World Agri-Tech London 2026 Agenda

• Who is truly capturing the value created by agri-tech innovation – farmers, technology providers, investors, or the wider food supply chain – and as capital flows into agriculture, can family farms stay competitive, or will scale increasingly determine who invests, grows, and survives?
• Are we solving real productivity and resilience problems in agriculture, or primarily funding technologies that improve efficiency for intermediaries rather than farms?
• Why is adoption of proven agri-tech solutions still inconsistent across farms – is the real barrier cost, trust, complexity, or misaligned incentives – and can current financing models support both farm succession and technology adoption, or are they making transition harder for the next generation?
• Can current policy frameworks support disruptive innovation, or are they structurally preserving the status quo?
• Is the future of farming becoming more autonomous and data-driven in a way that strengthens rural economies – or concentrates control and risk in fewer global actors?

• Which agriculture technologies consistently deliver ROI at farm level, and which have failed to justify the investment, and why?
• What are the most common reasons promising technologies stall at the pilot stage and never reach meaningful adoption?
• Do farmers trust data-driven recommendations, and what would need to change for that trust to be established at scale?
• At what point does adoption of a given technology become economically unavoidable, and have any reached that threshold yet?

• Where will we see full autonomy on the farm - will it be general purpose devices such as headless tractors, or task specific appliances like laser weeders?  
• Which strategy is the most likely to succeed - or go first? Automation layered onto existing equipment, or a shift toward fully autonomous system architectures? 
• When it comes to data ownership and interoperability, does the EU Data Act meaningfully shift the balance of power between farmers and OEMs? Given that data is only useful for AI training when pooled into large, diverse datasets - and not much use when kept isolated - is there a mechanism for data sharing? 
• Which is the better strategy for autonomy companies: Raas (lease) or equipment sale (perhaps with ongoing annual fees)? 
• How important is interoperability between autonomous machines - and are OEMs incentivized to create a truly open system?

• What if resilience is no longer enough? Can we design agriculture to thrive on uncertainty - from climate shocks and geopolitical disruption to market volatility - rather than simply withstand it? What would it take to structurally align capital, technology, biology and business models so that stress becomes a source of adaptation and competitive advantage?
• Is “antifragility” real in agriculture, or just a compelling idea? Where are we seeing systems genuinely improve under stress, and where do they still break first - inputs, yields, margins, logistics or decision-making?
• How resilient is agriculture without its safety nets? How much of today’s resilience depends on subsidies, insurance, uninterrupted input supply and open trade - and what happens when those stabilisers fail at the same time?
• And where is the ceiling? Are there limits to how “antifragile” agriculture can become, or are we still designing farms and food systems around a fundamentally outdated assumption of stability?

• Does the next major value opportunity for farmers lie in nutritional and quality traits - such as antioxidant content, reduced acrylamide formation, protein quality or fibre functionality - and if so, which of these traits can already be measured, proven and commercialised at scale in ways that translate into better margins on the farm?
• How are mills, processors and ingredient companies moving from "one big silo" towards identity-preserved supply chains and segregation based on nutritional or functional characteristics? Where does this transition genuinely stand today and what still limits broader adoption?
• Can food genuinely function as preventative health, and what level of scientific evidence is required before food manufacturers and ingredient buyers are willing to pay for measurable health outcomes?
• If nutritional traits become economically valuable, who ultimately captures that value across the chain - from breeders and farmers to processors, food manufacturers and healthcare?
• Where are the greatest innovation and investment opportunities at the intersection of plant breeding, agriculture, nutrition and health?

PRESENTATION

• Where do biostimulants, biocontrols, and biofertilisers sit today in terms of market size, growth trajectory, and share relative to synthetic inputs?  
• What is driving uneven adoption across geographies and crop systems – and is it primarily regulatory, agronomic, or commercial?  
• What does the investment and regulatory landscape look like heading into the next phase of scaling?

FIRESIDE CHAT

• Biologicals are often described as the next major wave of agricultural innovation. What needs to happen for these solutions to move from niche applications to mainstream adoption across European farming?
• Corteva has invested heavily in biological innovation. Where is the greatest untapped potential for biologicals to deliver both economic value for farmers and progress against Europe’s sustainability ambitions?
• As pressure grows to produce more with fewer resources, what role can biologicals play alongside seeds, crop protection, and digital technologies in shaping the future of European agriculture?

• Who captures most of the value in current carbon market structures, is it the farmer, or is value being extracted at the aggregation, verification, and corporate procurement layers before it reaches the farm gate?
• What breaks first at scale in carbon markets, trust in the underlying methodology, pricing mechanisms that cannot reflect the true cost of permanence, or verification systems that were never designed for agricultural complexity?
• Do carbon markets meaningfully change farming behaviour at field level, or do they primarily function as a corporate reporting mechanism with limited impact on how land is managed?
• Can carbon markets function credibly across the heterogeneous smallholder and dryland systems of the Global South, where verification is expensive?

FIRESIDE CHAT

• How is agricultural risk being managed in an era of increasing climate volatility and why have insurance systems struggled to keep pace?
• Who absorbs systemic agricultural shocks today: farmers, insurers, governments, or supply chains?
• Are parametric insurance solutions sufficient for large-scale, systemic climate events or do they paper over deeper structural gaps?
• How does risk exposure vary across regions and are current models designed for those differences?
• Are existing insurance frameworks adequate for the realities of a changing climate or does the model itself need to change? 

