Innovating Through The Challenges Facing Asian Agriculture

In the past several years, Asia has begun to turn its private and public resources toward agriculture systems to overcome the challenges related to rapid urbanization and subsequent labor loss, regional food security, a smallholder-dominated production system, and a myriad of ecological and economic concerns related to the implementation of inefficient production practices shared generally across the five regions (Fig 1). These must be – and generally currently are – viewed as emerging markets for agribusiness expansion. Among the five regions, the southern, eastern, and southeastern regions dominate production metrics and thus represent the most significant early opportunities (Fig. 1). However, engaging requires understanding each of the three regions' challenges as well as innovation momentum.