Sector deep-dive · 281 startups

Nature, Agriculture & Food

"The region's largest mitigation lever — and the foundation of resilience."

281

Companies

191

Top activity (Agriculture Processes)

1,150

Startups across SEA-6

Why this sector matters

Nature, Agriculture & Food spans three tightly linked systems: the natural resources everything else relies on, forests, mangroves, reefs and soil; the roughly 100 million smallholder farming households who work that land; and the food security and nutrition of everyone else, which both of those ultimately produce.¹

All three are under pressure at once: biodiversity loss is accelerating; farmers' incomes remain financially shaky; and the region's food supply is increasingly exposed to shocks from outside the region as much as from within it.

Between 1993 and 2018, weather-related disasters already cost Southeast Asia an estimated US$124 billion,² and that exposure is now being tested by shocks happening more frequently than before.

Nowhere else in this Landscape do cutting emissions and building resilience overlap so completely, because these three parts feed into each other. Degraded nature makes farming more expensive. Expensive, precarious farming makes food security more expensive. A stressed food system pushes farmers to clear more land, degrading nature further.

Breaking that cycle means building backup capacity, variety, and fair access to funding into all three parts.

Top stories 2026

6 forces shaping Nature, Agriculture & Food this year, with resilience ratings and named innovation opportunities attached to each.

01

Fertiliser and climate shocks are compounding each other.

Following the outbreak of the Iran conflict, prices of urea, the fertiliser most rice farmers depend on, spiked 50% to roughly US$720 a tonne in a month. Indonesia's farmers warned of a shortfall of subsidised fertiliser, and the government halted rice, sugar and corn imports; the Philippines tripled its rice support fund to PHP 30 billion.

The region has little cushion against this kind of shock: it imports 70 to 90% of its synthetic fertilisers, and no ASEAN country produces phosphate or potash at all. Climate stress is compounding the pressure.

This is turning biological alternatives to synthetic fertiliser into a commercial necessity. In Vietnam, trials lifted rice yields by 43% – six times the cost of the product used, which could be the kind of return that gets farmers to switch without a subsidy.

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Sustainable Fertiliser and Input Manufacturing

Companies turning farm and food waste into fertiliser substitutes now operate at commercial scale across Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore, spanning seaweed-based biostimulants, insect farming that converts palm-mill by-products into fertiliser, and protein-meal production. The common thread is feedstock grown, farmed or produced locally rather than imported.

Manufacturing fertiliser from crop residue or factory waste
Biostimulant products that boost a plant's own growth and biocontrol products (natural pest and disease control)
Soil improvement products that help fields hold nutrients and produce higher yields
Hardware and software that measure exactly how much fertiliser a field needs
Traceability software that tracks fertiliser and other farm inputs through the supply chain

Climate-Indexed Finance and Digital Risk Bridging

Another opportunity is reducing the risk of switching for farmers themselves: parametric insurance that pays out automatically once weather crosses a threshold, risk-scoring platforms that price a farmer's exposure more accurately, and credit tied to resilient practices. Insurance is furthest along, already covering tens of thousands of hectares of Vietnamese rice farms.

Parametric, weather-triggered insurance
Platforms that turn field data (soil, weather, crop health) into a risk score lenders can use
Trade and working-capital finance for small agricultural businesses exposed to fertiliser price swings
Finance tools into farming apps or supply chain platforms that reward farmers for verified low-emission or fertiliser-efficient practices

02

A Super El Niño threatens SEA's next harvest cycle.

Southeast Asia has already seen what a severe El Niño, the weather pattern that brings drought to parts of the region every few years, can do to a harvest. The 2015-16 event cut palm oil yields by 13% in Malaysia and 5–10% in Indonesia, and Thailand's 2020 drought cut rice production by 40% against the previous season. CIIP classifies El Niño and its counterpart La Niña as "predictable range" hazards, events that recur often enough, and with enough warning, that forecasting and financing arranged in advance can do real good, unlike a one-off catastrophic shock that no amount of preparation could fully offset.

The tools to act on that predictability already exist, and they are mostly data and insurance products rather than dams, sea walls or other physical infrastructure. Bain values Asia- Pacific's climate risk intelligence market, hazard mapping, flood and drought forecasting, and early-warning systems, at US$1 billion by 2030.

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Forecasting and Climate Risk Intelligence

What is actually holding this back is better data and more warning time. Bain treats hazard mapping, forecasting and early-warning systems as a market in its own right. CIIP's breakdown of solutions names flood and drought early-warning systems, and sensor-based pest and disease detection, as areas ready for private investment rather than something only governments should fund.

