From private burden to shared infrastructure: Governing regional adaptation in agricultural technology

Agricultural technologies often fail to scale across regions, because adapting them to local conditions requires substantial, repeated, and often overlooked work. Based on 72 interviews with agri-tech founders, distributors, and farmers across diverse geographies, this paper identifies four recurring layers of regional adaptation: agronomic calibration, regulatory validation, service-system build-out, and cultural legitimacy work. These layers generate structured and path-dependent adaptation costs that are systematically underestimated and frequently duplicated. We introduce the concept of the liability of regionalization to describe this recurring cost structure. As public infrastructures for field trials, regulatory mediation, and service coordination have eroded or fragmented, firms reconstruct these functions independently, even in overlapping markets. While duplication is often seen as wasteful, we show that it also serves performative, protective, and risk-hedging functions under conditions of weak trust and institutional fragmentation. These dynamics reflect a governance gap: current innovation systems support entrepreneurial acceleration but lack mechanisms to convert private adaptation efforts into cumulative regional infrastructure. We argue for a policy mix that complements firm-level scaling instruments with shared validation platforms, interoperable learning systems, and co-governed adaptation institutions. Reframing regional adaptation as shared infrastructure rather than a firm-level hurdle highlights its role in shaping innovation efficiency, inclusion, and food-system resilience. Strengthening adaptation governance is essential for scaling technologies in ways that are both commercially viable and regionally inclusive.