ASEAN’s Food, Agriculture and Forestry Sectoral Plan (FAF-SP) for 2026 to 2030 places sustainable and regenerative agriculture at the centre of the region’s agricultural agenda. But the harder question, now that the direction is set, is what framing will mobilise the financing, the indicators and the policy coordination needed to move from ambition to operational delivery.
FIA’s view is straightforward. In our conversations with governments, ASEAN Secretariat and member companies, one position is consistent. The strongest operational case for regenerative agriculture is food security, and that is the case ASEAN should really lead with because the climate benefits are significant, and it strengthens the chance of meeting ambitions.
Meanwhile, the food security frame should mobilise the financing, the political attention and the coordination required for the agenda to reach smallholder farmers at scale otherwise the agenda stays in small pilots.
The science is unambiguous for action now. FAO finds that cultivated tropical soils typically retain only 30 to 60 percent of the organic matter present under natural vegetation after two or more years of cultivation. Some lose up to 50 percent of their soil organic carbon within five years of conversion. Recent regional analysis places soil health indices across most ASEAN agroclimatic zones in the poor-to-moderate range, with parts of Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia and the Philippines clustered in the poor range. Add the FAO projection that climate change could reduce major crop yields by around 17 percent by 2050 under a high-warming scenario, and the food security framing answers itself. The productive base of ASEAN’s food system is eroding from underneath, and the food and beverage industry sources directly from that base.
However, the regional architecture is taking shape around this. The FAF-SP commits ASEAN to developing access to sustainable financial services for agriculture with risk-mitigating mechanisms, to aligning with the ASEAN taxonomy for sustainable finance for the agriculture, forestry and aquaculture, and to expanding smallholder access to financial tools including digital loans and insurance.
Globally, the SAI Platform’s Regenerating Together framework, signed up to by more than 170 food and beverage companies and farmer cooperatives, and the One Planet Business for Biodiversity coalition (OP2B) hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, provide outcomes-based definitions already operating across the supply chains that source from ASEAN. So, the pieces exist but what is missing is the connection between them and the smallholders the agenda is built around.
An estimated 100 million smallholder farmers in Southeast Asia produce the rice, sugar, cocoa, maize, coffee, dairy, fruit and vegetables that the food industry processes. However, while annual smallholder finance demand across the region is around USD 100 billion, less than one-third is currently met. And less than two percent of global climate finance reaches small-scale agriculture according to some estimates.
Layered on this is the cost reality of two transitions running in parallel. FIA, AFBA and Oxford Economics estimate that global net zero by 2050 will push food production costs in ASEAN up by 31 to 59 percent, with every 1 percent rise in average temperature already adding 1 to 2 percent to food producer prices. So, treating regenerative agriculture as a compliance overlay means the smallholder base is asked to absorb costs it simply cannot.
Another way is to frame it as food security investment, but the productive question follows: what financing architecture, what indicator alignment, what standards harmonisation lets transitions happen on the ground without pushing up the price of food on the shelf?
FIA’s ask of ASEAN policymakers is specific: ASEAN Ministers on Agriculture and Forestry (AMAF) implementation guidance for sustainable financial services should position regenerative agriculture explicitly as food security infrastructure, located within ASEAN’s broader resilience architecture against climate, supply chain and geopolitical shocks.
From there, AMAF, finance ministries and partners such as the Asian Development Bank can build the smallholder transition financing architecture the agenda actually requires, supported by an outcomes-based indicator framework anchored and inspired to the SAI Platform and OP2B but that is also tropical-context-appropriate and commodity-neutral.
A food security lens is what gets the work done while the climate positive gains will come with the work and projects that are implemented.