Flood and drought forecasting platforms that issue early warnings directly to farmers
Hazard-mapping software that helps businesses and insurers assess climate risk exposure
Sensor networks that catch pest and disease outbreaks before they spread
Solutions that turn weather forecasts into simple, farm-level alerts farmers can act on
Risk-mapping software that helps disaster management agencies track exposure across multiple hazards

Parametric Insurance and Anticipatory Payment Technology

CIIP's framework for managing different levels of risk places El Niño-scale events in the category best handled by insurance that pays out automatically once a weather index is triggered, rather than waiting for a disaster assessment afterwards. It also treats cash payments made ahead of a forecast event, before the harvest actually fails, as a distinct tool from insurance itself. The payout mechanism already works commercially: weather-index insurance for rice sells in the region today, with premiums from US$8 per hectare.

Parametric weather index insurance for drought-sensitive crops, and livestock insurance linked to climate and disease indices
Platforms that release cash payments as soon as a forecast crosses a danger threshold, ahead of actual crop loss
Mobile money and digital finance products tailored to climate-vulnerable households

03

On-farm innovation is racing to close a widening yield gap.

Southeast Asia's yield gap is being pulled from both ends. Climate stress is cutting potential yields, with rice grain yields falling 6–7% for every 1°C of warming, while farm labour disappears. Agricultural employment in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam has halved in two decades, and farmers average over 50 of age. Mechanisation remains limited: the region averages around 1.8 horsepower per hectare, against 16 in Japan and 17 in the US, and its cost has risen 58% since 2010, to US$224 per hectare in 2016.

That gap is pulling in capital. Agrifood tech investment in Southeast Asia reached US$1.27 billion in 2022, six times 2018 levels, across 270-plus startups, 43% in Singapore. WEF and CIIP point to the same near-term lever: precision farming and irrigation technology, sensors, AI-scheduling, automated valves and pumps, that cut water loss by up to 50% while lifting yields, without clearing new land.

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On-Farm Precision and Mechanisation Technology

The most direct way to close the yield gap is in the field itself. Precision farming, using sensors and software to apply water, fertiliser and labour more efficiently, and modern irrigation are already proven enough to attract investors. Southeast Asia's shortage of farm machinery shows exactly how much room technology has to grow. The same goes to digital tools that help farmers monitor pests, water use and disease across their fields.

Low-cost soil moisture sensors and irrigation scheduling software for smallholders
Pay-per-use mechanisation and irrigation
Pest and disease-surveillance tools that give early warning through simple mobile alerts
Farm management apps that bundle monitoring, agronomy advice and record-keeping in one place for smallholders
Affordable climate-controlled storage and greenhouse systems suited to smallholders

Extension, Market Access and Mechanisation Financing

New technology only closes the yield gap if it actually reaches farmers, many of whom are older and have little spare cash to invest. The CIIP research partnership, which studies climate finance gaps for smallholder farmers, treats this as much as a money and reach problem as a technical one: training networks so farmers learn new methods, platforms connecting them to buyers, and financing built specifically for mechanisation and irrigation equipment.

Peer-to-peer or digital platforms that let farmers train each other in new techniques
Aggregation and direct-to-consumer platforms connecting smallholders to buyers
Financing products designed specifically to help farmers buy mechanisation and irrigation equipment
Cooperative or shared-service models that let groups of farmers pool access to inputs and equipment

04

Smallholder farmers face a US$200 billion financing gap.

Smallholder farmers need far more credit than they can access. Smallholder farmer financing demand exceeds supply by more than US$200 billion a year, a gap CIIP expects to widen by a further US$100–130 billion annually without intervention.

In Southeast Asia, the shortfall concentrates in longer-term loans rather than everyday working capital: money to replant export crops like coffee, cocoa and palm after old trees stop producing, and to adopt better farming inputs and practices generally.

CIIP points to one structural reason the gap persists: blended finance, where public or philanthropic money is used to reduce risk for private investors and draw in more capital, is deployed in much smaller deals in Southeast Asian agriculture than the global average, even though sustainable agriculture is already one of the region's top five sectors for this kind of funding.

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Digital Credit and Alternative Data Lending

Lending to smallholders directly means judging creditworthiness without the land titles or other collateral banks normally require. Digital platforms that combine mobile money records, alternative data such as phone usage or purchase history, and their own credit-scoring models are already doing this in Indonesia and the Philippines. CIIP finds that older, informal and rural borrowers do not fit the mould of the formally employed farmers for whom government- backed loans are designed.

Credit-scoring platforms that use alternative data to assess rural and informal borrowers
Mobile money and digital lending products aimed at rural women entrepreneurs and small agri-businesses
Agri-ecommerce with built-in credit and insurance
Financial literacy tools that help farmers build the credit and savings habits lenders look for

Value Chain Financing Technology and Risk Infrastructure

Where direct lending to farmers still is not enough, the opportunity for startups lies in the technology behind the finance. Large buyers, cooperatives and aggregators, the companies that sit between farmers and export markets, need software to issue, track and manage credit based on a farmer's sales history and supply contracts. Lenders, in turn, need better data and tools to structure loans that spread risk, so that lending can scale safely.

