Wherever you are in the world, you no doubt experienced extreme weather events in recent months. In fact, nearly half the global population – some 3.6 billion people – is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, from droughts, floods and storms to heat stress and food insecurity. Climate hazards are only expected to worsen and the agriculture industry is particularly at risk of the increasingly inhospitable growing conditions presented by climate change. As early as 2030, corn and wheat yields could drop by as much as 24% and 17% respectively as a result of climate change. Investment in climate adaptation reached an all-time high of $63 billion in 2021/2022, a 28% year-over-year increase, yet it declined as a portion of overall climate finance – to 5% from 7% – as climate mitigation finance grew at a faster rate, according to nonprofit climate researcher Climate Policy Initiative. What investment there has been remains just a fraction of what’s needed; low and middle-income countries alone need some $212 billion a year by 2030

In two weeks’ time, I’ll take my first trip out to Dubai for COP28 and the inaugural World AgriTech Innovation Summit for the Middle East, Africa & South Asia region.When my good friend Mark Kahn at Omnivore, the leading Indian agrifoodtech fund, first told me about his discussions with Rethink Events about a conference for all these regions, I didn’t get the link. After all, Rethink had just done an event in Singapore, and geographically speaking, South Asia is nowhere near those other parts of the world.But as it turns out, the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia have many ties and similarities between them when it comes to agrifood, and increasingly get grouped together as the ‘MEASA’ region.Mark offered four such ties and similarities:Historic trade ties. Food security: South Asia and Africa are lynchpins of food security in the Middle East via that historic trade. Historic migration: There is an Indian and Pakistani diaspora across the Middle East, and a lot of Indians are heavily involved in Sub-Saharan African agrifood businesses and value chains. Smallholder farmers: each region has a significant smallholder farming population that can really benefit from the cross-pollination of ideas and what’s working in one place to take to the other.Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. The Middle East is a mix of smallholder farming economies as well as desert states that are very modern and heavy food importers; South Africa is an outlier as a whole.But when it comes to agtech innovation and investment, grouping the regions together makes a lot of sense