As the food and agriculture industries in APAC continue to navigate rapid technological advances, a common challenge continues to emerge across seemingly unrelated sectors: adoption.
This is a crucial consideration as even though new innovations may promise greater productivity and improved health outcomes, their impacts will remain limited unless users are willing and able to embrace them.
This challenge is especially relevant in this region, where factors such as affordability, education, access and infrastructure often determine whether new technologies gain meaningful traction. From agtech solutions developed for smallholder farmers to emerging GLP-1-related nutrition opportunities, adoption is increasingly becoming the key battleground for innovation.
Industry experts believe that success will require more than technological breakthroughs alone, and ensuring adoption is what will be essential to accelerating uptake and unlocking long-term value.
Farmer adoption: It takes an ecosystem
It is often understood that reaching out to farmers and convincing them to change their farming practices remain the biggest challenge in agtech adoption.
This challenge is amplified in Asia, where smallholder farmers own and operate the majority of farmland.
“The biggest bottleneck is commercial reach, or reaching farmers, educating them about the benefit of the technology,” said Kumardev Datta, director of marketing, strategy and growth at FMC Corporation.
“It’s very different when you’ve got a farmer with a two-acre farm who works on his or her own. Over here we’ve got millions of smallholder farmers. We do not have certified agronomists at scale, distribution is basic in many places, and farmers aren’t necessarily the richest people.”
To overcome these challenges, Datta believes successful adoption depends on creating a network of aligned participants, from technology developers and distributors to government extension services and financing providers.
“Ultimately, you need an ecosystem to get something going,” said Datta.
He pointed to agricultural drones as an example of a technology that has achieved rapid adoption because a supporting ecosystem emerged alongside it.
For instance, drone service providers have also emerged early on to support adoption, allowing smallholders to benefit from drones without spending the money to own one.
“A small farmer is not going to buy a drone for a couple of thousand dollars, so an ecosystem has been created of drone service providers. They own the drone, they get trained, and then they provide it as a service,” said Datta.
Datta stresses that commercial viability is essential and that technologies only scale when farmers see clear economic benefits.
Along with a well-supported ecosystem, drones offered farmers compelling economics that drove widespread adoption, including significant savings with more precise application and less manual labour.
By comparison, Datta said the biologicals sector still requires significant ecosystem development to support wider adoption.
Unlike synthetic crop protection products, biologicals can show variable performance depending on environmental conditions, making farmer education particularly important.
“A biological product has performance variations. It depends on climatic conditions, soil conditions and other factors. There is inherent variability in it,” said Datta.
Training growers to understand when and how to use biological products is therefore critical, especially in markets dominated by smallholders, he added.
“The more difficult part is training the farmer on how to use a biological. What’s the right time? What sort of performance expectations can the farmer have?”
Often times, To address this, FMC invests heavily in demonstrations and field support.
“We run hundreds and thousands of demonstrations because seeing is believing. We train the distribution about the product, and we’ve got technical staff on the ground to explain what that product does,” said Datta.
However, he noted that building farmer understanding at scale is time-consuming and resource intensive.
“A good ecosystem would help accelerate that because you’ve got different players who are aligned towards it.”
Looking forward, Datta sees an opportunity for the industry to develop technologies specifically for smallholder farmers.
“There is a narrative that the technology exists and adoption is the problem, and that’s largely true. But we also don’t have technology that is getting developed with a smallholder farmer in mind.”
He added that much of the tech entering Asia today were originally designed for large-scale mechanised agriculture and later adapted to smaller farms.
“We see a lot of adaptation, and there’s nothing wrong with adaptation, but there is an opportunity for technology that is exclusively targeted at smallholder farmers.”
He believes solutions must be designed around farm size, affordability and service requirements rather than simply scaled down from products built for developed markets.
“It can’t just be making a big tractor smaller. It has to make sense in this part of the world. It has to get to a price point that works for a farmer. We have to assume that the farmer is doesn’t have an agronomist sitting next to then explaining things, you know, there must be a service model around it.”
