AFNR Regional Scan 2026: Five Shifts Reshaping Southeast Asia

Recent regional assessments indicate that climate resilience is no longer viewed solely as an agricultural adaptation issue but increasingly as a broader agrifood systems priority. In response to more frequent droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, heat stress, and other climate-related hazards, regional strategies are giving greater attention to climate-smart agriculture, ecosystem restoration, disaster risk reduction, and nature-based solutions (FAO 2026a).

This broader perspective recognizes that climate shocks can simultaneously affect crops, livestock, fisheries, forests, water systems, infrastructure, markets, food prices, and rural livelihoods. Resilience therefore depends not only on introducing climate-tolerant varieties or individual farm technologies but also on strengthening early-warning systems, extension services, infrastructure, risk financing, social protection, natural resource governance, and regional cooperation (FAO 2026a; ASEAN Secretariat 2025).

This direction is reinforced by regional initiatives such as the ASEAN Food, Agriculture and Forestry (FAF) Sectoral Plan 2026–2030 and the ASEAN Policy Guidelines on Agroecology Transitions, which promote more resilient and environmentally sustainable agrifood systems (ASEAN Secretariat 2025; ASEAN 2024).

This direction is reinforced by regional initiatives such as the ASEAN Food, Agriculture and Forestry (FAF) Sectoral Plan 2026–2030 and the ASEAN Policy Guidelines on Agroecology Transitions, which promote more resilient and environmentally sustainable agrifood systems (ASEAN Secretariat 2025; ASEAN 2024).

Regional discussions on food security are placing greater emphasis on improving nutrition and ensuring access to healthy diets alongside reducing hunger. Although the number of undernourished people in Asia and the Pacific declined between 2023 and 2024, food insecurity and the double burden of malnutrition remain persistent challenges (FAO 2026a; FAO, IFAD, WFP, and WHO 2025).

Recent attention has also focused on making nutritious foods more affordable and addressing inequalities that limit access to agricultural technologies and livelihood opportunities, particularly for women and other vulnerable groups (FAO 2026; Cheong et al. 2025). Together, these developments reflect a broader understanding of food security that encompasses diet quality, affordability, safety, diversity, and equitable access.

This shift is particularly relevant to Southeast Asia, where improvements in food production and availability do not automatically ensure that all households can afford diverse and nutritious diets. Food prices, incomes, distribution systems, food environments, social protection, and access to markets all influence what people are ultimately able to eat (FAO, IFAD, WFP, and WHO 2025).

A wider AFNR perspective also calls attention to the contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to food availability, nutrition, livelihoods, and trade (SEAFDEC 2026; FAO 2026d). However, expanding aquatic-food production must be accompanied by responsible management of fish stocks, aquatic ecosystems, feeds, diseases, water quality, and food safety (FAO 2026d; SEAFDEC 2022).

Progress should therefore be assessed not only through production and hunger indicators but also through the affordability of healthy diets, dietary diversity, micronutrient deficiencies, food safety, and the equitable distribution of food-system benefits.

Emerging evidence underscores that sustaining agricultural productivity depends on protecting and restoring the natural resource base. While agricultural and food production in the wider Asian region is projected to continue growing, land degradation, declining soil health, nutrient depletion, and unsustainable land-use practices threaten long-term productivity and resilience (FAO 2025; FAO 2026).

The same concern extends beyond cropland. Water availability, forests, biodiversity, watersheds, coastal ecosystems, and aquatic resources are productive assets that support food production, livelihoods, climate regulation, and resilience. Their deterioration can undermine both present output and the capacity of AFNR systems to withstand future shocks (FAO 2025; FAO 2026b; ASEAN Secretariat 2025).

As a result, policy discussions increasingly emphasize sustainable intensification, improved soil and water management, ecosystem restoration, and other integrated approaches to natural resource management, with integrated farming systems serving as one example of these strategies (FAO 2025; FAO 2026a; FAO 2026b) .

The emerging shift is not away from productivity. Rather, it is away from treating short-term output growth as separable from the long-term condition of soil, water, forests, biodiversity, fisheries, and other natural resources (FAO 2025; FAO 2026b; ASEAN Secretariat 2025).

However, the transition to more diversified, restorative, or resource-efficient production can involve additional labor, investment requirements, uncertain short-term returns, insecure tenure, and limited access to knowledge and extension support. Policies must therefore align incentives, financing, technical assistance, and market opportunities with long-term stewardship instead of transferring the full cost of restoration to farmers, fishers, and forest-dependent communities (FAO 2025; ASEAN 2024; Teng and Ludher 2026).

Changing consumer preferences and evolving market requirements are reshaping agrifood value chains across the region. Rising incomes and urbanization continue to increase demand for higher-value agricultural products while creating new opportunities in regional and global markets (OECD and FAO 2025).

