Europe has the innovation – but not the finance to scale it

Europe’s agri-food sector is rich in innovation and early-stage capital but lacks the financial structures needed to scale technologies from validation to market deployment. Two new reports, including one from Tech Tour supported by Bayer, highlight that the main barrier is not the amount of available capital, but its coordination and deployment, particularly in the critical “valley of death” between demonstration and commercial scale. Both reports argue that blended finance—combining public and private funds—represents the most promising way to bridge this gap, de-risking investments and unlocking larger pools of institutional capital. The consensus is that to translate agtech innovation into real-world impact, Europe must move blended finance from theory to widespread practice.