From the Past to the Future: How philanthropy can help build a more resilient and equitable food system through agroecology

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.

Read the full op-ed written by Jen Astone and Daniel Moss in Stanford Social Innovation Review here.

Exchanging Knowledge on How to Design and Implement Policies to Scale Agroecology

The International Seminar on Agroecology for National and Local Policies: Lessons from Initiatives in the Global South, gathered together 55 participants from 18 countries in La Habana, Cuba from Dec 10-13th, to exchange experiences and lessons learned on how to strengthen the role of municipalities and other sub-national governments in scaling agroecology up and out. Through plenary sessions, panels, working groups, and field visits, participants shared policy strategies for healthy local food systems. Please read on to gain a flavor of discussions and findings.

The first of five knowledge exchange panels contextualized the legal and policy framework for the development of Agroecology in Cuba. The climate crisis was at the centre of the discussion as well as the National Food Security, Sovereignty and Nutritional Education Plan (Plan SSAN), the Food Sovereignty Law (Ley SSAN), and the Agroecology Law.

For Cuba, just as in many other countries across the globe, 2024 has been the warmest year on record, with an increase in sea levels, uncertain rainy seasons, longer droughts, and higher vulnerability to tropical storms and hurricanes. With agriculture taking up to 60% of the island’s water use, strategies to adapt and overcome the challenges of global warming are urgent. 

Climate change has been under study in Cuba since the 1990s. Recognizing it as a threat, local authorities have designed a national plan (Tarea Vida) to strengthen the island’s capacity to adapt and remain resilient. For food systems, Tarea Vida aims to foster climate security across the food chain, from seed to plate, leveraging sustainable practices like agroecology to improve ecosystemic health across territories. 

To ensure the effective support of the environmental and food production strategies proposed in Tarea Vida, public policies like Plan SSAN must be implemented in a complementary way. Local government agencies, civil society groups and research institutes in Cuba emphasize that while launching national policies into action is a step forward, these need to be adapted to the needs of local territories, for each demands different solutions. To ensure territorial input, in the second implementation phase of Plan SSAN, 714 capacity-building workshops were held with 777 provincial and municipal commission members, engaging over 23,000 people and training 1,073 promoters. 

An efficient implementation of Plan SSAN would demonstrate the political will to put food sovereignty at the front of a public agenda, back the constitutional right to food, and favor the transition away from an import-dependent food system. Among the challenges to advancing Plan SSAN are the scarce funding for food production, transformation and distribution, and deficient nutritional education. The more than six decades-long U.S. imposed commercial, economic and financial blockade looms large.

In the second panel, partners from Uganda, Sri Lanka, and India shared their experiences and learnings in topics such as the development of national public policies on agroecology, the fight against seed privatization and unsuitable forms of transitioning to organic production, as well as the importance of promoting nature-centric farming practices. 

Public policies at the state/department/provincial level were at the center of the third panel’s discussion. In Colombia, after three years of participatory work, the department of Antioquia developed an agroecology development plan to build and scale equitable food systems. In Brazil, the state of Bahia is fighting hunger through public policies that incentivize agroecological food production to contribute to public health, solidarity economies, and environmental justice. This includes public funds for agroecology extension services in partnership with civil society organizations. In the state of Paraná, local policies range from efforts like incentivizing urban farming, banning pesticides in the metropolitan region of Curitiba, transitioning to agroecology, and increasing food procurement of organic food to supply the public school feeding program. In October 2023, a bill in support of a Fund for Agroecology Transition was submitted to the State Deputy Assembly.

The fourth panel featured examples from Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, discussing municipal consortia and territorial networks to scale agroecology. Shared opportunities among these countries are: youth engagement, gender-focused strategies to support women farmers, strengthening the production and distribution of bio-inputs, and the participatory design of local policies with multiple stakeholders. 

To close the panel discussions, representatives shared their strategies to promote agroecology in public policies and programs at a municipal level. In Cuba, in the municipality of Cabaiguan, Sancti Spiritus province, a multi-sectoral platform is engaged in a participatory action research process to strengthen governance processes and implement public policies like Plan SSAN, that support the territorialization of agroecology. This includes the mapping of local actors, the development of assessment methodologies, and the identification of priority actions to scale agroecology. This scope of work is part of the participatory research initiative (IPA-LAC) supported by the Agroecology Fund.

In Kenya, the implementation of agroecology in Murang’a County aligns with a national agroecology plan, approved in November 2024. The county seeks to leverage its awareness in educational spaces, strengthen cooperatives and local food hubs, collaborate with public hospitals for nutritional therapies, and engage youth for intergenerational memory. This plan includes a financial model to sustain the municipal policy implementation. 

Land access for women farmers is at the forefront of the grassroots efforts of Sahel Eco in Mali, in partnership with Groundswell International. Based on communal ownership models, the municipality supports women’s groups to achieve tenure through mitigating conflicts and supporting community building. 

In Argentina, joint work between civil society networks like  the Union de los Trabajadores de la Tierra (UTT) and local governments seeks to improve land access, agroecology education, gender equality, youth engagement, and democratized access to clean, healthy foods. In partnership with the municipality of Mercedes, the UTT has created agroecological areas called “Colonias Agroecologicas” to facilitate access to land and healthy food supply.

Despite the differences between each country’s context, the implementation of effective agroecology policies on national and local levels is a shared vision across borders. Through working groups, participants engaged in the co-creation of ideas to promote agroecology in public policies, territorial markets and public financing. Stay tuned for more findings and recommendations that emerged from three days of dynamic conversation at a first-of-its-kind international conference, made possible with the support of the Porticus Foundation and Waverley Street Foundation.

Empowerment, Community-Connection and Self-Reliance: Women Farmers Transition to Agroecology in India

Agroecology Fund grantee partner, the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) and a key network to which it belongs, the Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch (MAKAAM, Forum for Women Farmers’ Rights), support women—primarily single women with little or no access to land, and sugarcane workers—to transition to agroecology. This work emphasizes the strengthening of local food and agricultural systems with the use of local seed varieties, no chemical inputs and drawing on women’s knowledge. Since its inception in 1991, SOPPECOM has worked at the intersection of water and rural livelihoods. Since 2015 they have been advocating for women’s land rights and their status in rural Maharashtra, with an emphasis on women from farmer suicide households. Over 557 farmers died by suicide in the first half of 2024 alone in five Maharashtra districts, many by poisoning themselves with agrochemicals. In 2023, nearly 3000 farmers in Maharashtra took their own lives amid worsening financial distress, and more than 100,000 farmer suicides occurred across India in the last decade. Some of the key issues faced by the women left behind by these devastating circumstances include: stigma and social exclusion; lack of land titles and poor access to credit; no incentives to make an exit from the chemical-based farming that led to farm suicides; and increasing indebtedness, especially from local money lenders and micro-finance institutions. 

With grant support from the Agroecology Fund, in 2023 SOPPECOM led more than 200 of these women from across six districts in the Maharashtra state of India to transition into agroecology and away from the detrimental industrial model. Chemical intensive agriculture is commonly practiced in these regions, and the main crops cultivated are often grown as monocrops, such as Bt cotton, soybean and pigeon pea. These crops, in addition to being unprofitable and highly vulnerable to climate changes, are not a source of food for these women and their families. The harsh realities of this model have contributed greatly to the farmer suicide epidemic. 

The primary efforts of SOPPECOM’s work in this region for the grant cycle included providing women farmers with seeds and gender-appropriate tools easy for women to use on their own, and training and capacity building to support their sustainable farming practices. One of the most important unplanned components of the work that emerged was the natural formation of collectives among women farmers, where learning and exchange now occurs alongside advocacy for local governmental support. Also, farms have been diversified beyond monocultures to include up to 30 different crop varieties, many of which are now consumed locally. Some women were even able to cultivate enough to sell, which provided them with extra financial stability. 

“By doing this kind of farming, we got to eat and to share. If there is only cotton farming, there is nothing to really share as all of it goes only to the market”. – Anita Tai, farmer 

An early success, this initiative provided communities with the confidence to consider expanding the program to new districts and to deepen engagement in the current areas. It has also fostered leadership skills among women farmers, many of whom have taken on roles as village-level agroecology champions mentoring others to drive agroecological transformations within their communities. 

This collaborative effort set out to challenge both existing social structures (caste, patriarchy, ethnicity) and the corporate-controlled chemical intensive agrarian paradigm. To document these efforts, SOPPECOM and MAKAAM interviewed some of the women participants to share first hand their experiences and knowledge. In Women Farmers Lead the Way, the six part video series below, you’ll hear from a ‘lower caste’ or Dalit woman from Beed who shared her sense of pride when upper caste women asked her about her farm and requested seeds from her; a farm widow who saw respect in the eyes of her father-in-law who once scorned her and blamed her for his son’s suicide; a husband who derided the agroecology model but now respects his wife and joins her in her endeavor; and an Indigenous woman who became so convinced about the potential of agroecology that she increased the area of farming with this approach from half an acre to 12 acres, and then influenced others to do the same. 

This video explores the hardships women face just for being women, and their commitment to challenging the common male-dominated, market-oriented agriculture model by promoting agroecology which has resulted in a diverse, climate resilient, multi-crop farming model.

This is the story of farmer Anita Kubade who shares what it was like to transition from cotton and soy monocropping to vegetable multi cropping, and how that impacted her profitability and food security.

This is the story of Anita Waghmare and other migrant women who work on sugarcane plantations and were able to transition to their own production with support from SOPPECOM.

This is the story of Vaishali Devtale, a widow whose husband died by suicide. She shares how she is now part of a group of women whose production and quality of life has improved as a result of agroecology.

This is the story of Sumitra Jadhav, a widow with five children, who shares how experimenting with agroecology has enabled her to make a living under very difficult circumstances.

This video features the plight of women sugarcane cutters, recorded by them. They share personal stories about the challenges women face working under extremely harsh conditions.

These stories share common themes—empowerment, community connection and self-reliance—all made possible through the cultivation of the community-centric values of growing healthy food outside of the industrial food system. Access to knowledge, tools, and support can be life changing for rural women with little access to capital, land, or ways to make a living on their own. It’s always inspiring to the Agroecology Fund to see how even small investments into grassroots agroecology movements can result in huge impacts on a local level, and even set in motion the mycelial-like growth of community networks required to scale agroecology. Learn more about how  SOPPECOM and MAKAAM are building power in rural communities across India to scale grassroots agroecology movements that advance food security, gender equity, and climate resilience to local communities.

A Missing Investment Strategy: Climate Resilience Hides in Local Food Markets

This op-ed is written by Agroecology Fund advisor Jen Astone, and was originally published in Food Tank here.

Over the last several years, agriculture has stormed onto the climate agenda. And it’s about time. Policymakers, donors, and investors are seeing the wisdom of investing in soil restoration, agroecology, agroforestry, and biodiversity, among other regenerative actions. And yet, what we have learned from our African colleagues is that without simultaneously investing in healthy local markets, these investments in sustainable production are likely to fall short.

Local markets are climate resilient. Not only are these markets a good fit for smallholder farmers who practice agroecology, but they are also more equitable and accessible for women and youth. Strengthening local economic markets and smallholders’ access to them creates a mutually generative cycle of food and ecological resilience—essential to strong local incomes and livelihoods. Remember that family farms continue to feed 70 percent of the world’s population. Specialty crop export and global food trade are still only a minor part of the world’s food story.

Local markets have two distinct advantages in accelerating climate solutions; one is their proximity to consumers, decreasing the miles that food has to travel to get to market, a net savings; two is that increasing agroecological production will enhance soil fertility, capturing carbon, and decrease the use of carbon intensive inputs such as artificial fertilizers and chemical inputs. When considering the amount of food and land under climate resilient food production, the carbon reduction is significant.

Over the past five years, the Agroecology Fund, through a grants program and learning community, has been gleaning insights from African networks and farmers’ organizations about the role of territorial markets to amplify agroecology. With the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and over a dozen farmers’ organizations, we have seen how smallholder farmers are building local economies that strengthen equitable relationships and climate resilience. Some of the key lessons we learned include:

Local consumers want local, healthy produce. There is a strong market demand for local products from agroecological farms and producers, including green leafy vegetables, fruits, grains, small livestock, and native seeds. Local manufacturing of bio-inputs including fertilizers, bio- pesticides, and inoculants is booming. These markets are large and important to local producers. Strong markets for agroecology mean that farmers are incentivized to practice climate resilient agriculture. An unpublished study of cooperatives and entrepreneurs in Senegal and Mali by Groundswell International noted that local demand for healthy foods is significant and growing. Part of a larger consumer movement led by farmers and consumers, the My Food is African campaign launched by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa has spread across the continent of Africa in national campaigns for healthy, local, and culturally relevant foods to be produced, celebrated and eaten regularly. Regional and national African leaders have taken up the cause by praising local dishes and demonstrating national pride in local foods as they recognize the costs associated with subsidizing imported staples.

