From Lab to Global Boardrooms: Matthew Tan on Agri-Tech, Climate Survival and Food Security

The Bridge is a series of Interviews on Legacy, Leverage, and Intergenerational Leadership. This post is sponsored by Bridge to Significance Pte Ltd

When I first crossed paths with Matthew Tan in January 2025 during the National University of Singapore’s Master of Science in Venture Creation (MSVC) course—where he served as course instructor and I participated as a business mentor—it was immediately clear that his perspective on industry and innovation was forged in deep operational reality. Wearing multiple hats as an APEC Chair - Expert Group for Sustainability, venture capitalist, and adjunct professor, Matthew has spent over two decades in the trenches of the agri-food tech sector. 

In this instalment of The Bridge, our ongoing interview series exploring leadership, leverage, and intergenerational leadership, Matthew unpacks the hard-earned lessons of his career, the commercial imperative of sustainability, and why bridging the gap between brilliant research and market reality is our defining challenge.

Unlearning Dogma: The Human Element in Agri-Tech

Over more than twenty years leading the charge in agri-food systems, Matthew has witnessed firsthand how traditional farming communities resist technological adoption. Generations of farmers rely on intuition rather than data, operating under the assumption that historical practice is bulletproof. During a recent site inspection trip in Egypt, Matthew observed large-scale fish farmers who monitored water quality simply by dipping their hands into the river. When confronted with a puzzling drop in growth rates—where fish took seven to eight months to reach 500 grams instead of the traditional five and a half—the farmers were baffled. Upon inspecting the fish, Matthew identified split gills, a classic biological indicator of severe physiological stress. Using his trusty YSI multimeter, he discovered that while total dissolved oxygen and total dissolved solids appeared stable, the water temperature had risen by two degrees Celsius. To the untrained eye, a two-degree rise seemed negligible, but thermodynamically, it caused ammonium to shift into toxic un-ionised ammonia which severely impacted the fishes' breathing, feeding patterns and leading to slow growth. This clinical example illustrates the stubborn misconception plaguing the sector: the belief that traditional methods can withstand modern environmental disruption without data-driven tools

Sustainability as a Commercial Survival Strategy

For years, sustainability initiatives were dismissed by agricultural producers as burdensome cost centres.

However, Matthew emphasises that the global paradigm shifted irrevocably with the 2015 Paris Agreement and the rollout of mandatory climate disclosure reporting.

With carbon taxes climbing from $13.50 per ton toward projected heights of $25 to $50, environmental accounting is no longer a corporate PR exercise; it is a hard commercial survival strategy.

Matthew points to his advisory work with a major European cherry wine vineyard to demonstrate proactive transformation.

Anticipating that airline logistics and international distributors will soon reject suppliers lacking carbon-neutral credentials, the vineyard installed wind turbines to transition its entire production and processing ecosystem to clean, renewable energy whereby resulting in a more carbon neutral end product.

Producers who ignore carbon disclosure requirements today will find themselves caught unaware when price parity and regulatory penalties make non-compliant operations commercially unviable.

The Incremental Cost Trap: Bridging Academics and Markets

As an educator in NUS’s MSVC program and the National GRIP program for deep tech translation, Matthew confronts the persistent disconnect between brilliant university research and commercial adoption.

Singapore’s recent S$300 million Research Translation Grant under RIE2030 provides crucial dry powder for nascent technologies, yet many innovations still languish in academic laboratories

According to Matthew, the root cause is a fundamental failure to understand the incremental cost of technology adoption. He recounts reviewing a brilliant deep-tech solution developed by a fellow professor that required an initial capital outlay of $15 million per implementation. 

While the technology was scientifically sophisticated, it ignored market reality: small and medium enterprises simply do not have fifteen million dollars to spare.

Navigating what business frameworks call "crossing the chasm" requires academic innovators to collaborate closely with industry-seasoned business mentors who understand value chains, pinpoint severe market pain points, and recognise when technologies require mass-market cost restructuring or licensing out to multinational enterprises.

Patient Capital and Early-Stage Venture Building

In his role on the investment committee for the Asia Food Sustainability Venture Fund— linked with the Innovate360 incubator which is backed in part by government support —Matthew adopts a patient, early-stage investment thesis.

Having supported over 250 companies, the fund provides early funding ranging from $50,000 to $2 million. Unlike strict Series A or B funds that demand immediate revenue traction, early-stage incubation focuses primarily on identifying a compelling problem statement and a distinct competitive edge.

Scalability and cost optimisation can be refined collaboratively during the entrepreneurial journey, ensuring that promising agri-tech innovations are not strangled in their cradle by premature financial KPIs.

Harnessing Generative AI to Dismantle Non-Tariff Barriers

Addressing macro-level food security requires solving systemic communication failures between public policymakers and the private sectors. During a recent APEC Policy Partnership on Food security (PPFS) retreat in 2024, it was highlighted how non-tariff barriers—such as conflicting phytosanitary standards, import quotas, and disparate safety regulations across 21 economies—prevent surplus food regions from supplying deficit markets. 

In response, Singapore submitted a concept note on the Use of GEN AI in APEC APIP on the utilisation of generative AI. This concept note led to a private sector initiative where more than  61,000 trade policies have been uploaded today into a centralised portal. This platform enables producers (such as a shrimp farmer looking to export 50,000 kilograms) to interact via voice or text across six different languages. The AI instantly synthesises complex import requirements, identifies matching international buyers, and connects traders with relevant government agencies, transforming an agonising bureaucratic maze into an efficient digital conduit.

The Intergenerational Imperative

Reflecting on his multifaceted career spanning policy, industry, venture capital, and academia, Matthew views his part-time teaching commitments not merely as a pastime, but as a passionate & vital act of legacy succession and impartation of wisdom and expertise to the next generation. While the current generation have largely secured their own food stability, the future security of our children’s children generation remains precarious. By mentoring student founders, he aims to instil real-world judgment into the next generation, 

Matthew is actively translating accumulated expertise into societal leverage.

Through platforms like The Bridge, capturing the wisdom of accomplished leaders ensures that the bridge between past experience and future innovation remains unbroken, securing our collective resilience for decades to come.

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Media contact: ian.gan@smaths.com