From the Past to the Future (SSIR)

(Image courtesy of Agroecology Fund)

We already know how to invest in the kind of equitable and sustainable food systems that can build climate resilience. Yet while the hazards of industrial agriculture (and the opportunities offered by agroecological food systems) are equally well known, most money still bets on the status quo: increasing the use of imported fertilizers and pesticides and motorized irrigation, despite high costs and questionable returns. Ignoring potent natural fertilizers, crop mixes, and water management practices that are cost-effective ways to produce diverse crops, short-sighted thinking—accompanied by short-term investments—stymie creative solutions. By emphasizing a global food economy and export value chains that reinforce fossil-fuel dependence, local and publicly managed markets get overlooked. Meanwhile, the acceleration toward fewer foods in our diets, often grown in monocultures, hurts landscapes, cultures, and health, eclipsing a richness of diverse, localized food systems neglected by investors.

In the African context, nutritious foods eaten by hundreds of millions of people—including cassava, sweet potatoes, and millets—already demonstrate both the potential for agroecology at scale. But because agrochemical companies still effectively market their proprietary technologies with governments, farmers, and development organizations as the path forward, investors, aid agencies and governments continue to invest in and subsidize chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and “improved” seeds. They ignore the investment opportunities in—and credit needs of—value chains of diversified, local, and Indigenous crops.

Agroecology offers an alternative investment screen, one leading toward a new food economy, grounded in ancestral knowledge, that can guide philanthropy, governments, and private investors alike toward local circular economies, stable land tenure, agrobiodiversity, and healthy soil.

Here we offer agroecological investment opportunities for a true food system transformation.

1. Think Beyond Export Value Chains

Agricultural development strategies often share a single, well-intentioned aim: boost farmer incomes. Too often, however, the perverse consequences of this way of thinking incentivizes smallholder farmers to apply subsidized chemical inputs to their fields and encourages biodiversity-centered family farming to enter export commodity chains. Yet while high input costs and unstable contracts and prices can leave farmers vulnerable, smallholder farmers producing diverse, nutritious foods for food security face difficulty differentiating their high-quality, nutritious products in accessible markets.

As more and more recognize that the vast majority of consumers still depend on farmers producing staple crops—like sweet potatoes, corn, millet, and plantains—for local markets, those markets are getting a long overdue second look. What if for every dollar invested in agricultural export strategies and subsidies for chemical fertilizers, we invested in farmer and consumer organizations collaborating with municipal governments to revitalize municipal territorial markets?

In Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula Agroecology Fund (FAPY in Spanish) invests in Mayan-led organizations and enterprises that work with municipalities to favor traditional milpa products (maize, beans, squash, and beekeeping) in local value chains. Imagine if governments invested in smallholder farmer networks producing for local markets. The Government of Brazil’s food procurement policies, for example, prioritize purchases of basic foods from family farms with simplified procurement requirements enabling farmers affiliated with networks like the Landless Workers’ Movement to feed school children from their harvests.

2. Think Beyond Yield Increases

Agricultural investments are too often guided by a single metric: yield increases boosted by chemical inputs. Viewed narrowly, it makes sense: the world’s population is growing quickly, and food security is critical. But approximately one-third of agricultural lands have been degraded by industrial agriculture: boosting yield through increased chemical inputs has degraded soils and water supplies, leaving future generations more
vulnerable to famine and climate change.

What if for every euro investors put into yield improvements and chemical-input development strategies like the One Acre Fund, farmers received equivalent soft financing to regenerate degraded land and water sources? At the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, for example, their Healthy Soil Healthy Communities Initiative promotes and innovates organic fertilizers and soil amendments, including supporting businesses to supply high-quality biofertilizers. In India, the Bharat Agroecology Fund supports women’s organizations like Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) to strengthen water rights and sustainable resource management collectives operated by landless women in Maharashtra.

3. Think Beyond Incubator Projects

Incubators and accelerators take up a lot of space in modern agricultural development strategies. Through intensive training, small cohorts of entrepreneurs receive technical assistance and financing for promising businesses (often featuring exports because financing may be tied to repaying loans in dollars or euros). This strategy is challenged by scale; access to affordable credit and technical assistance remains elusive for all but 15 percent of smallholder farmers around the world.

What if investments in incubators or accelerators were matched by investments in local financial institutions to make loans to agroecological farmers? The FINAPOP cooperative fund in Brazil, for example, lends to cooperatives of smallholder farmers, including women’s cooperatives, for value-added production while providing technical assistance to support business plans and marketing. Created in 2020 in response to worsening food security brought on by the pandemic, FINAPOP has loaned $13.7 million USD to 25,000 families operating small agroecological enterprises.

4. Drop the Skepticism Toward Indigenous Food Systems

While most agricultural development strategies dismiss Indigenous food systems as a way to meet today’s hunger challenges, we under-invest in these systems at our peril. Indigenous food systems preserve a broad diversity of quickly disappearing nutritious crops often not found on supermarket shelves and demonstrate how, for millennia, agriculture and nature conservation were able to coexist. They challenge the notion that industrial agriculture is the only path forward, an urgent lesson for a crowded planet suffering an epidemic of food-related diseases.

What if for every dollar invested in globally traded industrial agriculture, we financed local enterprises and campaigns revitalizing Indigenous food systems? At Nyakazi Organics in Kenya, youth purchase, dry, and package organic and local African Indigenous Vegetables (AIVs) that are both nutrient-rich and flavorful from women farmers and sell them in local markets. The business is thriving due to a resurgence of interest in local diets as a “My Food is African” movement has taken off across the continent.

Deepening Learning and Collaboration to Align Healthy Investments

This is a time of learning. In recent years, the Agroecology Coalition, which encompasses over 300 governments and investors, created the Agroecology Finance Assessment and Tracking Tool to assess investments against agroecology principles, a simple framework that allows investors to quickly see how their investments could be more transformative in building healthy food systems.

Realigning investments into healthy food systems requires attention to a diversity of metrics and approaches that include local markets, landscape restoration, affordable credit, and Indigenous crops. For many investors this is new territory but one that is buoyed by overlooked market opportunities and undervalued local knowledge and skills. Add to that the imperatives of enhancing biodiversity and addressing climate change and these approaches are a logical next step.

While philanthropy can be a helpful catalyst, it must act within an integrated financial flow: The Agroecology Fund, a pooled financing mechanism, uses grants to support farmers’ organizations and movements that are making common sense investments in safeguarding Indigenous land rights, restoring soils and local seeds, creating value-added products for local markets, and importantly, advocating with their governments for greater investment in agroecology. Many of our member foundations seek to supplement grants with impact investments from their endowments and thereby incentivize additional private and public investments.

A modest shift in investments toward agroecological innovation could go a long way toward strengthening nutritious, regenerative, climate-resilient food systems. Our mouths are crying out for healthy foods and just and durable climate solutions. Let’s put our money where our mouths are.

Read more stories by Jen Astone & Daniel Moss.