Women farmers have the most to gain from local markets. African women and youth have the most to gain from investment in local markets and local entrepreneurship. Examples abound of growing healthy businesses and value-added production that rely upon women’s agricultural knowledge and practices. Climate resilience requires broad participation from the most vulnerable farmers who are rural women dependent on natural resources for their well-being. In Senegal, a cooperative of women called We Are the Solution has created a fast selling brand of bouillon mix, Sum Pak, made from locally available ingredients without chemicals or preservatives. Chefs and home cooks praise the mix which echoes village flavors and offers consumers low and no sodium lines capitalizing on doctors’ orders.

Finance can be inclusive and accessible. The missing middle is a myth. Smallholder agroecological farmers are not being supported at any level of finance. Many policymakers write convincingly about the missing middle in agribusiness. They assume that microfinance is addressing smallholder farmers’ needs and that larger investors are picking up opportunities over US$100,000. This is not true, less than 15 percent of smallholders practicing any kind of farming are accessing finance below US$100,000. Microfinance is often not being used by smallholder farmers because of high interest rates and repayment durations that do not match agricultural cycles.

Smallholder farmers engaging in agroecology need what regenerative farmers in the U.S. are requesting: low interest, long-term patient capital to engage in both transition to agroecology as well as building up aggregation, processing and marketing of their products. Financing infrastructure such as light farm machinery, storage and refrigeration in the US$2,000 to the US$20,000 range creates new opportunities. This infrastructure enables smallholders to flourish and serve local markets that increase the circulation of local, healthy food. Climate resilience requires thinking about financing the transition in different ways from traditional finance—which has exacerbated inequalities. In Uganda, the purchase of a grinding machine by Eastern and Southern Africa Small-scale Farmer Forum, Uganda (ESAFF) to produce high quality peanut butter enabled a woman’s cooperative to increase the value of their peanut crop 2.7 times. In Cameroon, Service d’Appui aux Initiatives Locales de Développement (SAILD), completed a market analysis that demonstrated the viability of replacing imported wheat flour with local tuber flours grown agroecologically. Indigenous local foods are the present and the future but require financing to play their critical role in food systems.

Local markets are diverse and flourishing. Farmers’ organizations are working alongside cooperatives, associations, entrepreneurs and local governments to develop multiple markets and channels for smallholders’ produce. This includes providing food to territorial markets as well as developing specialized markets, creating on-line digital markets through websites and apps, creating opportunities for bulk purchases and exploring regional markets. Innovative initiatives that connect communities in direct purchasing agreements between producers and purchasers that began during COVID are continuing with great success.

The Kenyan Peasants League worked to pair peri-urban communities of 100 families with direct purchases from smallholder farmers in villages to make regular purchases of food, small livestock and farm inputs directly. Cost savings from shared transportation and the absence of regional market costs enabled many groups to participate. Government procurement programs and interregional trade among African countries remain relatively under-developed strategies with great promise.

Farmers’ organizations are essential. Incubator programs reach small cohorts of farmer entrepreneurs, but community-rooted farmers’ organizations can build trust among a network of small enterprises by building associations and cooperatives to strengthen their voice and action. These cooperatives and associations, supported by representative farmer organizations and networks, have traditions and practices of rotating credit funds that are equitable and provide access to appropriate finance. By working with existing women-led farmer cooperatives, Concertation Nationale des Organisations Paysannes au Cameroun (CNOP CAM) has introduced and funded new agroecological businesses. Ongoing relationships and savings and credit programs, often managed by farmers’ organizations, enable women and smallholders to benefit from loans and technical assistance where others would overlook their potential and undervalue their existing assets, an all-too-common experience.

As policymakers and donors consider opportunities to create climate resilience through agroecology and regenerative agriculture, it is important to remember that territorial markets lie at the center of resilient food systems. We overlook investment in the public agencies that manage them, the businesses behind them, and the farmer organizations that advocate for them at our peril.

World Forum of Fisher Peoples’ Declaration to the G20

We, the participants of the 8th Assembly of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples, including fishers,  gatherers, and harvesters from marine, coastal, and inland waters, gathered in Brasilia from  November 13 to 22, 2024, address the governments assembled in Rio de Janeiro for the G20. Considering the loss of environments, the devastation of mangroves, vegetation, and waters, erosion,  the melting of ice and permafrost, ocean warming and rising water levels, floods, droughts,  hurricanes, and the effects of climate change, the harmful impacts of aquaculture and industrial  fishing, the loss of aquatic biodiversity, and the entire process of advancing capitalism through other  emerging sectors of the blue economy, the agro-hydro-mineral business, and even so-called  renewable projects. 

We demand: 

• Stop the death policies of large projects by national and transnational corporations that  threaten our lives and livelihoods and forcibly expel us from our territories. 

• Hold national states and international organizations accountable for failing to respect their  own agreements and even less so to truly end the devastation. 

• Urgent historical, socio-economic, and environmental reparations. 

• Recognition of the climate crisis/emergency in which we live. 

• Stop projects that worsen climate change and false solutions that aggravate environmental  injustice. 

• End the criminalization and judicialization of defenders of the human rights of water  peoples. 

• We urge the G20 to stop wars and build paths towards world peace among peoples. 

That the following be recognized: 

• The ancestral, traditional knowledge of indigenous and all water peoples.

• The diversity of peoples living in communion with the waters: women, men, fishers,  gatherers, youth, traditional, ancestral, indigenous, and tribal communities. 

• Customary rights, including territorial rights over land and waters: rivers, lakes, lagoons,  oceans, mangroves, estuaries, deltas. 

• The legally constituted national and international rights that contemplate the rights of  peoples, such as free, prior, and informed consultation, in good faith and with consent. 

We declare that we are protagonists in our territories and in our lives; therefore, it is we who  must be consulted and make our own decisions!

*WFFP is an Agroecology Fund grantee partner, and with our support are strengthening the organization at a global level after the impacts of the pandemic. 

Food Security and Drought Mitigation in India’s Thar Desert

The Thar Desert region of India in the State of Rajasthan is the most densely populated desert ecosystem in the world. This region experiences extreme weather conditions and water scarcity that has severely impacted the lives of the population, who are largely dependent on agriculture and animal husbandry for survival. While perennial droughts have always been an issue that people living in deserts have faced, climate change has manifested in the unpredictability and shifts in the rainy seasons in recent years. Fortunately,  desert peoples’ local ingenuity offers food security solutions despite the drought.

Gramin Vikas Vigyan Samiti (GRAVIS), is a non-governmental organization working in the states of Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, India, to bring change by pioneering innovative need-based development models and committed partnerships with the Government, non-profits, and community-based organizations (CBOs). GRAVIS strives to raise the standard of living of communities by offering local solutions that blend traditional community knowledge with modern science and are financially viable and sustainable in the long run. 

A Q+A with GRAVIS 

Agroecology Fund had the chance to explore grantee partner GRAVIS’s work a bit more deeply in a recent interview. Learn more about their compelling work in the following Q&A:

How does your work on drought mitigation impact food security? 

Since its inception in 1983, GRAVIS has been working to support marginalized communities by building their capacities to resolve community challenges and enabling them to take charge of their own lives.

The Thar Desert is one of the most challenging climatic zones in the country. Inhabited predominantly by farming communities largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture and related activities, the desert has witnessed recurrent droughts, acute water shortages and food scarcity. Whereas extreme weather conditions are not new to the desert, the occurrence of climate change has aggravated the extremities, making it impossible for communities with limited resources to lead a healthy life with sufficient food, water and nutrition. Extreme variabilities in rains and weather have resulted in reduced ability of farmers from the region to produce sufficient food with land degradation, rapid groundwater depletion and decreased soil quality.

Solutions rooted in nature can restore land as well as resolve issues around natural water storage. GRAVIS’ program strategy focuses on nature-based solutions to improve the living conditions of people in the region and strengthen their ability to respond to recurring droughts and changing climate while safeguarding the biodiversity, improving health outcomes, and bolstering food as well as water security. Simple and low-cost technology is employed effectively to enhance water storage and utility for mitigating negative impacts of droughts. Some of the areas of intervention introduced by GRAVIS include:

Fostering rainwater harvesting systems to enhance water and food security

Community ponds or naadis are surface based rainwater harvesting basins that can store between 700 cubic metres and 40,000 cubic metres of rainwater and provide water for up to eight to 12 months of the year. The revival and maintenance of community-based resources is extremely important to ensure accessibility and availability of water for all residents, including children, women, older persons, and others belonging to the poor and vulnerable sections of the region. In the long run naadis contribute immensely by recharging the groundwater supplies as well as providing water to the livestock for drinking purposes. Considering this, GRAVIS has worked towards desilting of the ponds and building embankments around the ponds to ensure safe and secure storage of water. The naadis have emerged as an important lifeline for the residents and livestock of the Thar and have empowered them to be self-reliant, self-sufficient and climate resilient.

It becomes extremely important to capture rainwater and store it in a clean and safe manner in regions hit by frequent droughts. Taankas or underground water storage tanks are useful, easily constructed, accessible and sustainable storage units that can store up to 25,000 litres of rainwater. A single harvest of rainwater can be stored for as long as four months and the water stored in these units can be used for fulfilling domestic needs of communities. 

The Taankas are built at an elevated level of one foot and are also equipped with a fool-proof locking mechanism to ensure that it is safe from any form of infestation. These units have been extremely useful in ensuring convenient, uninterrupted access to clean water. Built very close to the households of the beneficiaries, women do not have to spend hours of their productive time securing water. Extracting water from Taankas becomes less laborious and less time consuming, enabling women to devote the additional energies and resources towards themselves, their families, and the community. Most importantly, this intervention has also contributed to enhanced household savings, which can be utilised for health care, education and other important priorities. Taankas help ensure water security and quality for households. The chances of contracting water borne diseases has been significantly reduced with the establishment of these structures.

Enhancing food and nutrition security by rejuvenating the barren desert lands:

Relying extensively on traditional knowledge, wisdom and techniques to ensure food and water security, GRAVIS has promoted the construction of khadins or farming dykes. A khadin is a traditional earthen embankment made out of soil at the end of an upland plot of land to prevent water run-off, that serves as a method of collecting water. This method was developed in Jaisalmer hundreds of years ago; however, it continues to be an effective and sustainable method for improving soil moisture. In the absence of adequate and consistent rainfall, khadins serve the dual purpose of retaining moisture from rainfall, however scanty it may be, while also protecting the top layer of soil from run-off water. The technique has restored several barren lands and has transformed them into cultivable lands, paving way for a viable source of livelihoods. 

The construction of khadins has ensured nutritional security, especially for those belonging to the poor and vulnerable sections of the Thar. Another important component of this multi-dimensional strategy is the establishment of AHUs (Arid Horticulture Units). In lands where agriculture is no longer viable, AHUs are a very useful alternative as they are not labour intensive, require very little maintenance, promote self-reliance, are self-sufficient and sustainable.  The AHUs are similar to small kitchen gardens that can be used to grow nearly thirty plants in one season and offer a myriad variety of benefits for families, with its fundamental objective being to achieve food and nutritional security, combating the nutritional deficiencies especially in children, women and older people. A typical AHU promotes the use of local seed varieties, which is crucial to climate adaptation and building climate resilience. The plants grown in these lands follow inter-cropping practices, require small quantities of water and are grown entirely using bio-pesticides. These units have changed the food and nutritional security situation in the Thar region for the better by making a diverse set of seasonal fruits, vegetables, and greens available. These fruit and vegetable crops can survive extreme weather, can be grown with limited water and are affordable sources of nutrition. 


GRAVIS also promotes farm forestry practices that involve integration of trees into farming systems. This practice is beneficial to both farmers and the environment. It  improves soil health by reducing erosion, while increasing soil organic matter and nutrient availability. Above all, it supports the resilience of farming communities against climate variability and rampant environmental stresses such as drought and soil degradation.

GRAVIS was recently featured in Andrew Millison’s popular Permaculture video series on YouTube.

Water scarcity impacts lives and cultures in many different ways. How does it impact women specifically? How does Gravis’ work address the inequity? As climate change leads to more drought conditions, how are women farmers in the Rajasthani region working to combat the impacts? 

Land is the most important resource for communities inhabiting the Thar desert in the State of Rajasthan. While the land resources are abundantly available in the region, recurring droughts, scarcity of water, sand erosion and salinity add to the woes of poor farmers. When water is scarce and land is degraded, women, children and older people are often the most impacted. With minimal rain, water is insufficient even for household use, drinking and livestock, which leads to a large share of time spent by women in fetching water from long distances. The time spent fetching water limits their time on self-care and opportunity for education. For many women this non-stop drudgery starts when they are as young as four. Every aspect of their life, be it schooling, health, safety, economic opportunity, pregnancy and childbirth are impacted by the lack of access to clean water. These problems and challenges multiply in cases of older women as they continue to face years of oppression and gender imbalance deeply rooted in the social and cultural norms.

