Themes: Food Systems

From The Ground Up: Founders and Funders Impact Pathways

Thu 18 Sep 2025, 10:00 am (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 4 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

How can funders, partners and founders work closely together to create impact? Join us for a dynamic workshop led by Co-Axis, an initiative by Temasek Trust, where impact-driven organisations will share their vision, challenges, and progress. This session is about sparking new ideas and conversations. Through facilitated discussions, funders, partners, and featured founders will explore areas for collaboration to unlock new ideas and co-curate solutions, with the potential to unlock deeper, lasting impact.

Grow Asia Investment Forum 2025

Wed 17 Sep 2025, 9:30 am (GMT+8:00)
Conrad Singapore Marina Bay

(Please note: this is an off-site event, held at Conrad Singapore Marina Bay)

Food is a lever for systemic change, touching health, climate, and community. With collaboration Grow Asia Investment Forum with IMPACT WEEK we are bringing the urgency of food systems transformation directly into IMPACT WEEK 2025, asking: How do we move from industrial agriculture to regenerative abundance?

Celebrating Grow Asia’s 10th Anniversary with founding partners ASEAN and the World Economic Forum, this forum showcases investment-ready solutions that embody IMPACT WEEK’s vision of systems that nourish rather than extract. Delegates will engage with blended finance models for regenerative agriculture, digital innovations that empower smallholder farmers, and gender-inclusive value chains that rebuild rural prosperity.

This isn’t just about funding better farming—it’s about co-creating investment pathways that transform food from commodity to catalyst for shared well-being. At IMPACT WEEK 2025, we don’t just talk about regenerative systems. We architect them, together.

From Seed to Table: Building Resilient Food Chains, One Ingredient at a Time

Thu 18 Sep 2025, 11:30 am (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 1 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Every meal we eat reflects a journey from farm to table—one shaped by local systems and global supply chains that directly impact people and the planet. Yet many staple ingredients still come from agricultural systems that degrade ecosystems, undervalue farmers, and leave rural communities at risk.

Regenerative agriculture presents a powerful alternative, using practices such as intercropping, agroforestry, and diversified farming to restore nature, boost farmer incomes, and build climate resilience. Despite their benefits, these approaches often remain small in scale, blocked by challenges such as fragmented supply chains, market and finance failures, social inequality, and gaps in technical knowledge.

This session examines these barriers through the lens of a typical meal—featuring rice, vegetables, spices, oil, or coffee—and explores how collaborative, multi-stakeholder action can overcome them. It brings together businesses, farmer cooperatives, NGOs, policymakers, and ecosystem builders to spotlight real-world solutions like the Regenerative Food Facility and inclusive retail models.

Together, these efforts show how we can move from aspiration to action—transforming the food system one seed, one plate, one partnership at a time.

Closing the Loop: From Waste to Wealth—Asia’s Food Circularity Playbook

Thu 18 Sep 2025, 12:30 pm (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 1 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Asia wastes over 230 million tonnes of food annually, even as more than 375 million people across the region remain undernourished. This stark contrast highlights food waste as not just an inefficiency, but both a social injustice and an environmental crisis.

This session reimagines food waste not merely as a challenge, but as a catalyst for regeneration. It explores how circular, inclusive, and low-carbon food systems can turn waste into value—economically, socially, and ecologically. From community food banks and food recovery to upcycled ingredients and nutrient reintegration, a range of practical models are already emerging across Asia. By treating food waste as a starting point for innovation, ASEAN and Asia more broadly can build food systems that restore equity, reduce environmental harm, and create new pathways for sustainable development.

Rather than promoting a single solution, the session showcases approaches such as redistribution, bioconversion, fermentation, and circular logistics. It examines what is needed to scale these models, including policy reform, shifts in consumer behaviour, inclusive financing mechanisms, and appropriate infrastructure.

Plant-Forward Food-as-Medicine: Prescription for Body and Planet

Thu 18 Sep 2025, 10:45 am (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 1 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

For centuries, Asian traditions such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and ancestral kitchens have treated food as both nourishment and healing. Modern science now confirms what ancient wisdom long understood: diet can prevent, manage, and even reverse chronic disease. A plant-forward diet—centered on grains, legumes, and vegetables—is one of the most accessible ways to support both personal health and the planet.

Yet across much of Asia, meat remains central to the plate, often seen as a symbol of wealth and strength. This cultural norm persists despite livestock contributing 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating land degradation. The gap between what we eat and what we know is growing.

This session reframes ‘food as medicine’ as both a personal wellness philosophy and a climate solution. It explores the potential of holistic diets, culinary innovation, and a systemic shift from meat-centric to plant-forward eating. It also asks how we can move beyond awareness to embed ancient wisdom into modern food systems—transforming trend into tradition and healing both people and planet.

De-Risk & Scale: Blended-Finance Pathways for Climate-Smart Food & Agri-tech

Thu 18 Sep 2025, 10:00 am (GMT+8:00)
Impact Lab 1 (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Piloting innovative agri-food and climate solutions is difficult, but the greater challenge lies in scaling these from promising pilots to viable market-ready solutions. Traditional finance often views such ventures as too risky, creating a funding gap known as the “valley of death” where many breakthroughs stall.

This session highlights practical cases demonstrating how catalytic philanthropy and blended finance can bridge this gap. Examples include catalytic grants that support farm-level validation and attract early-stage investors, and integrated financing models like risk waterfall and landscape-scale agroforestry that balance community livelihoods with nature restoration.

Together, these cases provide a clear, actionable playbook for a complete capital continuum—from philanthropy through risk-sharing capital and concessional finance to market-rate investment—emphasising the value of intentional financial partnerships.

Rethinking Food Systems: Mobilising All Voices for People, Resilience & Climate

Thu 18 Sep 2025, 9:00 am (GMT+8:00)
Impact Forum (Level 4 Suntec Convention Centre)

Food systems are a mirror of society, reflecting how we nourish, govern, employ, and sustain ourselves. Yet today, these systems are under extraordinary stress. From rising malnutrition to climate-induced crop failures, from chemically intensive agriculture to fragile global supply chains, the way we produce and consume food is becoming increasingly unsustainable, inequitable, and unsafe.

At IMPACT WEEK, we ask: How can food systems be reimagined to truly support human well-being, ecological regeneration, and societal resilience?

This session explores food systems transformation not as a technical fix, but as a collective shift – one that mobilises the full spectrum of actors shaping what we grow, eat, and value. We will spotlight voices that are often absent from global food dialogues, including retailers, food entrepreneurs, investors, and public agencies—all of which play a critical role in redefining demand, influencing markets, and shaping future food experiences.

Partnering with the World Economic Forum, the discussion will explore how consumer demand, trade, and procurement can serve as powerful levers for change – driving lower emissions, enabling more inclusive innovation, and opening new opportunities across the value chain, particularly in enhancing farmer productivity and the resilience of rural communities. It will also explore how philanthropy, public policy, and purpose-led business can help turn vision into action – not just for climate, but for people’s public health, access, and dignity.