At the same time, producers face growing expectations to meet standards for food safety, quality, traceability, and environmental sustainability. These developments are increasing the importance of value addition, reducing food loss and waste, and modernizing supply chains to strengthen regional competitiveness (FAO 2026a; ASEAN Secretariat 2025).

Competitiveness is therefore increasingly determined not only by how much is produced but also by whether crops, livestock products, aquatic foods, processed goods, and forest products can meet requirements for safety, quality, sustainability, reliability, responsible sourcing, and product origin (ASEAN Secretariat 2025; FAO 2026a; FAO 2026c).

These requirements can improve market access, consumer confidence, product quality, and opportunities for rural enterprises. They can also create substantial compliance costs. Meeting these requirements may demand capabilities and investments that many small producers, cooperatives, and rural enterprises do not yet possess. ASEAN has therefore adopted a regional framework to help these groups improve product quality, meet regional and international standards, and remain competitive (ASEAN 2021).

Value chain modernization should therefore be assessed not only by the adoption of new standards or technologies but also by who can participate, who captures the added value, and whether smaller producers receive the services and investments needed to remain competitive.

Recent discussions increasingly recognize that innovation involves more than introducing new technologies. Digital agriculture, precision farming, remote sensing, climate information services, and data-driven decision-making are expanding opportunities to improve productivity, resource use efficiency, and resilience (Montesclaros and Teng 2023).

However, access to and adoption of these technologies remain uneven. High costs, weak connectivity, limited digital literacy, insufficient technical support, fragmented platforms, and uncertain business models remain significant barriers. These constraints can prevent technologies from reaching small-scale producers or being adopted at scale. Digital access may vary according to location, connectivity, affordability, digital literacy, farm or enterprise size, and gender (Cheong et al. 2025; Kozono et al. 2025).

At the same time, recent regional assessments emphasize that successful innovation also depends on enabling policies, effective extension services, institutional collaboration, and partnerships that help translate research into practical applications (FAO 2026a).

Innovation must therefore include technological, institutional, financial, organizational, and social change. It may involve strengthening extension systems, improving farmer and fisher organizations, developing appropriate financial services, reforming policies, creating new market arrangements, and designing tools around users’ actual needs (FAO 2026a; ASEAN Secretariat 2025; Kozono et al. 2025).

Ensuring that smallholder farmers, women, youth, and other underserved groups can benefit from these innovations will be essential for building more inclusive agrifood systems. An innovation should ultimately be judged not by its novelty or the number of users registered but by whether it solves a clearly defined problem, can be sustained beyond a pilot, and produces measurable benefits for its intended users.

These developments indicate a growing regional shift in policy discussions toward more integrated agrifood systems that that seek to balance productivity, resilience, sustainability, competitiveness, and inclusion. Climate change, land degradation, food insecurity, market transformation, and technological innovation are increasingly recognized as interconnected challenges that require coordinated policies, cross-sectoral investments, and systems-based approaches rather than isolated interventions (FAO 2026a; ASEAN Secretariat 2025).

The five shifts are closely connected. Climate shocks can damage natural resources, reduce production, disrupt value chains, raise food prices, and worsen nutrition. Degraded soils, forests, watersheds, coastal environments, and aquatic ecosystems weaken both productivity and resilience. New technologies may improve access to information, finance, and markets, but unequal access can deepen existing disparities. Higher market standards may increase competitiveness while excluding producers who cannot bear the cost of compliance (FAO 2026a; FAO, IFAD, WFP, and WHO 2025; ASEAN Secretariat 2025).

For example, protecting soil, water, forests, and fisheries strengthens food production, rural and coastal livelihoods, ecosystem services, and climate resilience, while improving farmers' and fishers’ access to technology, finance, extension services, and markets supports livelihoods, food security, and rural development simultaneously.

The region’s diversity also means that no single pathway will be suitable everywhere (ASEAN 2024; FAO 2025). The conditions facing rice farmers in major deltas differ from those confronting upland communities, livestock producers, coastal fishers, aquaculture enterprises, plantation workers, or forest-dependent households. Even similar interventions can generate different results depending on ecology, tenure, infrastructure, markets, governance, culture, and institutional capacity.

The regional transition toward integrated agrifood systems also underscores the importance of cooperation beyond national borders. Climate change, transboundary pests and diseases, agricultural trade, and natural resource management require continued collaboration through ASEAN and other multilateral platforms (FAO 2026a; ASEAN Secretariat 2025). Shared river basins, aquatic resources, food safety requirements, market standards, research networks, and digital systems also create issues that individual countries cannot address effectively in isolation (ASEAN Secretariat 2025; FAO 2026c; Kozono et al. 2025).

For institutions such as SEARCA, these developments reinforce the value of generating evidence-based knowledge, supporting interdisciplinary research, and translating research into practical solutions that contribute to resilient, sustainable, competitive, and inclusive agrifood systems across Southeast Asia. They also reinforce the need to connect agriculture more deliberately with fisheries, forestry, food and nutrition, rural livelihoods, and natural resource governance.