At GRAVIS we bring women of the Thar desert together and support them to lead a variety of drought mitigation and climate change adaptation initiatives. They are an integral part of the process of designing and implementing programs. With the backing of women-led community-based organisations like Self Help Groups (SHGs), Village Development Committees (VDC) and Intergenerational Learning Groups (ILGs) women are building community resilience and leadership through sustainable agriculture and water management practices, both are solutions that can work efficiently to reverse the impacts of climate change. 

GRAVIS also invests significant resources in developing the leadership skills and capacities of women by providing learning spaces on subjects like community development—highlighting the role of women and girls in disseminating information and awareness on health, education, menstrual hygiene, traditional agricultural practices, seed management, water storage and cleaning techniques, income augmentation, and more. This has contributed to a reduction in social hierarchies and inequalities that deprive women of control over fundamental resources, while restoring their self-respect and social status in the society.

Food Security and Drought Mitigation Efforts

The Agroecology Fund proudly supports GRAVIS’s food security and drought mitigation efforts. With our support GRAVIS has been able to implement:

Khadins (Farming Dykes) 

The construction of khadins in five drought stricken villages, benefiting 35 households (280 people) from the most impacted rain-fed farming communities. In  the first year this initiative has already achieved a 35-40 % yield increase including drought resilient crops like green gram (Moong), Moth beans (Moth), sesame (Til) and millet (Bajra), cluster beans (Guar), mustered (Sarson), chickpea (Chana), and sorghum (Jwar). The Khadins also support natural vegetation and many shrubs like melon, cucumber, citrus fruits and desert plums, adding to the region’s biodiversity. 

Community Seed Banks (CSB)

Availability of good quality seeds during the farming season is very challenging in drought prone villages. A CSB is a community facility in which all local farmers have deposited seeds and are provided seeds at the time of need. A total of 10 such CSBs (2 in each village) have been established. Seed banks ensure all community members can receive seeds on time even with no investment, with the agreement to return seeds post harvesting with an interest of ¼ of seeds produced. It has reduced the dependency of farmers on local vendors and money lenders. 

Agroforestry Units 

In an area of about 8 hectare, over 2,000 plants were planted and are managed through community norms. This unit will become an important source of vegetation cover, fodder and fuel for the entire community. The plantings included Gunda , Ber (ziziphus), Pomegranate, Drum sticks, Khejri (Prosopis cineraria) and Kumat (Acacia senegal). The survival rate of the planting was 80 %. 

Setting up Rain-fed Arid Horticulture Units (AHUs)

 35 AHUs were established, benefiting 280 people from 35 families.  This effort provided vulnerable communities with nutritious food in a sustainable manner. 

Technical Trainings and Learning Exchange 

Ten trainings were organized to enhance the technical knowledge of farmers on rain-fed and organic farming practices. Along with technical trainings, 10 women’s self-help groups (SHGs) and 10 Village development committees (VDCs) have been organized. These trainings focused on project leadership, monitoring and sustainability of the project. Women have also been training on financial literacy. 

Learn More

GRAVIS has a rich resource of research papers and studies documenting processes, learning, and practices that highlight issues, solutions and strategies as outcomes of its various multi-pronged interventions. These resources are shared to stimulate learning and to encourage replication in other arid regions of India and across the world. 

Territorial Markets: How Grassroots Organizations are Revitalizing Local Food Supply Chains for Healthy Food, Real Relationships and a Fair Deal

Territorial markets are embedded in societies as critical public spaces where traditional, healthy, medicinal, biodiverse crops are found, where smallholder farmers have the option to sell directly to consumers and reduce dependence on intermediaries, and consumers have a chance to buy fresh food directly from farmers at fair prices. 

Rooted in territories and communities, territorial markets have existed for millennia and go beyond economic exchange by strengthening socio-cultural ties, relationships between food producers and consumers, and harnessing trust and solidarity. Traditionally, these market systems build resilience for farmers, families and communities. But they are now increasingly threatened by a combination of forces.

Corporate concentration and underinvestment in municipal infrastructure has led to the neglect of territorial markets and localized food systems have lost some of their resilience. Global commodity markets and corporate-controlled supply chains are prioritized by public and private investors, leaving us all at risk. Finding solutions to these challenges calls for speed and urgency in supporting grassroots innovations. 

The Agroecology Fund supports collaborative initiatives in more than 90 countries globally, and this year, has escalated efforts to support the growth and strengthening of agroecology economies. During our recent webinar ‘Territorial Markets – Healthy Food, Real Relationships, and a Fair Deal’, attended by nearly 400 participants from 71 countries, we learned about grantee partner initiatives to strengthen territorial markets and the challenges of scaling this key component of local food systems across diverse countries, regions and territories.

Through the advocacy of farmers and consumers – often working closely with local governments – territorial markets are enjoying an overdue renaissance. The markets have evolved and take many forms – from municipal plazas to WhatsApp platforms to purchase local foods to public purchasing programs to a seed exchange fair  We heard from grassroots, farmer-led networks from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, from countries including Sri Lanka, Benin, Mali and Peru, about their experience revitalizing fresh food markets and strengthening links among farmers, consumers, and public officials. 

Against this backdrop, the Human Development Organization (HDO), a development organization working with the marginalized communities including tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka to promote their right to food, spoke about working with minority women plantation workers to grow and market agroecological products. 

Women tea plantation laborers historically have had little experience cultivating food agroecologically. Through territorial markets, this initiative supports the transition from worker to farmer, and from farmer to entrepreneur for women. There has been tremendous progress over the last five years. 

Les Jardins de l’Espoir, Benin showcased their intervention, Eden’s Farmers Market, and how they used digital channels and social media to launch the initiative and raise its visibility. Participants heard about how the market has evolved and improved, and the challenges and opportunities towards creating healthy and sustainable food systems. 

Working in collaboration with several networks and organisations, Les Jardins de l’Espoir shared how their focus on agroecology “is helping us to protect biodiversity, nature-friendly food systems, inclusive food systems, as well as commercial systems that offer favourable and sustainable price points. Since 2021, we have been expanding the network to ensure that as many farmers have access to Eden Farmers Market as possible.”

The Asociación ANDES, Peru shared about the network of Eco Markets they are creating across the country.

ANDES shared how their markets target, “ people in the lower income bracket. We have a standard for fixing prices across different regions. Our products are recognizable through the logo and our Fruit of the Earth markets – where we ….  encourage and facilitate barter trade. We also participate in eco fairs where we educate consumers about the health benefits of agroecological foods.” 

We also learned about the main findings of the “Food from Somewhere” report, launched by The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). 

Speaking to findings from the report, Shalmali Guttal from IPES Food observed, “Global corporate food chains have demonstrated catastrophic vulnerability to shocks, while bringing unhealthy, ultra-processed food into the markets. We need a shift to a completely new model of food provision – to resilient, localised food systems and food webs.” She stressed the need to encourage consumers to buy directly from producers and to push governments to create an enabling policy environment for territorial markets.

“There are many kinds of territorial markets such as mass marketing spaces like public markets, informal markets, street vendors, farmers markets, peasant markets, wet markets, specialty markets. Then there are bulk community spaces. There are food hubs, cooperatives and network markets. There are also independent local businesses and direct producers to consumer markets through community supported agriculture. There are also digital sales, farm shops, urban agriculture and a number of different channels with potential to actually build up territorial markets and territorial food systems to something much broader,” Guttal observed.

Further stating, the research showed that territorial markets build food security and resilience on multiple fronts—they demonstrate increased food access, health equity and environmental benefits and at the same time, boost and support community solidarity and cohesion. They also make food accessible and affordable, especially for low-income populations.

“Territorial markets support decent prices and steady incomes for producers, especially women and youth. In Thailand, for example, green farmers markets offer producers higher margins than big retailers and these green farmer markets in Thailand and across much of Southeast Asia account for 60 to 80 percent of the income of small-scale food producers and vendors,” Guttal shared. 

You can access the recording of this webinar and the previous webinars in our Agroecology Economies series here. 

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Building Social Movements for Food Sovereignty and Climate Justice in Pakistan

In honor of World Food Day—this year’s FAO World Food Day theme is “Right to Foods for a Better Life and a Better Future—we share an interview with Agroecology Fund grantee partners, Roots for Equity and Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT), in which we explore their work practicing and promoting agroecology and food sovereignty; demanding just and equitable land distribution; working with small and landless farmers with emphasis on women to build social movements for food sovereignty and climate justice in Pakistan, with a specific focus on their joint campaign against corporate control of dairy and livestock sector. 

The Agroecology Fund recognizes that true food systems transformation towards agroecology requires divestment from industrial agriculture. From pesticides to monocultures, deforestation to land grabbing, our fossil fuel dependent food system under corporate control and concentration, is a major contributor to the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity. Roots for Equity and PKMT are not only promoting food sovereignty, but they are also actively working to keep industrial agriculture models from replacing their localized food systems. 

Thank you to Azra Sayeed, Founder and Director of Roots for Equity and Wali Haider, Joint Director of Roots for Equity and the secretary of PKMT for sharing their experiences and inspiring efforts in the following Q +A  to thwart industrial agriculture from taking hold while there is still an opportunity to do so. 

Background

In recent years, the local dairy sector in Pakistan has been facing monitoring by Pure Food Law Authority, Punjab. Milk trucks were being stopped, tests were being carried out for milk contamination, and thousands of liters of milk were being wasted by the authorities. These acts are a threat to the livelihood and food security of small and landless farmers and others associated with the local supply chain. This led to Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity to investigate the situation. The result was a series of discussions with communities to understand the issue, as well as research to better understand trade liberalization and corporate capture of the livestock and dairy sector to support the launch of an awareness campaign. Learn more about these efforts here. 

Q+A

Please share about the impact that industrial agriculture, specifically in the dairy sector, has had on women farmers in Pakistan.

The livestock sector in Pakistan is integral to the lives of nearly 8 million rural families who derive 30-40% of their income from livestock. The sector is particularly critical for small and landless women farmers, with 52% of women working in the agriculture sector engaged in all stages of livestock management; women clean animals’ living space, collect and dry animal manure, make dung cakes, arrange, cut and prepare fodder, feed and milk the animals. Ownership of livestock guarantees household food security, and milk and dung sales are regular and consistent sources of income, even for landless women agricultural workers who have tenuous access to agricultural work. 

To date, Pakistan’s livestock sector largely remains in the hands of rural farmers; about 80% of the national milk supply is in the hands of 55 million small and landless farmers with small herd sizes who have conserved local breeds of milk-producing animals that can withstand the regional climate and have adapted to low-resource environments. Additionally, small herd sizes drastically reduce incidences of disease outbreak. 

However, women farmers’ role as custodians of livestock and dairy is facing threats from the   World Trade Organization that has paved the way for corporate encroachment in the food and agriculture sectors of member countries through legally binding agreements since its very formation.

At the local level, this is giving rise to pro-corporation and anti-farmer government regulations. On one hand, the Government of Pakistan is set on eventually banning the sale of unpasteurized milk through its mandatory pasteurization policy and emerging narratives and policies are targeted towards standardizing and centralizing milk production under the pretext of eliminating adulteration and contamination, as well as to improve productivity and reduce supposed ‘inefficiencies’ in the supply chain – all this means is that acquiring fresh milk from multiple small producers increases costs and cuts down on the profits of corporations. Inevitably, measures aimed at centralization and standardization will wrest control of the sector away from small and landless farmers and replace the current system with large-scale industrial dairy farms.  

The full impact of the ban on unpasteurised milk (which is up till now on paper only) is still to be determined. Yet, the women’s comparative experiences in the non-corporate and corporate milk circuits provide important insights into the future.  

Livestock ownership and land tenure significantly impact food security and income generation in rural areas. Women agricultural workers raise livestock for various reasons, such as selling cattle, selling milk and dung for daily expenses, or religious and cultural purposes. For the landless, owning livestock is often the only asset they possess. During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, women could still earn money from milk sales when men’s wage jobs were reduced or lost. Households that owned land and livestock were less likely to experience food insecurity than those that did not. Those with access to land through ownership or leasing had more fodder to give to their livestock, which allowed greater milk yields and the capacity to multiply the herd. Women who own or lease agricultural land, are more food secure than those who don’t have land. Due to the pandemic, milk collectors stopped buying milk from women, but they converted milk into non-perishable dairy items like butter and ghee for their households, staving hunger at the household level.

Women foresee negative impacts on their nutrition intake and income sources following a ban on selling unpasteurised milk. Women livestock keepers sell milk to other households and milk collectors, who then sell it to shops, tea stalls, restaurants, and dairy companies. Women farmers get the highest price for their milk when they sell directly to nearby households, but they prefer selling to milk collectors because they pay monthly. A monthly payment allows them to manage large expenses better. Companies sell processed milk at more than double the amount women are paid for raw milk, but milk collectors and companies refuse to increase the rates paid to women, citing high production costs. A ban on the sale of unpasteurised milk would impact them by denying them the income derived from selling milk, causing financial distress. This would make it unaffordable to keep livestock and access dairy products for household consumption, negatively affecting their nutritional intake. There are no other avenues for alternative work to supplement the earnings of women, especially women landless, agricultural workers.  

