How Grow Asia advances sustainable and resilient food systems in Southeast Asia from its hub in Singapore

Grow Asia's 10 years of scaling sustainable agriculture from Singapore

This year, Grow Asia celebrates its 10th anniversary — a milestone that not only marks a decade of impact for Asia’s agri-food sector but also showcases Singapore’s pivotal role in making this possible.

The vision of Grow Asia was catalysed by the World Economic Forum in close collaboration with the ten nations of ASEAN. The decision to place Grow Asia’s Secretariat in Singapore was made in 2015 with early support and encouragement from the Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).

Since then, Grow Asia has evolved into a trusted regional platform that convenes more than seven hundred diverse partners, spanning multinational companies, investors, and agri-food innovators, who are united by their belief in advancing more sustainable, and resilient food systems across Southeast Asia and beyond.

The story of Grow Asia was conceived at a time when Singapore was quietly positioning itself as a regional hub, where global businesses and partners could come together to address common challenges and regional opportunities.
 

Singapore as a hub where business and partnerships thrive

Singapore’s unique position as an attractive business hub has been central to Grow Asia’s success. Its world-class infrastructure, transparent governance, and pro-business environment have long attracted leading agri-food and finance firms to anchor their regional headquarters here. Companies such as Cargill, Visa, Bayer, Corteva and Olam Agri all call Singapore home.

Through Grow Asia, these companies have found a trusted ally that helps them navigate the complex landscape of agri-food policy, while forging impactful partnerships that allow them to align their commercial objectives with their broader commitments to driving sustainable impact across the three pillars of environmental, social, and governance outcomes.

In the last decade, Grow Asia’s role has evolved beyond that of a technical assistance provider, to a trusted facilitator of public-private investments and a strategic broker of uncommon partnerships.

As the only accredited entity of ASEAN that works with such a broad range of partners, Grow Asia has succeeded in bridging silos between the finance and agriculture sectors and is working with companies like Visa, Standard Chartered Bank, and MUFG to demystify the needs and risks of hundreds of millions of small-scale farm businesses, who are the engine of growth for ASEAN’s economic success.

Working with Visa’s Singapore-based team, Grow Asia helped roll out financial literacy programmes and digital payment solutions for rural communities across Southeast Asia. This not only improved financial inclusion for smallholder farmers but also created new market opportunities, aligning business growth with social progress.

Similarly, with Mars, headquartered in Singapore, Grow Asia led the design and delivery of a scalable training programme in Indonesia’s cocoa sector. The initiative, titled GrowHer Kakao, is uniting public, private, and non-government organisation partners including GIZ and Save the Children to deliver targeted training to 4,000 cocoa growers. This collaborative work is strengthening supply chain resilience, empowering women, and advancing Mars’ global sustainability commitments.

Other strategic partnerships with companies like Cargill, Nestlé, Syngenta, and Bayer have focused on improving climate resilience and yield improvements for key crops like rice and coffee in Vietnam and the Philippines.

The Coffee Task Force in Vietnam has trained over 50,000 farmers on Good Environmental Practices and lowered greenhouse gas emissions by 40,000 metric tons of CO²e, reducing the amount of irrigation water used by 21 million cubic meters. These collaborative efforts with the Vietnam Government have lowered production costs by US$220 (S$281) per hectare and generated savings of US$12 million annually for smallholder coffee farmers.

“These examples demonstrate the unique value of anchoring our Business Council here in Singapore,” says Beverley Postma, Executive Director of Grow Asia.

Connecting capital to agri-food innovation

Beyond its value as a hub for businesses, Singapore has become a vital bridge for linking companies and projects to private capital in the fast-emerging sector of agri-food technology. Increasingly, family offices and high-net-worth individuals based in Singapore are seeking opportunities to invest in technologies and digital solutions that can transform food systems and deliver a return on investment that offers both impact and value.

In the last five years, Grow Asia has been instrumental in connecting this emergent investor community to the most promising opportunities and trends.

Each year, Grow Asia has been honoured to co-design and host the popular Food Leaders Roundtable at the prestigious annual Milken Asia Summit. This carefully curated event brings together investors, innovators, and regional thought leaders to explore how public, private, private and philanthropic capital can be effectively harnessed to de-risk and accelerate the shift towards regenerative and resilient agriculture.

Hosting this unique dialogue in Singapore sends a powerful signal: that the country is not only the gateway to Asian markets but also the launchpad for cutting-edge agri-food innovation and research.

Grow Asia’s much anticipated annual Investment Forum is another Singapore success story. The Grow Asia Investment Forum has become the region’s premier gathering of agri-food investors, innovators, corporates, and policymakers and has offered a platform for several groundbreaking launches.

