.

Why agrifood needs a new capital stack

Food systems require solutions that often take longer to scale than traditional software businesses, making it increasingly clear that multiple funding streams need to find better ways to collaborate and cooperate. Rather than relying on venture capital alone, different forms of capital can support different stages of the innovation journey according to their respective risk appetites, investment horizons, and return expectations.

“The new capital stack is not a single financing structure,” says Deepa Hingorani, partner and head of planetary health Asia, Novo Holdings. “It is a coordinated sequence of capital, with each provider taking the risks it is best equipped to manage.

“The central principle is that the type and duration of capital should match the company’s stage of development. Alongside financing, companies also need strategic expertise, governance, industrial partnerships, and credible routes to market. The strongest capital stacks therefore combine money with capabilities, networks, and long-term ownership.”

As traditional venture capital becomes increasingly concentrated in later-stage companies with proven business models, clear routes to revenue, and lower execution risk, a funding gap is emerging that alternative sources or approaches may need to fill. Non-dilutive public and philanthropic grants, for example, can de-risk early-stage innovations to prepare them for commercial investment. As businesses mature, corporate investment and private equity can provide the scale-up capital and exit pathways needed to reach wider markets.

The roles of different funding sources are also beginning to shift. VCs are not only providing capital but can also unlock non-dilutive public funding through co-investment mechanisms to extend start-up runways and improve the timing of future rounds. At the same time, corporates have a critical role to play before or beyond investment through strategic partnerships, by opening access to customers, data, procurement pathways, and pilot environments that help start-ups validate their technologies and build a clearer route to commercial scale.

Given how the landscape is evolving, fostering continuous dialogue between investors and start-ups at every stage of growth is critical to matching the right type of capital to the right business need, building investor confidence earlier, and helping promising innovations move beyond pilots into wider adoption.

Hingorani argues that the objective should not be to subsidise businesses indefinitely, but to help viable solutions progress towards commercial scale and ultimately attract sustainable, market-based financing.

“Venture capital can start the journey,” concludes Hingorani, “but building resilient food systems requires patient growth capital, development finance, strategic corporate participation, and supportive public policy working hand in hand.”

It is clear that building resilient food systems in Asia-Pacific requires more than capital alone. The challenge will be creating streamlined and effective collaboration for infrastructure investment, innovation funding and partnerships across public, private and philanthropic stakeholders.

These themes will be explored in greater depth throughout the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Summit and the pre-summit Investment Forum this October.

Join us at the following events to find out more and to contribute to the conversations shaping food system resilience in APAC.

For investors

Pre-summit Investment Forum (26 October): A dedicated forum bringing together VCs, CVCs, philanthropists, institutional funds, infrastructure investors, and private equity. Investors interested in speaking or attending should contact Theresa Flach, Senior Conference Producer.

For start-ups and scale-ups

The funding reckoning: What gets backed in the agentic age? What lessons can be learnt from the past funding cycle? Which areas of agtech and foodtech continue to attract capital – and how are founders and funders rethinking growth and governance?

For Infrastructure Investors, Development Partners and Policymakers

Infrastructure matters: Who will finance the backbone of food system resilience? Where are the greatest investment opportunities across water, energy, logistics, and digital infrastructure? What barriers limit the flow of private capital into these areas?

For corporates, strategic investors and industry leaders

Capital catch-up: Key takeaways from our pre-summit investment forum

How is capital being deployed and constrained across agri‑food value chains – and how are VCs, corporates, philanthropists, public agencies, and start-ups rethinking capital efficiency, timelines, and growth in Asia? Plus How can corporates and start-ups move beyond transactional partnerships to shared roadmaps for pilots, procurement and scale?

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