How did Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity come to collaborate on this issue? What do you see as the biggest challenges, and which aspects of the campaign have been most successful?

In September 2019, Asia Pacific Women Law and Development (APWLD) initiated the Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) under one of their specific themes ‘Women Interrogating Trade and Corporate Hegemony (WITCH). Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity as members of APWLD took part in the FPAR, in order to carry out action research with various groups of women in Sahiwal district, Punjab province, who were involved in livestock breeding and caring. Sahiwal district has PKMT membership as well as is home to the Sahiwal cow, a well-known indigenous breed.  

PKMT and Roots for Equity participated in the research with a clear intention of exploring the impacts of the Pure Food Law, that the government of Punjab (later followed by all provinces of Pakistan) had initiated, and organizing and mobilizing women farmers/livestock care takers against the corporate capture of the dairy sector.   

Based on the series of organizing processes carried out through PKMT, Sahiwal district has a strong women membership. At the national level, a mass mobilization campaign was developed under the title “Save our Invaluable Rural Assets: Campaign against Corporate Control of Dairy and Livestock Sector in Pakistan.” The campaign objectives are to resist the government-imposed regulations on natural pure milk, as well as the increasing trade liberalization and control of the corporations in the sector. The campaign will also build awareness amongst the farming community and the masses to stand up against the attack on their food, livelihood and the environment.  

The three-month campaign was carried out from March 8, 2023, International Women’s Day and culminated on June 22, 2023, commemorating the day a brave, peasant woman, Mai Bakhtawar was killed by feudal thugs resisting control over her community harvest in 1948. 

Public Assembly

The number of activities undertaken through the campaign were as follows:

  • National webinars/seminars on agriculture workers, livestock and dairy farmers;
  • Social media and print media sharing on the situation of livestock and dairy farmers and impacts of neoliberal policies;
  • Theater performances – using art and advocacy; 
  • Documentary;
  • Radio Messages.

Brief details of some of the activities:

Pamphlet Distribution: The goal was to distribute 500,000 one-page pamphlets developed for popular dissemination across the country. Through the pamphlet distribution we reached on foot more than 500,000 Pakistani citizens in 58 districts of four provinces making them aware of the insidious aims of the Pure Food Laws. These pamphlets were distributed in public places including at cattle markets (mandi), vegetable mandi, local markets, hospitals, railways stations, bus terminals, international days events and at other public points. All distribution was carried out by PKMT members; only in a few districts Roots staff assisted. 

Pamphlet Distribution

Many small town local news channels included coverage of the campaign, reporting on the public’s refusal of Pure Food Laws based on World Trade Organization agreements and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures & Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). A total of 11 Television channels and 15 Newspapers covered the campaign.

Pamphlet Distribution

Radio Messages: Three short messages of 45, 55 & 60 seconds were developed to highlight the advantages of fresh milk and indigenous breeds of cattle. These were broadcasted daily for three months.The total reach of Multan FM 103, the local station on which they aired, is 16 districts of South Punjab, reaching approx 34.7 million people.

Social Media: Social media has become increasingly important in today’s society, as almost everyone owns a mobile phone. We have shared campaign materials on social media at various times, which highlights how imperialist companies and agents are profiting off our valuable assets and imposing their values on us, while inducing the government to make and implement laws and policies that are allowing not only land grabbing but also eliminating genetic resources based in the plant and animal kingdom, while taking away these resources from small and landless farmers, who are the real custodians of this wealth.

Video Documentary: Save Our Invaluable Rural Assets is the second documentary that PKMT has produced with respect to the corporate capture of our dairy and livestock sector. The documentary demonstrates the critical role of traditional dairy and livestock rearing, as well as the environmental impacts of the industrialized dairy sector.

Save Our Invaluable Rural Assets Documentary

Though the campaign was successfully able to reach-out to small and landless farmers, the major challenge we face is in mobilizing and organizing fresh-milk sellers (retailers) not just in rural areas but also in the urban small towns. There are two main reasons: i) The enforcement of Pure Food Law in terms of destroying containers of fresh milk through inspection is quite harsh, and hence there is fear of the inspection teams. ii) In many of the districts, law enforcement is not present so people think it is not their issue.  

Currently, there is status quo; no major steps have been taken to implement the Pure Food Law. Their declaration that Lahore, the second biggest city of Pakistan, will be made into a pilot project only allowing sale of packaged milk has yet to be acted upon; however the law exists. It is speculated that given that 90% of the milk market is supplied by fresh milk, the dairy corporations are incapable of providing for the huge market. There is also the possibility that the corporations positioned to control the dairy sector sense that they will be challenged by local organizers, and hence are rethinking their strategy. There is still time to ensure small farmers and landless farmers maintain their livelihoods and ways of living. 

How will the corporate take-over of dairy in Pakistan negatively impact biodiversity and traditional and Indigenous knowledge?

It is important to mention that since the green revolution in the 1960s, agriculture production has been taken over by the corporate sector. The corporate sector not only dispossessed hundreds of thousands of traditional, local and indigenous seed varieties but also forced the farming community to adopt an unfamiliar agricultural production model which promotes mono-culture, chemical and pesticide and capital-intensive technologies. All of this negatively impacts biodiversity. The green revolution also impacted livestock – hardy oxen that were used for land plowing are now hard to come by, as most of the work is now done by tractors. The use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has highly impacted small insects, including earthworm, butterflies, honeybees and birds. There is a lack of scientific assessment of the loss; however, visibly many birds, butterflies, beetles are rarely seen in rural areas. Even in the urban areas, the impact on insects and birds is very visible, as they are not seen anymore. The less diverse an ecosystem, the more susceptible it is to climate change. 

There are also attempts to take over livestock production with the same false lucrative offer to bring prosperity among livestock breeders. The traditional and indigenous process of livestock production is claimed to be outdated, and a need to promote an industrial livestock production system has been propagated by industrial countries and their corporations. Governments are also buying these ideas like they did for green revolution policies. 

“These cows eat five times more than our cows; their cow dung is like water and of no use. Please tell them to keep their cows to themselves, and leave our cows to us.” – A landless woman in Sahiwal, who breeds Sahiwal cows and vehemently opposes breeding of Australian cows such as Holstein Friesian.

Local and foreign corporations are capitalizing on these pro-corporate state policies to capture the dairy and livestock sector, at the cost of small and landless farmers. For instance, in an effort to improve the milk quality and quantity of local herds, the government is encouraging crossbreeding with foreign cattle. Favoring non-indigenous breeds reveals a policy bias towards large scale animal holdings that can only be financed and maintained by large-scale dairy farms. Additionally, imports targeted at corporate dairy farms (e.g. industrial milking systems, genetic material, calf milk replacers, premium fodder) are on the rise. Foreign corporations are increasingly turning towards our markets for supplying these commodities. It is clear that these policies do not recognize small and landless farmers particularly women farmers as key stakeholders and make no efforts to integrate them.

Similar to what we have seen happen with corporate control of plant genetic resources, the control of animal genetic resources technically produces more, but its much less nutritious and costs way more money to produce. The result of cross-breeding livestock is huge animals that give vast quantity of milk daily (40 liters vs 10-15 liters from indigenous breeds) but they are very expensive, need special cool living quarters (not adapted to hot, dry climates), eat at least five times more than traditional breeds, and they cannot walk well due to size. Therefore, they do not graze, and do not breed well. Additionally, their animal dung is watery so is a lost by-product as organic manure. On top of all that, the milk is low on fat and therefore mostly useless. Like the green revolution and GMO seeds – we are seeing lots of food but basically nutrition less, and harmful to the environment and biodiversity.

What is your vision for a food secure and climate resistant future, and how is your work helping to bring that to fruition?

In Pakistan, where feudal structure is so strong, just and equitable land distribution remains the primary solution to world hunger. Small food producers remain as society’s poorest and hungriest class because local elites, big transnational corporations, and imperialist powers continuously take away our lands and plunder our natural resources, exploit our labor, control almost all aspects of food systems, violate our rights, and destroy the environment. In order for us to sustainably produce food for all, we must end feudal control and imperialist exploitation in our own countries by taking back control over land and resources.  Currently, according to government data, 5% rich feudal families have control over 64% of land. Under new corporate farming ventures, the provincial governments are providing thousands of acres of land to corporate entities for growing cash and food crops, all destined for export.

Rural peoples directly bear the brunt of climate change impacts, which often translates to loss of lives and livelihoods. But instead of putting the brakes on capitalist profiteering, governments and international institutions are giving the green light to big corporations cashing in on the climate crisis through false climate solutions that will lead to more land grabbing and displacement of rural peoples.  

We must shift the future through (1) shifting the bias of policy making toward the peoples’ rights and aspirations, (2) shifting the control over lands and natural resources, and (3) shifting financing toward genuine food systems transformation.  

We propose implementation policies that will ensure adoption of agroecology-based production systems— based on autonomy and free from the shackles of agro-chemical corporations. Given the grave looming food insecurity situation, farmers must be provided free access to local indigenous seeds and organic inputs that would allow the country to ensure food security of its people.  

In terms of climate justice, again the political framework of food sovereignty and agroecology pave the way for claiming rights over land and productive rights, while also slowly revitalizing and enhancing our genetic resources and protecting biodiversity. 

There is an acute need to carry out education including practical application of agroecological methods. There is an acute need for advocacy on the issue and claim government support for agroecology practice.

There is also a need to heighten climate justice campaigns at the  local, national, regional and global levels to promote sustainable production and consumption, while sharply de-escalating fossil fuel use but also advocating for lifestyle changes of rich industrial nations and elites of both North and South.

Our work is built on all of the above actions: practice and promotion of agroecology and food sovereignty; demanding just and equitable land distribution; working with small and landless farmers with emphasis on women to build political and social movements for food sovereignty and climate justice.

Public Assembly
No to Corporate Capture of Our Dairy and Livestock
Community Organizing

About Dr. Azra Talat Sayeed:

As an activist with a focus on women’s and peasant rights, Dr. Azra Talat Sayeed has made an important contribution to building peasant movements in Pakistan and in the Asian region. She is the Executive Director of Roots for Equity, a Karachi-based organization working with small and landless peasants, the current Chairperson of the Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN) and the International Women’s Alliance, and a Steering Council member for the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty Asia. Learn more about her work in this interview.

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Building a Network of Connected Agroecology Economies

Written by Joyce Chimbi, a cohort three graduate of grantee partner ESAFF Uganda’s Agroecology School for Journalists & Communicators. Agroecology Fund supports this initiative with the aim of building the capacity of journalists and communicators to write and report on agroecology in their communities.

Agroecology Fund’s African Learning Exchange on Agroecology Economies gathered more than 150 people representing organizations working towards agroecological food and nutrition sovereignty. It was an opportunity to learn more explicitly from Agroecology Fund grantee partners in Africa about what they are doing, how they are doing, and to learn from their success stories about how their community-led solutions might be replicated in different contexts. This rich, in-person gathering was also a chance for partners to brainstorm about agroecology as a business and enterprise. The backdrop of the exchange was Kufunda Village – Kufunda means learning in Shona, the language spoken by 70% of the people of Zimbabwe. The village, on the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe, is a learning center with a focus on vibrant and healthy local communities. 

At an early gathering, Angela Cordeiro, an agronomist and Co–Director at Agroecology Fund spoke about the importance of thinking about agroecology simply beyond production. She encouraged the participants to think more expansively about agroecology, and stressed the need for movements to create economies and tap into the significant potential for positive socio-economic development in local communities. The power inherent to transforming structures is a significant marker of why grassroots agroecology movements hold the possibility to transform global food systems—and why Agroecology Fund centers these movements in their grantmaking. 

“The root of the word economy, or its meaning, is to take care of the house or to take care of your home. The economy has been kind of controlled by one way of taking care of the home and we are here to brainstorm, to exchange ideas on how we are trying to develop new ways of taking care of the home through innovative approaches such as the participatory guarantee system, territorial markets, commercialization as well as financial mechanisms,” Cordeiro said.

Agroecology Fund grantee partners from across the African continent reflected on what the word economy means in their diverse languages and cultures, and on the positive socio-economic benefits associated with agroecology. In the Democratic Republic of Congo where the Lingala language is spoken, ekonzo means economy, in Swahili the economy translates to uchumi. For Yoruba people in Nigeria it is okowo, in Zambia it is phindu and in Dagara a language spoken in Burkina Faso, economy translates to na-bomo.

The discussions that were held on the economy and agroecology, and how these concepts translate in different languages highlighted that there can be many different ways of commercializing foods produced in synchronicity with nature. Conversations explored market practices that are favorable to the peasant farmer and peasant families in rural and urban areas, as well as the revitalization and investment in larger territorial mass markets.

Dioma Komonsira, an action-learning and advocacy coordinator for Groundswell International West Africa – an Agroecology Fund grantee partner– said that there is no contradiction between building a business around agroecology and upholding social values. 