He also highlighted the potential role of regional innovation hubs such as Singapore, where talent and investment capital can support the development of scalable, impact-driven solutions for farmers across the region.
Datta concluded: “I would say there’s a lot of opportunity for targeted technology development for smallholder farmers alongside ecosystem development. Those two things together will help get technology into farmers’ hands faster.”
Preparing for Asia’s looming GLP-1 nutrition revolution
One of the biggest recent science-related food trends that has become widely adopted is GLP-1, where both industry innovation and consumer food choices are being reshaped based on the use of GLP-1 agonist drugs as a weight management strategy.
Although the impact of this has been most prevalent in the United States where GLP-1 drugs are widely available and accessible, many industry experts believe that it is only a matter of time before this trend makes its way over to the Asia Pacific region and many consumers will start to adopt diets that are compatible with the use of these.
“GLP-1 has already been shown to cause a major disruption in the food sector, and cause a new fundamental shift in how people choose and eat food,” Arla Foods Ingredients head of sales development for performance nutrition Sarah Meyer said.
“The question that food companies will eventually need to answer is not going to be how to help consumers eat less, but more on how to product food that is higher in nutrition in smaller portions — and in Asia, just like many other parts of the world, there are many opportunities out there because many processed food items in the market currently have a lot of empty calories.”
There are many factors that point to APAC potentially adopting GLP-1 habits similar if not the same as what is being seen in the United States, so it is something that Meyer believes food firms definitely need to prepare for in advance.
“It is common knowledge that there are high levels of diabetes and obesity in this region, and with GLP-1 proven to be able to solve these and several other issues in one go, it makes perfect sense that consumers here will go for it,” she said.
“The main potential hindrances such as price and accessibility could well be solved with the local production of generics as well as the launch of the oral version of GLP-1 agonist drugs, and from there the progress will naturally expand to cover companion foods that can complement the use of these drugs.”
Semaglutide is the main active ingredient in GLP-1 agonist drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, and the core patent for this expired recently in March 2026, allowing local manufacturers in markets like India and China to develop and produce generic alternatives at lower cost, opening up the market to a new wave of consumers especially in the APAC region.
But as APAC consumers adopt such new consumption habits, it is highly unlikely that they will be willing to compromise on the taste or quality of their food for any extended period of time, and it is also becoming increasingly clear that they will expect the maximum value possible out of every purchase, based on recent trends.
“One thing that is clear in this region is that not only will consumers want a focus on getting the right nutrients at the highest possible quality, but they will also want additional benefits,” she added.
“Digestive and gut health is an obvious one that most consumers will be looking for, so manufacturers are going to need to ensure that many boxes from taste to protein content to gut-beneficial ingredients and more are all ticked to satisfy them.”
As the market matures, the category is expected to make a gradual shift as consumers evolve from seeing foods they eat on a GLP-1 diet as a medical complement, but more of a lifestyle change.
“The naming of these foods will also be important: Calling them ‘GLP-1 companion foods’ and potentially having these prescribed obviously feels different from food bought on supermarket shelves, and this is where the food industry needs to play an important role in developing products that meet the needs of the latter,” Meyer said.
For instance, some of Arla’s ongoing related product innovations include protein waters that contain high protein levels but zero milky feel, allowing consumers to feel like they’ve just had a drink so they don’t feel full but in fact have already had access to the protein they need.
“GLP-1 is sparking a reinvention of protein and other essential ingredients in smaller, denser formats, and this is what will be key to ensuring adoption at the end of the day,” she said.
Find out more at the APAC Agri-Food Innovation Summit
Datta and Arla Food Ingredients Head of APAC Alexander Leufgen will be speaking at the APAC Agri-Food Innovation Summit in Singapore, held from October 27 to 29 at Suntec City Convention Centre.
More details on the agenda can be found here, and tickets can be booked here.
