A Call to Private Equity: A Critical Examination of Wasted Capital in Food and Agriculture.
Private equity wants to shape the future of food and agriculture. The intention is strong. The capital is available. The global need is undeniable. Yet again and again, large sums rush toward ideas that never stood a chance of solving the real problems in the food system. It’s been a constant source of frustration for me to see capital deployed against a more frivolous want, rather than an immediate and ongoing need to increase access to affordable and nutritious food.
I am not indicting the ambition of PE. Mostly, it serves as a reminder to pause and consider the gap between what sounds transformative and what actually brings about transformation.
And it raises a real question: Why are many in the PE world so ready to throw capital behind ideas that cannot carry the weight of global food demand?
When Imagination Outruns Reality.
I may make some enemies here, but at our firm, we focus on the truth. So here is a real-world example. Cultured meat sits at the center of the PE sustainable food security puzzle. The scientific curiosity is understandable. The imagery is compelling. But the current scientific and economic realities remain immovable. The energy inputs, production economics, regulatory pathways, and consumer acceptance fail to align with the optimism poured into pitch decks.
Then came the even more fantastical turns—“mammoth meatballs,” for example, that I won’t even do justice to by linking to the ridiculous article. If you are interested, search for it. In this case, capital and scientific resources flowed toward a concept pulled from the realm of spectacle rather than substance. It illustrates a deeper issue: investments are too easily inspired by novelty rather than necessity.
Meanwhile, sectors capable of real transformation often receive only a fraction of that attention.
When Betting Goes Right — And When Critics Get It Wrong.
Vertical farming endured criticism, and not without reason. Some models have overreached because of high operational costs and other factors. Some have failed loudly. But the principle remains sound: growing food in managed environments can conserve water, streamline distribution, and put fresh produce closer to the people who need it. The global industry, I believe, still has a long runway for improvements and success.
Greenhouse technology — the grandparent of controlled-environment agriculture — continues to prove its value. This is not a new idea. It is an old, resilient technology that has become more effective through advanced engineering and integration with natural sunlight. It demonstrates the strength of innovations that evolve within the realities of the system rather than attempting to leap over them. PE should continue to flow into harnessing the sun for plant propagation, growth, and harvest.
A World in Need of Capital — But the Right Capital.
The global potential for PE investment in food and agriculture is enormous across Africa, Latin America, North America, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. These regions do not need speculative fantasies. They need capital that listens, learns, and supports the existing backbone of the food system while accelerating meaningful disruption and innovation.
Public institutions echo this need. In October 2024, The World Bank Group announced plans to double agribusiness and agri-finance commitments to $9 billion annually by 2030, with a focus on mobilizing private capital into food systems. Equally promising is the UN FAO’s Investment Centre, which continues to work with banks and funds to attract and mobilize private investment alongside public funds (“crowd in”), thereby strengthening the foundations of global food systems and ensuring long-term resilience.
The signal is clear: the world is ready for investment in food security. The question is what kind of investment — and from whom.
It is essential to recognize a distinction that lies at the heart of this debate. I define PE for Good vs PE for Takeover + Harmful Profiteering.
PE for Good means backing genuine solutions, empowering producers, relying on sound science, building lasting value, and taking a patient approach to returns—without exploiting the system. This is PE that works with the food system — not against it.
PE for Takeover + Harmful Profiteering is about chasing fast profits, squeezing value out of the system, consolidating at the expense of competition, raising costs, and disregarding the realities of farming and ecology—ultimately putting food security at risk. This version of PE treats agriculture like a short-cycle consumer product — and agriculture simply does not work that way.
A Look in the Mirror for Private Equity.
Agriculture rewards patient capital — capital aligned with the pace of nature, supply-chain evolution, producer adoption, and the building of trust across systems.
Patient capital is not passive; it is strategic persistence, and recent reports unpin the current state-of-play.
A 2023 analysis by Campbell Lutyens on sustainable food and agriculture strategies in private equity offers a promising signal that capital is beginning to move in the right direction. The report mapped more than $60 billion in specialist food and agriculture funds worldwide, with approximately $35 billion held in private equity and venture strategies. Most importantly, it found that new investment is increasingly flowing upstream—toward production systems, supply-chain infrastructure, and on-farm innovation—rather than into the crowded, short-cycle “food-tech” ventures that captured so much speculative attention over the past decade. This upstream movement suggests investors are starting to recognize that durable value in food and agriculture is created where crops are grown, animals raised, and inputs improved—not where marketing narratives or novelty dominate headlines.