“We will soon be publishing a survey that we did focusing on 200 to 300 women-led agroecological enterprises in Mali and Senegal. There is a big and untapped market for agroecology products, bigger than the products available at the moment. But at times the women are limited in their production capacities due to challenges in accessing financing. We are seeing that there is potential in women organizing themselves in cooperatives. There is also an urgent need to train women or peasant farmers in general in how to develop a business plan,” he said. The Agroecology Fund is currently supporting 15 African networks that support emerging enterprises to create business plans. 

Some of the innovative practices being used by women peasant farmers to raise much needed financing are anchored in social and solidarity economies – group savings or village fundraising strategies to help address the most pressing needs they face as a community. 

Among other practices shared by grantee partners during the exchange included the Kenyan and Senegalese women’s solidarity funds in the form of rotating microcredits called “solidarity calabashes”. These funds are a way to mobilize local capital through donations from the local community to address their most pressing needs, including hunger.

From these conversations emerged ideas about how agroecology economies can thrive within varied communities, utilizing similar ideas and frameworks adapted to each local context as the respective communities see fit. The connections made among grantee partners is one of the major benefits of these learning exchanges. There is power in connection, and the mycelial-like network of grassroots agroecology movements grow stronger with each engaged interaction. 

Reflections on Climate Week NYC 2024: Money, Grassroots Power, Cocktails and Agroecology

By Daniel Moss, Co-Director, Agroecology Fund

It was quite a jolt to move from an agroecology learning exchange among hundreds of small farmers and advocates in Zimbabwe to the monied terraces of New York City where thousands gathered for Climate Week NYC 2024. And I was born in New York! I couldn’t help but wonder what it might have felt like for a Maasai pastoralist leader entering this dizzying universe for the first time, trying to assess the dynamics to know how to best advance a rights-based climate resilience agenda?

The week was a whirlwind with more than 600 events and social gatherings. There were so many interesting conversations about both the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, especially around food systems transformation. And while the momentum and energy of the event produced a sense of hope and inspiration, it also raised concerns about how we think about change. 

A bit more about the both/and: 

Community-led Conservation and Indigenous Food Systems

At an event hosted by Maliasili and Synchronicity Earth, conversation built on the findings of a new report, “From Pledges to Practices: Shifting Conservation Funding Approaches to Better Support Local African Organizations”, which presented troubling data about underinvestment in community-led conservation. This session aimed to encourage more and better funding for African conservation and climate organizations working on community-led solutions.

The top-line message was loud and clear: “Despite growing momentum for improving climate and conservation funding that flows to Indigenous and local organizations, shifting those pledges into practice – e.g., money into the hands of local actors – has been limited.” Speakers observed, with a bit of nervousness since it’s a sensitive topic, that colonial patterns have been hard to break and BINGOs (big international NGO’s) tend to receive the majority of funding. 

Present was Agroecology Fund grantee partner IMPACT Kenya—which champions Indigenous resilience by securing land rights, fostering sustainable livelihoods, and nurturing ecosystems. Of particular interest to me was how pastoralist’s conservation strategies are inextricably linked to agroecological strategies to preserve Indigenous food systems. There is much urgency to collaborate at the nexus of food and conservation and to ensure that local organizations and their representative networks have the resources they need to further this critical, inter-sectional work. 

Investing in Indigenous-led Climate Solutions 

“Investing in Indigenous-led Climate Solutions,” was an event co-hosted by Collective Action for Just Finance, the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples, the Christensen Fund and Confluence Philanthropy. Moderated byJen Astone, Agroecology Fund’s Agroecological Entrepreneurship & Territorial Markets consultant, it wove together a conversation among Ben Jacobs, Co-founder & President Tocabe, Chrystel Cornelius, President & CEO, Oweesta Corporation, and Keoni Lee, CEO, ‘Aina Aloha Economy Fund, Hawai’i Investment Ready. 

Panelists discussed how to leverage investment and grants to support Indigenous communities in their efforts to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Each shared culturally-affirming business models and approaches to investing in Indigenous communities using holistic investment strategies, including trust-based financing which required no collateral, and rights-based approaches to housing, green energy, and healthy foods.  

Investing in Indigenous-led Climate Solutions Panel Conversation

Listening to these cases, I couldn’t think of a better scenario for impact investors seeking climate-friendly investments with powerful  equity outcomes . “Impact Investing” was a common refrain during Climate Week and so throughout my time there. I was mystified by why amazing climate-friendly, triple bottom-line enterprises like these continue to have difficulty obtaining the financing they need. U.S. foundations sit on billions of endowment dollars that could be invested in these Indigenous-led solutions. Why does this gap still exist? 

The Agroecology Fund will continue to seek ways to stimulate the flow of capital—from public, private, and multilateral sources—into community and Indigenous-led climate enterprises. 

Celebrating Indigenous Philanthropies and Power

On two evenings, lifted to the heights of Manhattan’s skyline in ear-popping elevators, I joined powerful celebrations of Indigenous-governed institutions providing essential support to their communities. The first gathering was a 10 year celebration of the Pawanka Fund. Pawanka is an Indigenous-led fund, “promoting and protecting traditional knowledge, wellbeing, rights and self – determined development.” Led by a guiding council, Pawanka has granted over $18 million to Indigenous-led organizations in dozens of countries. I had first met Miskito leader and Pawanka Founder, Myrna Cunningham, 40 years ago in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua and finished the evening awed by the stories of the Fund’s deep impact on Indigenous communities. 

The next night, the NDN Collective, which applies a mix of organizing, activism, philanthropy, and grantmaking to create “sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms” celebrated their work on a terrace lit by the Empire State Building, an iconic landmark in the ancestral territory of the Lenape people. Earlier in the day, NDN had held a donor workshop about their Landback campaign, exploring how Indigenous land stewardship and rights can drive climate justice and community-led conservation. Just prior to Climate Week, the NDN team had met with elected officials and governmental agencies to raise issues around climate, police violence, and more. There, Janene Yazzie, Director of Policy and Advocacy at NDN, stated “Indigenous Peoples hold a wealth of knowledge around how to build sustainable systems that allow everyone to be safe and free – and we will continue to uplift that knowledge until those systems are in place.” NDN is a close collaborator with the Agroecology Fund’s long-term partner, the International Indian Treaty Council.

Fossil Fuel Companies Double Down on Plastics, Pesticides and Fertilizers

As alternative energy solutions accelerate, fossil fuel companies pivot into increased manufacture of derivative products, such as pesticides, fertilizers and plastics. A recent damning article describes a criminal PR campaign to downplay pesticide risks, financed with US taxpayer support. At a gathering on agrochemicals convened by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food and the ClimateWorks Foundation –  essential allies of the Agroecology Fund – we discussed the challenges of countering the narrative that chemical inputs have been nothing less than a “modern miracle” with no downside.  Jane Fonda, showing up as an activist and cancer survivor, spoke powerfully of the impact of pesticides produced in Louisiana’s cancer alley and the urgent need to remove petrochemical corporations’ social license. The corporate concentration, vertical integration and lobbying weight is daunting but the focus by activists, donors, and government officials provides an essential counterbalance. Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, described his office’s lawsuit against Exxon-Mobil accusing them of contributing to plastic pollution. A good portion of the session focused on manufacture of bio-inputs and ways to restore healthy soils to obviate the need for chemical fertilizers. The Agroecology Fund is proud to support the “true miracle” – grassroots enterprises and advocacy across the world that leave people and the planet healthier.

The Hazards of Global Gatherings

Deliberations on climate change and related planetary crises are increasingly marked by a series of high visibility events that you can find on a calendar – Conference of Parties (COPs), Climate Week, etc. Over cocktail plates of hummus and celery stalks, one might start to believe that these spaces are where change occurs. And to be fair, they do have immense value: Relationships are fortified, collaborations are incubated, deals are struck and critical information about false solutions such as green ammonia are shared. But there are dangers to organizing ourselves around these moments. Since these are exclusive gatherings – we can’t all afford to be there – the grassroots actors who tirelessly organize grassroots constituencies and advocate with local and national policy makers are easily invisibilised. While these global events can be important, they contribute more forcefully to a democratic groundswell for climate justice when sufficient resources are allocated for the grassroots work before and after these events. Perhaps more concerning is whether these events fan an inflated sense among global gathering attendees that they are the primary change makers, rather than the people back home, much closer to the ground. Too infrequently did I hear invoked and lifted up the names of climate champion organizations and networks – the landscape stewards, food producers and grassroots activists. Trust-based philanthropy should ensure that these champions are entrusted with adequate resources for their work. We all benefit from their leadership. 

Rooftop garden at Jacob Javits Center, NYC

Food Systems Everywhere

Finally! Food systems have arrived in climate conversations. Once ignored, food is gaining prominence. At a gathering entitled, “Unlocking Catalytic Investments for Regenerative Agriculture Transitions” co-sponsored by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food and the Rockefeller Foundation, Ana Terra, from Brazil’s National Secretary of Supply Cooperativism and Food Sovereignty, Ministry of Agrarian Development and active in Brazil’s powerful social movements, spoke about the success of public procurement for healthy school food program, which incentivizes thousands of agroecological producers who, in turn, regenerate climate-resilient landscapes. Learning about this work, one can see that with the right pressures and policies, profound changes can quickly occur.  

That night, mesmerized by Times Square neon pitching products that push us closer to climate collapse, I thought about the work ahead. No doubt the logistics will be complicated to provide all those NYC pizza parlors with agroecologically-produced tomatoes and cheese. But it can be done. Harder still will be to redirect the billions of dollars flowing toward climate solutions away from techno-fixes and towards truly just and sustainable solutions. But with a powerful imagination and a powerful climate justice movement, I’m pretty sure we can do that too. 

Peasant and Family Farmers’ Perspectives of Harare’s Good Seed and Food Festival

Written by Joyce Chimbi, a cohort three graduate of grantee partner ESAFF Uganda’s Agroecology School for Journalists & Communicators. Agroecology Fund supports this initiative with the aim of building the capacity of journalists and communicators to write and report on agroecology in their communities.

In various shapes and forms, peasant and family farmers from across the African continent came together from their respective countries to showcase the best of their seeds and foods. As part of the Agroecology Fund’s Learning Exchange on Agroecological Economies, Agroecology Fund grantee partners visited this year’s Good Seed and Food Festival in Harare to share their experiences and interact with the best of Zimbabwe’s traditional and organic seeds and food from the four corners of the country.

Carmel Kifukieto Manzanza from the Democratic Republic of Congo experienced firsthand how prices vary depending on the route that the farmer takes to sell their produce, “when farmers sell directly from their farm or as an individual, they often sell at a price that is lower than the market rate. But when there is an event such as this (festival), that brings many people together, the prices then become favorable for rural peasant farmers who are often cut off or at the margins of the market systems. And, yet the prices are also favorable for the consumer compared to what they would have paid in other markets such as a supermarket. Overall, it was an opportunity for farmers and local peasant communities to showcase what they can do.”

January Watchman Mvula from the Sustainable Rural Community Development Organization in Malawi, “learned that Zimbabwe as a country is investing much of its resources in organizing farmers’ cooperatives and in particular, peasant farmers from local communities. By doing that, they are also transferring various skills like drying for preservation and processing for value addition.”

What stood out for Ruth Badubaye from the Centre d’ Appui a’la Gestion Durable des Forests Tropical in the DRC are the innovative, value addition activities undertaken by peasant farmers. “They had packaged their products in ways that are very appealing to consumers while still maintaining a price range that is fair to the consumer. I took some time to learn how the farmers produce such big fruits. The watermelons and pumpkins were very big. I also shared what I know and, in the end, I realized that there is always a way to learn, exchange and improve knowledge all around. My take away is that in this community, the post-harvest processing or value addition is really done at a more advanced level. In DRC, people only do value addition to fruits and vegetables and only for household consumption. In Zimbabwe, the community does it for commercial purposes and this is very impressive as it helps put more money in a farmer’s pocket.”

A member of the African Alliance Against Industrial Plantation Expansion, Nasako Besingi a grantee of the Agroecology Fund, observed, “I have interacted with various farmers’ gatherings and the idea of a food and seed festival is not unique to Zimbabwe, as we have similar festivals in Cameroon. But for the most part, that is where the similarities end. We have many more crop varieties than what I saw and many more farmers than what I saw. Perhaps the issue of fewer farmers is down to the fact that the festival was hosted in an urban area which limits the participation of peasant farmers.

“I come from Mundemba in Cameroon the headquarter of the Korup National Park 

which extends over a huge chunk of mostly undisturbed forest. There, we have lots of plant varieties or what we call non-timber forest products such as vegetables and many other food varieties, that grow without human or farmer intervention”, said Besingi.

“But I also saw a few varieties of crops that we do not grow in Cameroon or Central Africa and a number of my colleagues from Gambia purchased some traditional cereal and vegetable seeds for planting when they return home.