• How are climate resilience priorities reshaping strategies across the food and agriculture sector?
• What role are Scope 3 emissions, SBTi commitments, and broader sustainability goals playing in business decision-making?
• Where are businesses focusing investment and resources to drive measurable progress and long-term resilience?

LIGHTNING TALKS
A rapid assessment of farm profitability under sustained input inflation and market instability, drawing on data from European producers.   

• Where farms are reducing dependency and where exposure is rising
• How sustainability-led practices perform economically in practice, not in theory
• What the data says about structural profitability across different farm types and regions

CASE STUDIES

This session focuses on how food production holds up under three very different kinds of extreme pressure - active war in Ukraine, chronic dryland food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa, and top-down food-system transformation in the Gulf. The panel looks at what breaks first, what adaptations have worked, and whether those lessons carry over between regions.

• Digitalisation as a Strategic Pillar of Ukrainian Agriculture During Wartime
  Volodymyr Pugachov, Regional Director of Donau Soja Eastern Europe & Deputy Chair, Agricultural and Food Committee, UKRAINIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
• Solar Powered Irrigation: How Much Does It Cost to Feed an Entire Country? 
  Samir Ibrahim, CEO and Co-Founder, SUNCULTURE
• From the Gulf to the Globe: Exporting a Climate Resilience Playbook 
  Hassan Halawy, Group CEO, ELITE AGRO HOLDING
• When Every Drop Counts: AI, Water, and the Future of Farming
  Jeff Macdonald, CSR Leader EMEA, IBM

• How exposed is global food production to energy volatility, and how quickly does a price shock become a production crisis?
• Can fertiliser dependency realistically be reduced at scale, and do the risks look the same across Europe, Africa, and import-dependent regions?
• What happens to food systems when input supply is disrupted, and who absorbs the damage first?
• Should fertiliser and energy inputs be treated as strategic infrastructure in the same way critical minerals and energy networks are?  
• Can the industry transition from fossil fuel-based synthetic inputs to more sustainable alternatives – circular, biological, and low-carbon?

• How can the transition to more sustainable farming - including regenerative ag and other low-carbon farming systems - be financed fairly and at scale?
• Is transition finance bringing new investment into agriculture, or is it primarily redirecting existing capital, and what more is needed to unlock funding?
• How do banks, government policies, lending criteria, retailer sustainability requirements, and corporate supply chains influence which farming transitions can access finance?
• Who is benefiting from transition finance, and are smallholders and younger farmers being left behind by current financial models?

• How will differing regulatory approaches, between regions already cultivating gene-edited crops and more restrictive markets, shape global trade and market access?
• How is the competitive landscape evolving as some countries move into commercial cultivation while others remain in trial or policy transition, and what does this mean for where innovation and investment are concentrated?
• How do approval speed, regulatory certainty, and policy direction determine not only where gene-edited crops are deployed, but how quickly they can move from discovery into scaled use?
• What factors will ultimately determine leadership in the gene-editing landscape over the next decade, scientific capability, regulatory agility, or the ability to translate innovation into real-world adoption through effective collaboration across industry, startups, and academia?

The tables are turned. Founders question investors - not the other way around. What does genuine partnership look like beyond the term sheet? What does support beyond capital mean when field data is years away and regulatory pathways are anything but straightforward? And how do you build a relationship that holds up when things get hard?

Early-stage founders put leading agri-investors in the hot seat, probing the questions that rarely get asked in a pitch room: how investors really behave when a start-up is struggling, what rights they exercise and why, and whether patient capital is a genuine commitment or just a talking point.

CASE STUDIES
This session highlights gene editing’s growing role in accelerating targeted trait development and improving crop performance.

• Which crop systems and regions are generating consistent economic returns from regenerative practice, and what do the best-case studies tell us about the conditions and support structures needed to replicate that at commercial scale?
• Where do the most persistent barriers to adoption lie, and what financing models, transition support, and supply chain partnerships are proving most effective at moving farmers from ambition to execution? 
• How are leading businesses building the commercial case for regenerative transitions and does combining incentives, carbon markets, and consumer engagement drive mainstream adoption?

LIGHTNING TALKS

• How is hyperspectral imaging being used for early crop-stress detection, disease monitoring, and water-use optimisation and what does it deliver at field level?
• Can satellite-to-machine interoperability move from concept to practice and how is remote sensing data being used to directly inform machinery decisions and in-field actions?
• Are satellite-driven MRV systems robust enough to support carbon, biodiversity, and water stewardship claims or do verification gaps remain?
• What is the quantified operational impact of each of these technologies in real farming systems?

Scaling agritech requires navigating technical complexity, distribution barriers, regulatory friction, and investor expectations. Leaders from high‑growth companies share practical insight into the transition from pilots to robust commercial scale, with a focus on how capital and execution evolve from Series A to C. Find out more →

NETWORKING BREAKFAST
Join us for a morning of meaningful networking and conversation celebrating the women who are driving innovation and impact across agriculture today. Through candid discussions on mentorship, resilience, leadership journeys, and inclusive networks, we will explore how the sector can better support, retain, and elevate the next generation of diverse female talent.

Open to all women attending the summit.