Cultivating Certainty: Advancing Agriculture's New Frontier

The latest series of the popular streaming show, Clarkson’s Farm, has brought agricultural technology (AgriTech) to the forefront of people’s minds, displaying what is possible when digital innovation is pursued in traditionally physical industries. Within businesses, the desire for innovation is also clear: almost 60% of leaders in the agricultural industry interviewed for the 2026 Verdantix global corporate sustainability survey identify data management and reporting as either their ‘number one priority’ or a ‘high priority’ for funding over the next two years. In the same survey, buyers of agricultural produce or products, such as food and beverage manufacturers, report plans to increase spend on commercial software and services to support supply chain activities.

At the end of 2025, Verdantix wrote about how innovation and technical advancement are key to securing agricultural resources. We analysed how large brands were investing in their agricultural supply chains, where sustainable agriculture was attracting investment from capital markets, and how software and services solution providers were evolving offerings to support agricultural initiatives. As we approach the final quarter of 2026, the developments continue.

Investment and big brands

Agriculture continues to attract investment and interest from household brands. For example:

• In May 2026, Tesco launched its AgriTech challenge, in partnership with Leading Edge Only. The challenge identifies and supports AgriTech innovators that help farmers and suppliers build more resilient and sustainable food supply chains.
• In July 2026, Deutsche Bank helped to launch a new private equity climate fund in Southeast Asia – The Mekong Earth Regeneration Fund – to support regenerative agricultural practices in Vietnam and Laos.

Software and services capabilities

Software and service providers continue to develop their agricultural expertise and offerings. We see:

• BASF acquiring AgBiTech in March 2026, as the firm seeks to further its Agricultural Solutions offering. The transaction sees BASF acquire the biological crop protection provider from Paine Schwartz Partners – a private equity investor focused on sustainable food chains – ahead of the planned initial public offering of BASF Agricultural Solutions in 2027.
• CropX Technologies acquiring SCIO in August 2026, in the digital agronomy solution provider’s eighth acquisition since 2020. CropX obtains portable near-infrared spectroscopy capabilities, supporting the development of its offerings across the agricultural life cycle.
• Sweep and HowGood partnering in June 2026 to promote access to product-level food emissions data. The partnership promises the integration of HowGood’s database of more than 12 million product carbon footprints directly into the Sweep platform. This will help food and agriculture firms strengthen Scope 3 carbon accounting, supplier engagement and regulatory reporting in one system.
• Watershed and AdAstra Sustainability partnering in September 2026 to open-source the latter’s Orbae dataset. The partnership will make the Orbae land use change emissions dataset, as well as the code behind it, openly available. As a result, food and agriculture firms will be able to apply more transparent data to forthcoming reporting requirements under the GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals Standard, and support progress monitoring against Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) targets.

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