Platforms that let buyers, cooperatives and aggregators issue and manage credit directly to their supplying farmers
Solutions that turn field and crop data into risk scores lenders can use to approve loans
Digital systems that verify stored inventory
Reporting tools that help aggregators package farmer loans into deals investors and development banks can fund

05

Ecosystem loss is creating a market for restoration finance.

Ecosystem loss and restoration finance are two sides of the same failure. The World Economic Forum puts the imbalance in global terms: US$7.3 trillion went into activities that harm nature in 2023, against just US$220 billion for nature-based solutions. Most of that smaller sum went to conservation, protecting what is left, rather than to actually restoring what is been degraded.

Southeast Asia's peatlands, mangroves and remaining intact forests sit at the centre of that imbalance. Clearing land for commodities like palm oil and timber accounts for roughly half of all forest loss across Asia and the Pacific, and because national accounts do not put a price on carbon storage or coastal flood protection, cutting down a peatland can look like a straightforward economic win even though it destroys value the accounts never counted in the first place.

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Nature-Based Solutions MRV and Credit Verification

For investment in nature protection to scale, there must a trusted way to measure what is being protected. Tools like satellite imagery, drones, eDNA (genetic material collected from water or soil samples to detect species present) and AI-based change detection turn a forest, peatland or mangrove into something a bank or investor can verify and finance.

Satellite, drone and AI platforms that detect forest and peatland change in near-real time
eDNA and biodiversity-monitoring services that verify what species are actually present on a nature-based project
Digital registries that prove a carbon or biodiversity credit represents a genuine, additional outcome, not something that would have happened anyway
Early-warning tools that flag peatland fires or illegal clearing before they spread
Tools to make nature and carbon credit records easy to verify

Restoration Project Aggregation and Market-Access Platforms

Good data on a restoration project only matters if it can find a buyer. Southeast Asia's restoration efforts are still made up mostly of small, community-led projects that individually are too small or too disconnected to attract financiers on their own. The opportunity here is building the platforms that bundle and package these projects together, not just doing the on-the-ground conservation work itself.

Platforms that bundle small, community-led restoration projects into deals large enough for investors to fund
Tools that package nature-based credits into products for corporate and financial buyers
Marketplaces and registries where biodiversity and nature credits can be bought, sold and tracked
Reporting tools that translate restoration outcomes into the ESG disclosures companies need for compliance

06

Alternative foods are turning agricultural waste into new ingredients.

Southeast Asia's agrifood waste is becoming an ingredient category rather than a disposal problem. WEF sizes "reducing food loss in supply chains" at US$367 billion in nature-positive business value globally, naming agricultural and food waste repurposing as the investible opportunity behind it. Circular use of crop residues and food waste can cut emissions, reduce pollution and improve farm economics. However, scalability remains the open challenge.

Alternative proteins are the other half of the story. WEF names plant, fermentation, cell, insect and algae-based proteins as a single emerging category, requiring less land than livestock and already high-growth for manufacturers. For Southeast Asia, the opportunity is localisation: plant-based, microbial and cultivated seafood formulated for Asian markets rather than imported from elsewhere.

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Agrifood Waste Valorisation

Turning crop residues and food waste into something useful is achievable now; scaling it is the question. The opportunity lies in the logistics and processing layer that collects scattered waste streams and turns them into usable inputs, such as feed, energy or soil additives, rather than in waste disposal infrastructure itself.

Small-scale, decentralised systems that convert crop and food waste into energy, animal feed or farm inputs on-site
Platforms that collect organic waste from multiple sources and match it with buyers
Waste recovery logistics that keep perishable waste streams properly chilled from collection through to reuse
Digital tools that optimise nutrient management and soil amendment use
Farming of Black Soldier Fly larvae and other insects that convert organic waste into protein and fertiliser

Alternative Protein and Functional Ingredient Development

What makes this a genuine Southeast Asian opportunity is localisation. Plant-based, microbial and cultivated proteins are already a recognised, fast-growing category worldwide. The opening here is developing products specifically for local cuisines, price points and nutrition needs, not adapting something designed for other cultures and markets.

Plant-based, microbial and cultivated seafood products formulated specifically for Asian tastes and price points
Low-impact functional ingredients suited to regional food and beverage products
Shared fermentation and biomanufacturing facilities for smaller foodtech companies
Software that simulates fermentation and bioprocessing facilities virtually, cutting the cost of scaling up production
Tools that score and label products by climate impact, giving buyers a clear carbon footprint