“If you were to visit a similar food and seed festival in Cameroon, you will have access to foods that have come directly from the forest, like native tubers similar to yam and not necessarily cultivated. Our soils are still very healthy and in fact, if you try to grow say Irish potato using fertilizer, it will all rot and go to waste. It means you are adding more to the plant than it needs.”

“I did not see forest products in Harare but, for us, they are very important to our food systems in both rural and urban areas. There are forested areas in Zimbabwe, what happened to their forest foods? 

“This is the beauty of farmers from across the continent meeting, interacting, learning and sharing from each other. You get to see and understand what is possible, and you are able to think beyond what you can see and to try new agroecologically innovative ideas. Overall, it was a fantastic festival and I had a great time!”

Equitable Commercialization Networks: Facilitating Access to Healthy Food

A successful agroecological transition is not simply about sustainable food production.  Guaranteeing the right to healthy foods through a just food supply system is likewise a foundational agroecology principle. 

Farmer and fishers’ markets, food basket delivery services, and online stores are some of the ways that agroecology movements sell directly to consumers at fair prices. But their reach only goes so far. To scale up agroecology, commercialization networks must be strengthened. 

School lunch programs, “earth markets” that link to the global Slow Food movement, and food sovereignty corridors are among the many innovative ways that civil society organizations and farmer groups are doing this, as speakers described in a recent Agroecology Fund webinar.

The third in our Agroecology Economies webinar series, this conversation with grantee partners and allies was held on July 17th, 2024, and focused on the topic of commercialization networks as a necessity for guaranteeing healthy foods. You can access a full recording of the webinar here. 

Schools as a Hub

School lunch programs can create a market for agroecologically produced food while securing healthy, nutritious food for children.  

Marut Jatiket, with Thailand’s The Field Alliance (TFA), said the group launched a program after studying school lunches and discovering that 90 percent of the vegetables were contaminated with organophosphate and pyrethroid pesticides. 

“Most farming in Thailand, commercially done, uses quite a bit of chemical pesticide [and] schools buy their ingredients in the local or distribution market where organic food isn’t available,” he said. 

The Field Alliance’s program links agroecological farmers to safe, organic school lunches via an online platform that allows schools to directly contact farmers. In the countryside, where the internet is not accessible, they promote connections between farmers and rural schools to build healthy food supply arrangements. The group’s farmer schools offer training in agroecology, often in collaboration with government extension agencies and community learning centers. Farmers learn to use mobile phones to link to a database of farmers selling agroecologically produced vegetables. 

In just one year, with funding from Agroecology Fund, TFA expanded the number of farmer schools it works with from five to 23. 

The group is challenged by Thailand’s limited national budget for school lunches, strict regulations that discourage schools from purchasing directly from farmers, and Thai farmers’ limited organic production, yet Jatiket is unfazed. “The solution for us is to expand agroecological training to the college level in Thailand and prepare the young generation for sustainable farming practice,” he said.

Tapping into the Global Slow Food Movement

Forming partnerships with the global Slow Food movement, which shares agroecological values, can be fruitful. Slow Food’s “Earth Markets” give local producers the opportunity to sell directly to consumers and allow consumers to access locally produced healthy food. They likewise encourage exchange among consumers, farmers, cooks, and other actors in the food chain through food and taste education workshops, cooking lessons, and teaching consumers where their food comes from.

“We believe healthy and culturally appropriate food should be a fundamental right of every global citizen,” John Kariuki, a gastronomist with Slow Food Kenya, said.  “We also believe in resilient food systems through agriculture and biodiversity conservation, and that our food should be free from chemicals.”

The Slow Food collaborative supported by the Agroecology Fund in Eastern Africa created 15 Earth Markets in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The markets are run by members of Slow Food communities, and ensure that small-scale farmers get fair compensation for the hard work they do. 

Prices at these markets are very competitive with the prices at conventional markets, Kariuki added, because “we are dealing with very short supply chains, and the value chains are not complicated”. 

Food Sovereignty Corridors 

Food sovereignty corridors are an approach applied to assert territory rights as a place of living, culture and identity and promote exchange between small-scale farmer communities in remote regions.

In Colombia’s northern Cauca region, for instance, Grupo Semillas supports Afro-Colombian communities to establish Afro-food sovereignty and cultural heritage with a corridor that spans a 1200-hectare region inhabited by Black communities in seven municipalities. 

“We’re looking to promote healthy foods because of the conflicts that we’re facing,” said Afro-Colombian Anyela Leon Gonzales of Grupo Semillas Colombia, naming mining and GMO maize production in particular.“ The management of the land has changed, and it has affected the whole environment. Twenty-eight varieties of local species have been completely lost, and 43 species are endangered, while children suffer from malnutrition and diseases,” she said. 

Grupo Semillas has supported the development of seed houses, an agro-biodiversity refuge, a Farmer School, a university agricultural program, and a school lunch program operating in three schools. The Afro-Colombia Food Sovereignty Corridor includes a network of seed guardians on 18 farms and Afro-food markets that sell local agroecological products at a fair price. 

“We want to keep the land in the hands of the farmers. We’re recovering the territory so that people can become more aware of the importance of the local traditions and practices,” Gonzales said. 

Meanwhile, in Argentina, the Unión de Trabajadores de la Tierra (UTT) developed a sovereignty food supply corridor to link its more than 20,000 farmer families to each other and to markets and to guarantee its members and consumers a healthy product at the fairest price.

Argentina’s vast expanse stretches 5,500 kilometers from the tropical north to its cool southern tip. UTT’s members in the south, where the growing season lasts just 45 days, are especially isolated. Half the food consumed there comes from outside the region and is very costly. 

“It is a huge challenge to transport food around the country without intermediaries or speculators who add high logistical costs,” Josefina Galan and Agustin Mavar of UTT said. “We’ve been working to strengthen commercialization networks and to give farmers direct channels to sell and commercialize their products.”

Agustin Mavar, a small-scale cattle producer in Patagonia and member of UTT, said they began developing the corridor seven years ago by “just jumping on a truck” and mapping out the routes. Eventually UTT bought a vehicle that enables them to carry products to the furthest reaches of the country, but they must still often rent private vehicles that can be costly.

UTT and their new truck

“It’s a huge change, because it allows farmers to be able to plan,” Mavar said.  The UTT can now facilitate access for a producer to bring 50 crates of apples to market 100 km away from the main routes, which they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access without their own transportation. “It has allowed us to think and develop other models, such as focusing on value-added products,” he added.  UTT also created five storage areas and points of sale for families. 

Currently, the Sovereign Corridor stretches across six provinces, with additional corridors being planned. 

Enabling Public Policies

Strengthening commercialization networks requires enabling policies; Brazil’s Food Procurement Program, or PAA, offers an excellent model. The PAA was created in 2003 to boost family producers’ income and food security for vulnerable populations. 

“We’re trying to encourage family farming, promote access to food for people with food insecurity, stimulate cooperativism … and strengthen local and regional commercial circuits,” said Silvio Porto, a professor who works with Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento (CONAB), a Brazilian food supply company which manages the PAA.

From 2019-2022, the past government reduced the PAA budgets drastically. Since 2023, the new government has been working to revive the program and is also implementing innovations to improve it. An important achievement so far is the better outreach to the Amazon region, reaching Indigenous Communities and Afro-Brazilian communities (Quilombolas, in Portuguese), as well as food insecure families in the Northeast of Brazil.

The Brazilian Government has also allocated a budget to school food programs, which reaches 47 millions students daily. Since 2009, the law requires that at least 30 percent of school food be sourced from family farmers. In 2022, 45% of the resources for food purchases of the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) were allocated to family farmers. Priority is given to Indigenous peoples, local and traditional communities, land reform beneficiaries, and youth groups. Also, at least 50 percent of the food purchased for PNAE must come from women farmers. 

In 2023, the PAA funded 2,280 projects in more than 1,000 municipalities, spending 12 million real ($2.13 million) to purchase and distribute 94,000 tons of food. Eighty percent of the 380 types of food it distributed was fresh fruit and vegetables. All of PAA’s distribution programs are managed autonomously by civil society organizations.

“It shows the value we give to our food culture and the public markets to traditional foods, regional foods,” Porto said. 

The revival of the program by the current government has been accompanied by important innovations. Since 2023, government purchases support solidarity community kitchens, which are “almost the only public program that can reach unhoused people living in the streets, a major issue for most Brazilian big cities” said Porto.

The webinar demonstrated that strengthened and equitable commercialization networks are fundamental to producers’ organizations to scale up agroecology and to ensure the right to healthy food for all people. It also demonstrates the role that public policies and programs must play in reshaping food systems. These initiatives, most with support from Agroecology Fund, show their power to weave a social fabric and strengthen territorial identity, generating creative solutions for resilient supply chains and healthy food. 

Learn more about Agroecology Fund grantee partners who participated in this conversation at the links below:

Learn more about Food Policies in Brazil and the role the PAA plays in fighting hunger.

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Billionaire Climate Donors’ Interest in Food and Agriculture Is Surging. That’s Helped This Fund Soar

The following article was published in Inside Philanthropy in July 2024. You can read the original here.

For an example of how climate philanthropy’s newest billionaire donors can supercharge veteran organizations with just a couple of checks, consider the Agroecology Fund. 

Founded in 2012, the Boston-based regrantor awarded a total of $10.5 million during its first decade — an average of just $1 million a year. Growth picked up in 2022, with a fundraising campaign, new regional initiatives and organic growth helping the fund to nearly double its all-time grantmaking over the following two years.

Then came the tech billionaires.

Laurene Powell Jobs’ climate outfit, Waverley Street Foundation, announced last November a four-year, $10 million grant to the fund. Then, this April, the Ballmer Group, Steve and Connie Ballmer’s grantmaking LLC, made an unrestricted, three-year, $9 million gift. 

The Agroecology Fund is now on track to give out about as much money in the next several years as it did in the last dozen — a sign that philanthropic interest in this space has spiked as the climate crisis pushes more funders, and particularly billionaire donors, to put money toward food system transformation. 

These new backers are a boon for agroecology, a term with many definitions that most broadly refers to agricultural approaches seeking sustainable coexistence of people and planet. Advocates and practitioners of agroecology — which has its roots in Indigenous food systems — have seen a funding swell over the last few years as donors look for equitable ways to decarbonize our food system, which by some measures accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. 

The Agroecology Fund not only serves as a barometer of this new interest; it embodies many of the major trends in climate philanthropy: funders’ wide range of focus areas, billionaire donors’ preference for regrantors, burgeoning support for localized grantmaking, nonprofit interest in government funding, and uncertainty about the future of the current billionaire funding boom. 

“More donor understanding of the importance of food systems”

The surging support for agroecology reflects a long-building swell of funder interest in movements within the food and agriculture space, largely driven by climate-focused funders, with increased resources flowing to related if distinct topics like regenerative agriculture — an area with a fast-growing new affinity group — and food system transformation. It adds up to an increasingly varied landscape of what we at IP sometimes call sustainable agriculture funders.

“You’re seeing more donors understanding of the importance of food systems to solve the climate crisis,” said Daniel Moss, who has been with the fund since its second year and now serves as codirector, sharing leadership with Angela Cordeiro.

Other billionaire philanthropies backing agroecology include the Walton Family Foundation and Lukas Walton’s Builders Initiative. Eric and Wendy Schmidt have also supported such work through their foundation and its 11th Hour Project (which is a fund member), and Wendy Schmidt wrote a 2022 op-ed for IP arguing that “philanthropy can seed agroecology.” Legacy foundations, like Rockefeller and McKnight (another fund member), have also been agroecology backers.

For the Waverley Street Foundation, the Agroecology Fund’s attention not just to land and ecosystems, but to people, was a key draw, said Kai Carter, head of international programs.

“To achieve lasting climate solutions, we must adopt multifaceted strategies that prioritize both people and the planet, ensuring that equity is at the core of our efforts,” Carter said in a statement.

Waverley’s grant will support research and advocacy by farmers, scientists, consumer groups and policymakers. The aim is to develop policies and public support to “scale up” agroecology as a climate solution. The fund is expected to secure another $6 million in matching funds.

Many reasons to fund agroecology, and climate generally

The Agroecology Fund traces its origins to 2012, when four colleagues from four foundations — the Christensen Fund, Swift Foundation, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation and New Field Foundation — came together to form a collaborative grantmaking vehicle at a time when such outfits were less common. (Today, the fund remains a fiscally sponsored project of Global Greengrants.)

Those founding members’ various focuses foreshadowed the fund’s appeal to a broad swath of philanthropy, and also mirrors the wide-ranging reasons that can pull foundations into climate philanthropy. Those focus areas spanned Indigenous communities, women’s empowerment, movement building and human rights — topics that are forefront in today’s climate conversation.

“That’s part of the beauty of agroecology,” Moss said. “There aren’t that many funders that are what you might describe as dyed-in-the-wool agroecology funders, but they see the intersectionality.”