In 2023, Singapore’s Minister of Sustainability and the Environment, Grace Fu, helped to unveil Grow Asia’s GrowBeyond Fund, which includes a first-of-its-kind blended loan facility targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in ASEAN. The GrowBeyond Fund has been designed in partnership with a Singapore-based team at Bain & Co and is designed to leverage up to US$1 billion of climate finance through a structured public-private blended financing model.

The new fund aims to unlock inclusive finance for small agri-businesses over the next 10 years, targeting the 70+ million SMEs in Southeast Asia that lie at the forefront of the region’s climate resilience. With the agri-food industry producing more than 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the fund is prioritising initiatives in climate-smart agriculture, regenerative practices, and innovative technologies, with an initial focus on low-emissions rice in Vietnam and sustainable palm oil in Indonesia.

The GrowBeyond Fund is the most innovative and ambitious of Grow Asia’s Public-Private impact funds and includes the ASEAN Sustainable Agriculture Loan Facility (ASALF), which will address the current fragmentation of climate finance.

By consolidating strategic investments from governments, financial institutions, private investors, FinTech, and AgriTech companies, alongside technical assistance providers, Grow Asia is delivering a comprehensive suite of crop-specific financial and market services that are required for SMEs to scale their businesses and adopt regenerative practices. Through these investments, every farm is aiming to see an increase in productivity of between 20 and 30 per cent, and a corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 per cent.

This year’s Grow Asia Investment Forum on 17 September is a special celebration as Grow Asia marks its 10^th anniversary in Singapore. This year’s Forum will be a key feature of Singapore’s IMPACT WEEK 2025, in collaboration with TPC (Tsao Pao Chee Group) and NO.17 Foundation. The event will bring together 250 philanthropic organisations, institutional investors, venture capital firms, and MNCs, generating new partnerships and investment commitments to scale sustainable agriculture and agri-food technologies across Asia.

By staging the annual Forum in Singapore, Grow Asia hopes to reinforce the nation’s role as a valued gateway for channelling global capital into Asia’s food systems — connecting innovation with investment, and ambition with action.

Anchoring innovation in Singapore and scaling across Asia

Singapore’s innovation ecosystem has enabled Grow Asia to experiment, incubate, and scale ambitious solutions. Through Grow Asia’s annual Innovation Challenges, a growing community of startups and innovators have been connected to investors and enablers who together, are deploying and scaling the best-in-class technologies across Asia’s farming systems.

From digital platforms that provide farmers with real-time agronomic advice, to blockchain-enabled traceability solutions and climate-smart inputs, these innovations are shaping the future of sustainable agriculture.

The role of Singapore is not only to provide a platform for these ideas but to ensure they can scale effectively across borders. By connecting local innovation with regional demand, Singapore is strengthening its position as an indispensable hub for regional climate resilience, where ideas, capital, and talent converge.

Building knowledge for responsible investment

Another success story is the collaboration with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University to develop the ASEAN Academy on Responsible Investing. Based on the ASEAN Guidelines for Promoting Responsible Investment in Food, Agriculture and Forestry, this training programme was designed to equip professionals from both private and public organisations with the tools to scale responsible investment in the agri-food sector.

Delivered by Grow Asia in partnership with the Nanyang Business School and the Singapore Agri-Food Innovation Lab, the hugely popular course reinforced Singapore’s role as a centre of excellence for agri-food knowledge and innovation. By anchoring this academy in Singapore, Grow Asia not only advanced best practices across the region but also strengthened the city-state’s position as a thought leader and convenor in sustainable investment.
 

Looking ahead: The next decade of partnership

Securing our global food supply in the face of rapidly worsening effects of climate change hinges on ensuring scalable access to innovative farming practices.

In Southeast Asia alone, it is estimated that US$800 billion of investment in the agricultural sector is required in the next decade to meet consumer demand and fortify supply chains¹. Investing in innovation is one critical area that can pave the way for long term resilience and sustainability capable of withstanding the climate challenges ahead. This resilience extends beyond individual farmers; it encompasses communities, regions, and global food systems.

As Grow Asia looks to its next decade, the focus remains on deepening collaborations that drive economic growth while building resilient, sustainable food systems in the region. The opportunities ahead are immense:

• Harnessing AI and digital technologies to improve farm productivity and supply chain transparency.
• Expanding agri-fintech solutions to give farmers better access to credit, insurance, and risk management tools.
• Mobilising and de-risking private capital from Singapore’s vibrant investor community to accelerate the scaling of breakthrough agri-food technologies.

Postma concludes: “Our first decade has been a testbed for proving the power of strategic partnership. But the next decade will be about unlocking new forms of collaboration — between businesses, investors, governments, and innovators. With Singapore as our home, Grow Asia is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation and ensure Asia’s food systems are resilient, sustainable, and fit for the future.”

This article was issued by Grow Asia. 

Footnote:

¹ Temasek (2020). Feeding the next billion: Agriculture’s big opportunity.