Inside BENEO’s new pulse plant: pioneering sustainable protein from faba beans
Krishna Kumar, Founder & CEO – Cropin
In 2026, food systems will cross a defining threshold. What were once episodic disruptions; geopolitical tensions, regulatory pressure, climate volatility, and labour constraints are converging into a permanent operating reality. For agri-food enterprises, resilience will no longer be a matter of scale or intuition, but of intelligence. The next phase of transformation will be driven by how effectively organisations turn uncertainty into foresight and foresight into action. Here are the key shifts that will shape food production, sourcing, and supply chains in 2026:
1. Geopolitics becomes a core food-system risk: Food security is rapidly becoming a board-level geopolitical concern. Trade barriers, protectionist policies, and regional instability will increasingly dictate where food is grown, sourced, and priced. In response, agri-food enterprises will move away from over-reliance on traditional production regions toward diversified, predictive sourcing strategies. Real-time intelligence spanning climate, field conditions, yield outlooks, and trade risk will enable earlier commitments, smarter origin choices, and a shift from reactive firefighting to foresight-led resilience.
2. Risk-adjusted sourcing becomes a board discipline: The old sourcing playbook optimised for cost and efficiency. The new one optimises for continuity. Procurement leaders will increasingly adopt risk-adjusted sourcing, using forward signals on production risk, logistics fragility, and policy disruption to guide origin diversification, scenario-led contracting, and season-ahead decisions. Sourcing will evolve from a transactional function into a strategic lever for supply assurance.
3. Regulation becomes operational, not rhetorical: Regulations such as EUDR signal a broader shift: compliance moving from reporting obligations to core operational requirements. Even as implementation timelines evolve, the direction is clear. Traceability, geolocation evidence, and due diligence will become embedded into daily operations, not handled as downstream documentation. Evidence-ready supply chains will no longer be optional, they will be table stakes for market access, brand trust, and continuity.
4. AI evolves from “predictive” to decision-grade intelligence: Boards don’t buy predictions; they buy outcomes. In 2026, AI adoption will be driven by its ability to change decisions before capital is deployed: acreage allocation, variety selection, supplier strategy, protection planning, logistics timing, and contingency sourcing. The language that will matter is decision-grade intelligence, systems that translate signals into clear, contextual actions at enterprise scale.
5. Agentic planning becomes the operating model for volatility: Static annual plans break the moment conditions change. Agentic systems, capable of continuous sensing, scenario simulation, and next-best-action recommendations, will increasingly support dynamic re-planning across procurement, quality, and sustainability functions. This marks a shift from linear planning to living operating models, where decisions evolve in real time as seasons, markets, and risks change.
6. Autonomy scales as intelligence meets execution: Automation and robotics are moving beyond pilots, driven by labour constraints and unit economics. The real leap in 2026 will be closed-loop execution: detect → decide → act. Intelligence will guide machines on where to intervene, what to do, and when, reducing waste, protecting yield, and improving consistency across production systems.
7. Regenerative agriculture scales when it becomes measurable and financeable: Regenerative agriculture will move from aspiration to operating model as measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) become continuous and outcome-linked. When soil health, emissions, and yield resilience are measurable, auditable, and tied to financial outcomes, regenerative programmes can scale beyond pilots, unlocking procurement models that are both sustainable and commercially viable.
The Bottom Line
The winners of 2026 will build a new food-system operating stack: Decision-grade intelligence + agentic planning + autonomous execution + audit-ready compliance. This is what surety of supply looks like in modern food systems, not driven by intuition, but by intelligence that enables resilient production, sustainable sourcing, and predictable supply chains at global scale.