The fund now has more than 50 donors, and they’re a diverse bunch. Members span foundations in the U.S. and abroad, multibillion-dollar institutions and unendowed regrantors, legacy funders and billionaire-backed operations. Some family foundation members make $20,000 grants to the fund, while a few big backers award millions of dollars, like Waverley and Ballmer.

Billionaires love regrantors

One of the most notable climate philanthropy trends in the past few years has been new billionaire donors’ reliance on regrantors, with megadonors like Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott and C. Frederick Taylor, the hedge funder who is the donor behind Sequoia Climate Foundation, as just a few examples.

The Agroecology Fund’s billionaire patrons — Powell Jobs and the Ballmers — have also taken this well-traveled path, including in their food and agriculture funding.

Waverley Street Foundation chose several such groups in its initial grantmaking, and it took the same approach in backing the Farm Bill, sending dollars to grantmaking intermediaries like the Regenerative Agriculture Foundation, as well as the new Platform for Agriculture and Climate Transformation and Farm Bill Grassroots Capacity Fund. 

Intermediaries are also playing a starring role in Ballmer’s climate portfolio. Awards include a $118 million grant to the Climate and Land Use Alliance, which works in similar regions and shares at least one grantee with the Agroecology Fund. Ballmer also made a four-year, $45 million grant to the One Acre Fund, which, while not exactly a regrantor, supports farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to address poverty and climate change.

Whether it’s the Agroecology Fund or other intermediaries, there are many reasons why billionaires are cutting substantial checks to such operations. Some of these new megadonors are still scaling up their operations and lack the capacity to make lots of grants; others want to get significant funding out the door quickly. They might also choose to fund through regrantors while building their strategy, or appreciate the trust-based practices and network impact of regrantors.

“Localized, decentralized, trust-based philanthropy”

Another big reason that billionaires favor regrantors? It allows them to get funding to small groups in communities around the world. Few funders, particularly newcomers, have the relationships to build their own grantee portfolios far from offices typically located in the U.S.

The Agroecology Fund is a prime example of this: It started its first regional fund, Fondo Agroecológico para la Península de Yucatán, in 2020 with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Next came the Bharat Agroecology Fund in India, which attracted support from the IKEA Foundation.

Now, the fund is setting up regional funds in Eastern and Western Africa through a partnership with TrustAfrica that also allows donors to send grant dollars directly to the continent.

“There’s been a really important trend in philanthropy… toward more localized, decentralized, trust-based philanthropy — and these regional funds made a lot of sense to” grantmakers, Moss said. While the fund had always accepted restricted funding, these regional funds also helped it attract support from grantmakers with particular geographic interests.

The Agroecology Fund’s fiscal sponsor, Global Greengrants, was one of the first and most widely regarded intermediaries to develop a network of grantees around the globe, including several branches that have since spun off into independent entities, such as Fundo Casa Socioambiental.

“Philanthropy is a bit player”

Funding from billionaires has reshaped the environmental funding landscape in recent years, but many nonprofits see the larger prize as securing government dollars. 

For some, that means applying for a slice of the hundreds of billions of dollars in funding flowing from the Inflation Reduction Act, while others are targeting financing from bilateral organizations like the Green Climate Fund. The Agroecology Fund is no exception. 

“Philanthropy often forgets it’s really a bit player,” Moss said. “The biggest single donor for agroecology in the world should be and is governments.”

While the fund does not advocate with governments, its grantees do. The fund is also part of the Agroecology Coalition, a group composed of dozens of governments, nonprofits, research institutions, philanthropies and multilateral institutions like the United Nations Development Programme and International Fund for Agricultural Development.

In June, the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development joined as the Agroecology Fund’s first bilateral development agency donor, with a four-year $1.5 million grant to support the new regional funds in West and Eastern Africa, as well as to explore the feasibility of an additional fund in Southeast Asia.

Like most regrantors, Moss sees plenty of potential to put more dollars to good use. “It’s not like there’s all this money chasing very few opportunities,” he said. “We are overwhelmed with many more fantastic opportunities.”

But will it all last?

Back in 2016, Moss was worried the fund’s growth was over. “We’ve hit the ceiling,” he kept thinking. He needn’t have worried: The organization has since more than tripled its budget. 

Yet like a lot of environmental organizations that have grown rapidly as billionaires jump into the field with massive commitments, Moss and the fund’s team are concerned about whether the good times will last. 

Moss said the fund has tried to both be “totally bullish” — its public mission, after all, is to “move massive amounts of money” into agroecology — but realistic, including making financial plans for both growth and retraction.

“A lot of times, following boom periods is a bust period, and it would be irresponsible if we grew too much without thinking ahead,” he said.

Read more about Agroecology Fund’s plea to climate philanthropists to invest in grassroots agroecology movements in our op-ed for Alliance Magazine. 

Why climate philanthropy must increase funding to grassroots agroecology movements

The following article was published in Alliance Magazine in July 2024. You can read the original here.

Constructing climate-friendly, healthy food systems that are good for the planet and people remains one of humanity’s great challenges.

The ‘modern’ food systems put in place over the past century – with many technologies and trade rules imposed in colonial fashion – have taken a toll on ecosystems, nutrition, income, and rights protections of smallholder farmers and Indigenous peoples. Peer-reviewed research assigns approximately 33 percent of greenhouse gas emissions to industrial agriculture, meaning that, without a radical reshaping of food systems, we are unlikely to stabilize the Earth’s climate.

Currently, less than two percent of global philanthropic giving goes toward climate mitigation, and only three percent of all climate finance is allocated to food systems, an even smaller fraction to farmer, fisher, or Indigenous-led organizations. Robust scientific and case studies show how agroecology-based food systems contribute to climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.

Multiple lines of evidence converge and demonstrate that success factors for increased resilience are not only the reliance on ecological principles but, importantly, on the social aspects, particularly on the co-creation and sharing of knowledge and traditions that lead to improved climate change adaptive capacity.

A Call for Increased Climate and Food Systems Transformation Funding

As the world faces a polycrisis – increased hunger, loss of biodiversity, and climate-related disasters – it’s imperative that we see a massive increase in financial investments in climate and food systems transformation. A global transition to regenerative and agroecological approaches can support a cascade of positive outcomes from stable yields, crop resilience and higher incomes for farmers, fishers, and food producers to improved nutrition and food security and enhanced biodiversity.

In December 2023, at the launch of COP28, the Agroecology Fund, along with 25 leading philanthropies, issued a joint call for a tenfold increase in funding for regenerative and agroecological transitions to address urgent global agricultural and environmental challenges. These philanthropies aligned around a shared ambition to catalyze a transition to 50 percent regenerative and agroecological systems by 2040, and to ensure all agriculture and food systems are transitioning by 2050.

However, it is not enough to shift financial flows; supporting participatory, democratic, local governance of funding and financing are critical to ensuring current and historic uneven power dynamics aren’t replicated.

Those closest to the impacts of the climate crisis have the solutions that are right for their communities and demonstrate how to move agroecological food systems forward. That’s why in addition to a global fund, the Agroecology Fund is incubating four regional funds. A territorial approach to change is required for true global transformation to occur, and that’s not possible without deeper funding of grassroots movements.

The Agroecology Fund works to strengthen relationships among a diverse pool of funders – now over 50 – to respond to the creativity and needs of grassroots agroecology movements. With increased interest from funders in supporting participatory models of grantmaking to invest in climate solutions at local levels, the fund has been able to significantly expand their network of support for collaboratives around the world.

But it can’t just be about mobilizing philanthropic funding – it will never be enough and it cannot be held publicly accountable. That is why we collaborate with bilateral and multilateral agencies as well as governments and private investors through mechanisms like the Agroecology Coalition. We aim to constantly remind donors and investors that their funding ought to be deployed for climate solutions at the grassroots and territorial levels.

Deepening Grassroots Movements

In late 2023, Waverley Street Foundation and Agroecology Fund partnered to support collaborative research and advocacy among agroecology and climate justice networks and, through them, among farmers, scientists (biophysical and social), consumer groups, and policymakers, to explore how to strengthen an enabling policy environment to scale up agroecology as a climate solution. This $16M investment shifts major funding into grassroots and climate advocacy collaboratives. 

This partnership builds on learnings and momentum from an eight country Latin American and Caribbean participatory action research initiative supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre. The resources provided by the Waverley Street Foundation initiative deepen the Agroecology Fund’s capacity for decentralized, trust-based grantmaking and extends the participatory action research methodology to Agroecology Fund partners in Asia (India and Indonesia), Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa), Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and USA) and Europe (France), building on successes and momentum.

Certainly, a burning question we all ask ourselves in these times of crises is how do we design and implement public policies for truly climate resilient food systems? This initiative is unprecedented in its size, scope and methodology. The iterated process of participatory action research and advocacy will also contribute to strengthening the agency of civil society in food systems governance and can catalyze transformative shifts in public budgets.

A Call for Support

The Agroecology Fund continues to strengthen relationships among a diverse pool of funders to respond to the creativity and needs of agroecology movements. The recent spike in interest and investment from major philanthropies is immensely hopeful, as is the deepening collaboration with other public and private investors.

The world sits in a precarious place, and deepening investments in grassroots movements that build truly just and sustainable food systems is essential. We call on the greater climate philanthropy community to seize this moment and dramatically increase funding of grassroots movements whose work is rooted in research and learning processes that result in effective solutions for local contexts. Without funding frontline communities, we fear that our efforts to build climate-resilient food systems will be thwarted.

Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti (MAJLIS) with tribal families. Madhya Pradesh, India. Photo Credit: Sayali Dongare

National Agroecology Planning in East Africa: Takeaways from Cultivating Change Gathering in Arusha, Tanzania

Agroecology Fund grantees, staff, and allies recently participated in an inspiring agroecology gathering in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. This “Cultivating Change” conference, co-organized by Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Biovision Foundation, and the Agroecology Coalition, featured East Africa governments and civil society organizations (CSOs) presenting their emerging agroecology plans, with aspirations to muster public and private financing to support implementation. CSOs and researchers spoke to the urgency and possibility of transitioning food systems damaged by Green Revolution agricultural practices and policies. Colleagues from India – some representing the renowned Andhra Pradesh state program on Community-Managed Natural Farming and others affiliated with the Bharat Agroecology Fund – shared the powerful Indian experience with advancing agroecology.

Key takeaways from the gathering:

Planning in partnership is essential. Public leadership is essential for a sustainable food systems transition. Governments should be applauded for crafting national agroecology plans in partnership with NGOs and CSOs. However, professional NGOs may be different from community-based CSOs, and therefore, extra effort may be needed to ensure deep partnerships with civil society organizations, especially farmer organizations. At the end of the day, the plans must be meaningful to their farms, their diets, their livelihoods, and their rights. Fraught with power imbalances and political realities, it is not easy to get all actors in a room to imagine and plan for a more just and sustainable food future. The Tanzanian gathering demonstrated the possibilities for inclusive planning, but there is still much to learn about how governments and CSOs can work hand in hand to include all perspectives – youth, Indigenous People, women, and more. National agroecology planning is an opportunity for farmer organizations to advocate and hold local and national governments accountable.

National agroecology plans need implementation and accountability mechanisms. Plan implementation responsibilities must be shared among CSOs and governments. Within plan frameworks, farmer organizations must be perceived as critical implementation partners – and receive public funding for their critical work. At the same time, an agroecology plan must be dynamic and transparent, adjusting to community aspirations and methods. There must exist ongoing consultation spaces in which civil society can engage with governments to evaluate how plans are progressing and suggest course corrections. Agricultural budgets must be transparent, including the budgets for perverse subsidies that can undermine agroecology plans. Strengthening the international community for agroecology may be a helpful complement to ensure national transparency and accountability. Tanzania and Uganda are both members of the Agroecology Coalition. Through the Agroecology Coalition’s tracking finance tool, countries can assess their agroecology programs and make transparent their agroecology investments.

Financing agroecological transitions requires new funds and repurposing existing subsidies. At the conference, we didn’t get a full picture of how much each government currently allocates to subsidies for Green Revolution approaches. The sum and impact are substantial. It is essential to look at the overall agricultural budget to discover where funds that are currently misallocated towards unsustainable practices can be repurposed for agroecology. If these subsidies are not redirected, they will render agroecology plans symbolic, never maturing beyond pilot programs. The donors currently underwriting Green Revolution subsidies, especially the development banks, must be encouraged to repurpose their investments. Governments may respond positively when development banks shift their incentives.

Effective allocation of agroecology monies requires flows to governments and CSOs. Unlike Green Revolution approaches, which centralize research and extension in an Agricultural Ministry and within the private sector for sales of fertilizers, seeds, and pesticides, agroecology uses a very different approach. The core requirement to scale agroecology is horizontal, through representative farmer associations and networks. Co-creation with farmers sits at the center. Since most bilateral and multilateral funds flow through governments, it is essential that they build strong partnerships with farmer associations, organizations, and networks to implement priorities. Farmer organizations require funding to conduct their participatory research on appropriate bio-inputs, to develop small enterprises to process local foods, and to carry out farmer-to-farmer extension grounded in cultural norms. Therefore, governments must perceive donors’ direct support to these civil society organizations as a critical component of financing a national agroecology plan.