Complementary findings from Agri Investor’s 2025 Sustainable Agri Investing Report show food and agriculture emerging as one of the fastest-growing sustainable private-market themes. Investor interest is shifting toward natural capital, regenerative agriculture, farmland, and upstream agribusiness—areas closely tied to land, production, and supply-chain integrity—rather than experimental or unproven concepts. Taken together, these data points confirm that while meaningful capital is entering the sector, the strategies gaining traction are those grounded in agricultural fundamentals rather than technology-led abstractions divorced from the realities of food production.
In its most recent Global Impact Summary Reports (2023 and 2024), KKR highlights investments that advance its core impact themes of climate action, sustainable living, and inclusive growth—areas that increasingly intersect with food, agriculture, and land stewardship. While these reports acknowledge agriculture-related opportunities through investments in seeds, water systems, and land remediation, they stop short of a dedicated focus on the broader food system. Still, a firm of KKR’s scale and commitment to sustainability is well-positioned to deepen its reach in this food and agriculture space. Achieving the full potential of its impact vision would be strengthened by partnering with experts who bring decades of experience in agricultural and food systems, ensuring that capital aligns with both global sustainability goals and real-world production realities.
These three aforementioned reports deliver a clear message: more smart money is shifting toward real agriculture, not fantasy food concepts.
While private finance in agriculture is expanding, it remains underdeveloped relative to global need. I often marvel at why investors are willing to throw financial capital down a hole investing, in the likes of the Sam Bankman Fried’s of the world, or unreliable and unnecessary concepts like the Metaverse as opposed to the reliable farmers and industry players in agriculture. Imagine what could be done to solve chronic hunger if equity started to pivot toward and scale exponentially for global food and agriculture.
The good news: investment is rising, and returns are real. The bad news: remains unevenly distributed.
Large opportunities continue to sit inside “capital deserts” — regions and supply-chain segments where even modest investment would meaningfully advance productivity, resilience, and food security. These areas remain overlooked largely because returns mature on timelines longer than typical fund cycles.
For PE firms, the facts invite serious reflection:
Is food security a genuine strategic pillar for the firm? If no, why not?
Are current food and ag investments performing as expected, or drifting off thesis?
Are short Rate of Return (ROR) expectations forcing exits too early or preventing investment altogether, especially in a sector that matures across seasons and years?
Is the fund structure compatible with 7–10 year agricultural transformation cycles?
Are investments concentrated in saturated markets while capital deserts remain ignored?
Is risk assessed through spreadsheets or through lived agricultural understanding?
The food system rewards investors who understand the power of time.
Who Is Advising the Investors?
This is the question that sits at the center of the problem.
Far too often, those shaping investment decisions may have never worked in agriculture, never walked land with a producer, never negotiated inside a commodity system, never felt the weight of a harvest, never studied the science behind food production, and never experienced the global complexity of trade, climate, and supply chains.
Instead, the world sees a rising wave of “armchair aggies” — analysts and advisors far removed from agricultural reality. I marvel at the number of people who call themselves experts because they like the idea of being part of the industry, yet have no ag cred whatsoever. All of us know those advisors.
Agriculture is not an abstraction. It is a living, breathing system requiring expertise shaped through decades of work, relationships, study, and practice.
As a graduate of UC Davis and Cornell, and as someone raised in and around agriculture, I see the widening gap between real expertise and the guidance investors often receive.
This gap carries consequences measured in failed ventures, wasted capital, missed opportunities, and lives negatively impacted.
A Call for Credible Expertise.
Private equity can play a defining role in building a more resilient, profitable, and sustainable food system. And success requires more than capital. It requires insight—real insight—from people who:
have lived inside this industry,
carry decades of global relationships,
understand supply chains and systems thinking,
can evaluate first-, second-, third-, and fourth-order impacts,
and can distinguish between ideas with staying power and ideas destined to collapse.
Agriculture needs investors. Investors need truth, and that truth comes from those who know this world because they have spent their lives in it.
As aggies — those who grew up in this field, studied it, lived it, and remain committed to it — we share a responsibility to ensure investors have access to the knowledge and experience required to succeed. The future of food and the stability of food security today depend on it.
In summary, call on us. We want to support PE groups in effectively deploying capital across the global industry. It’s a win for the investor, the industry, and society.