Agroecology planning must take place at national, municipal and regional governments to be effective. A national agroecology framework is essential. But since agroecology is at its core about territoriality and the ecological and cultural diversity within, implementation of programs and spending priorities must be centered in local governments. Importantly, it is with these local governments that civil society organizations have the most day-to-day contact and with whom they can have the most advocacy influence. As Kenya is demonstrating, agroecology plans shouldn’t only be national but municipal and regional as well.

A human rights frame must inform agroecology planning. Agroecology is not only a set of agricultural practices but a holistic approach to a sustainable and equitable food system. Safeguarding rights to natural resources, such as land and water, is an essential part of agroecology and advances national food sovereignty, community rights, and stewardship. Agroecology plans must include rights dimensions for all, particularly for youth, women, and Indigenous Peoples.

Track agroecology progress through appropriate metrics. With climate financing emerging as a possibility to underwrite an agroecological transition, metrics require evidence of carbon capture. It is necessary to inquire: Evidence by whom, for whom? It has been amply demonstrated that healthy soils capture carbon. Likewise, research shows that soils are healthier with polycultures rather than monocultures. Rather than agroecology plans requiring that farmers produce hard-to-obtain data on carbon capture gathered by third-party consulting firms, farmers’ own proxies can provide sufficient evidence. These must be accepted data points to track progress on agroecology plans. Nations can also show carbon capture through soil rejuvenation in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and as part of Nature Based Solutions (NBS) strategies.

Donors are essential and must respond to community-led solutions. The Global Alliance for the Future of Food’s Report, Cultivating Change, “estimates annual transition costs (to agroecology and regenerative approaches) to be USD 250 to 430 billion, which is notably less than current agricultural subsidies”. In the face of this considerable financing gap, contributions from donors and investors are critical complements to tax revenues and other national mechanisms to finance the agroecological transition. Donors were warmly welcomed at the Arusha gathering to gain a better understanding of where their funds are most needed. At the same time, we know that donor-driven initiatives are not sustainable in the long term. Donors’ most important job is to listen and respond generously to community-led solutions.

The Cultivating Change conference was a landmark event to accelerate agroecology planning and implementation while backing it up with finance. Governments, NGOs, CSOs, and donors of various stripes came together to explore how to advance an agroecological transformation. It was an excellent learning lab for how to support a very challenging process. Let’s continue to reflect on the lessons from this illuminating gathering to deepen support for inclusive agroecology planning across the globe.

Nancy Mugimba, National Coordinator of grantee partner Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers’ Forum Uganda (ESAFF Uganda). Photo Credit: Benson Eliamani

How to Finance an Agroecology Transition: Innovations in Accessible and Affordable Credit Systems For Grassroots-led Enterprises

Sri Lanka’s civil war lasted a quarter century and left the island nation in ruins. Tens of thousands were killed or displaced, vital infrastructure was destroyed, and social movements, once strong, faced enormous challenges. 

In this context, how can an agroecology transition, rooted in community initiatives, be financed? Civil society organizations across the world, working in challenging contexts, are asking this same question. 

An inspiring example of a way forward is the work of the Northern Cooperative Development Bank, or NCDB. In 2019, NCDB, was established with a federation of 1200 rural cooperatives that is modeled on a development bank. The need to rebuild rural livelihoods and revitalize social institutions was dire. Movement leadership was essential to lead an agroecology transition.

NCDB is fully owned by the cooperatives. The development bank arm provides “all the support necessary, whether it’s technology, marketing, or research to grow the movement,” said Dr. Ahilan Kadirgamar, sociology senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna, who helped create the bank and chairs its international advisory board. Kardirgamar spoke on a recent Agroecology Fund webinar about how to finance the agroecology transition. 

This webinar, the second in the Agroecology Economies series, was attended by 399 people from 76 countries. We heard from 4 grantee partners and two allies about experiments with new credit models and innovative financial mechanisms for an inclusive economy fit for a large-scale agroecological transition while grounded in the particularities of territories. 

NCDB created a revolving loan fund, and in 2023 lent $1.3M of its $1.68M fund to members of cooperatives, which range in size from dozens to thousands of farmers and fishers. NCDB also engages in joint ventures with cooperatives, such as for coconut oil milling or rice production, to minimize the risks of small industries undertaking value-added activities. NCDB leveraged state funds to purchase $720,000 of rice directly from farmers and provided financing to mill and market, repair and redeploy 13 farm vehicles, as well as to refurbish a fish meal plant.

Worldwide, smallholder farmers and cooperatives face similar challenges accessing the credit they need to improve production, develop value-added processing facilities and access markets for their products—regardless of how they farm. Often, the only credit they can access has extremely high interest rates, is tied to conventional production methods, or requires unreasonable collateral.  Though NCDB’s credit system isn’t directed 100% towards farmers transitioning to agroecology, it offers an illuminating model.  

Speakers from Cameroon, Benin, and Brazil also shared their approaches to providing affordable credit to farmers transitioning to agroecological production—or, as Dr. Rajeswari Raina, professor at Siv Nadar University, wisely remarked, “agroecology transition(s), because every landscape, culture, and food production system is different.”

In Cameroon, Madame Elisabeth Antagana, President of Concertation Nationale des Organisations Paysannes au Cameroun (CNOP-CAM), described a revolving loan fund to support its members. In this case, the fund operates out of one farmer cooperative and provides low-interest loans to its individual members.

CNOP-CAM

CNOP-CAM partners with the government and other NGOs on rural development, and, in 2021, began partnering with Agroecology Fund to focus on women and young farmers practicing agroecology.  With a second grant in 2023, they created a revolving fund to facilitate access to credit for women farmers.

“We would like to contribute to growing [agricultural] production, building technical capacity for women and youth, and also train them on the commercialization of agroecological products,” said Elisabeth Antagana, CNOP-CAM President. 

Meanwhile, the Research and Action Group for Well-Being in Benin, GRABE Benin, a nonprofit organization focused on sustainable and ecological development, helped rural women set up a self-managed savings system, or “Caisses Communautaires,” which empowers women to help one another.

GRABE-Bénin

“Rural women have a lot of challenges contributing to household expenses and usually it comes down to the lack of livelihood and challenges in accessing financing,” said Géraldine Viwaylde, of GRABE Benin.“To get a loan or a credit from microfinance institutions, you have to jump through hoops and [get] huge interest rates, and that’s very difficult for women to pay back.”

Women participating in the community fund meet weekly. They pool their resources and issue low-interest loans to one or more women who want to implement a small enterprise project, farm, or buy farming equipment.

“It allows them to farm crops that have been used for ages in the local areas and that are cheaper to produce,” noted Viwaylde.

The fund is run by a committee of seven members from different organizations. Three manage the loans and negotiate partnerships with financial institutions. 

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, or MST, has multiple programs that finance farmers transitioning to agroecology.  FINAPOP finances cooperatives in land reform areas in Brazil. It was created in 2021 in response to worsening food security brought on by the pandemic. FINAPOP makes it possible for any Brazilian citizen to invest his/her savings in farmers cooperatives moving towards an agroecology transition. The aim is not just profit but, above all, to provide healthy food on a scale that is accessible to all citizens, especially those who are socially vulnerable.

“FINAPOP is the main instrument under land reform to fund organic production and strengthen the agroecology transition,” said Luis Carlos Costa, FINAPOP. 

FINAPOP offers three lines of credit: capital expenditure for buying machinery or for longer-term investments to develop local industries, working capital loans for well-established cooperatives, and seed capital for cooperatives that are in their early stages.

Since its inception, FINAPOP has carried out 85 financings, totaling 59.2 million reais (~US$12 million), distributed to 53 cooperatives and associations and agrarian reform settlements, reaching 25,000 people across the country. 

The Agrarian Reform Association of Parana State, ACAP-PR, another MST affiliate, joined other civil society organizations to educate elected Deputies to promote agroecology. In June 2023, the State Assembly of Deputies created the Parliamentary Coalition for Agroecology and Solidarity Economy. This group has approved 30 million reais (~6 million dollars) to the 2024 State Budget to support an agroecology transition.

Paraná laws require school lunch programs to procure food grown by family farmers using agroecological production methods. By 2030, 100% of the food provided by 2,000 municipal and state-run schools must use agroecological food, preferentially from family farmers. Despite that mandate, many school lunch programs in Paraná, and especially those in smaller municipalities, are not able to procure agroecologically-produced food.

ACAP-PR

“Production is still conventional,” in the smaller municipalities, explained Marcos Pereira, of ACAP-PR. “We have to do awareness building with the rank-and-file farmers, capacity building, and training to scale agroecological production. It is a long process.” 

Other speakers discussed challenges they’ve faced and how they’re overcoming them. Several spoke about climate change.

“We have losses of crops because of climate change,” said Costa from FINAPOP. “In Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil, there is a serious crisis with flooding in the entire state, and many cooperatives have lost their areas and their structures. We need a fund that can cover these moments of crisis and losses.” 

In Cameroon, “The demand is very high. There’s a need to mobilize more resources to scale the project,” said Antagana. CNOP-CAM also wants to expand its financial training so that more women can negotiate with financial institutions. 

Governance is a critical concern. “It’s essential to have transparency and accountability regarding the investments from fundraising, from investors and linking them to the final product,” noted Costa.

Each program has tailored its own approach to loan monitoring and risk mitigation. Kardirgamar, for example, said that due to NCDB’s ability to restructure loans, “non-performing loans are near zero.”  

However, building a “culture of cooperativism” presents challenges, said Costa. Kardirgamar agreed, noting that cooperative rebuilding and reconstruction take precedence in Sri Lanka. “When we’re thinking about this agroecological transition, you have to first stabilize the farmers. Otherwise, it’s very unfair to ask them to take more risks.” 

Ultimately, “strong and committed policy reform and high levels of public budgets [for] agroecological transitions” are necessary. That, and a redefining of finance and capital,” Dr. Raina said. “It’s not about ‘getting returns on investment’ but about ‘sharing and caring for natural and social systems.” She also highlighted the importance of testing and practicing decentralized systems and the need to combine scales, from the micro to medium to macro level.

You can access the recording of the webinar and subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates about the next webinar in our Agroecology Economies Series.

Participatory Guarantee Systems for Accessible Agroecology Markets: Learning for a Way Forward

In the Brazilian Cerrado, the world’s most biodiverse tropical savanna, traditional and Indigenous communities have been harvesting a bean pod called faveira for selling into markets for decades. However, local families earned very little money for their harvests due to low yields and the low quality of their products until the 2000s, when Cerrado Agroecological Development Center (CEDAC), an agroecology association that works to strengthen traditional communities and conserve socio-biodiversity, began working with small farmers to develop sustainable management practices. 

CEDAC conducted an evaluation and proposed a management plan emphasizing sustainable fruit collection, elimination of child labor, equal rights for women in establishing and setting prices, and no more land burning, said Alessandra Karla da Silva, CEDAC Coordinator. “We began in 2002 with two native species and 300 families with participatory monitoring, with the objective of creating collective work for the sustainability of local peoples.”

CEDAC’s management protocol evolved into a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), a locally focused, quality assurance system designed to make organic, healthy foods accessible to all. PGS are an alternative to third-party certification, which can be costly for small-scale farmers and consumers alike.

By 2012, CEDAC had created a PGS network covering 7,000 families, based on their sustainable management protocol. The Ministry of Agriculture accepted CEDAC’s collaborative certification program, or PGS, allowing families to sell their products with Brazil’s organic seal.

“Participatory guarantee systems, in addition to guaranteeing quality with a seal, generate local knowledge systems and empower local people to take control of information about methods that are fundamental for them to improve their quality of life,” said Laércio Meirelles, an agronomist, agroecologist, and facilitator of the Latin American PGS Forum.

Centro de Desenvolvimento Agroecológico do Cerrado (CEDAC)

The main idea is “a democratic and inclusive organic food market” that is accessible and affordable for everyone, including small family farmers and low-income urban populations worldwide, continued Meirelles. “We are not comfortable with the idea of producing healthy food that’s for the elite.” 

Meirelles, Karla da Silva, and six Agroecology Fund grantee partners gathered to discuss their approaches to PGS on an Agroecology Fund webinar moderated by Agroecology Fund Advisor Georgina Catacora-Vargas, that was attended by nearly 600 people from 88 countries, and was translated in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. The webinar was the first in the Agroecological Economies webinar series that will continue throughout the year. The conversation focused on grassroots experiences with PGS as a way to strengthen access to markets and trust between consumers and producers. Participants described PGS with differing structures and norms depending on the needs and circumstances of local communities.

“What is now known as PGS began much earlier in the agroecological movement as a way of resisting expensive, one-sided international auditing systems that were alien to local realities. At the time, we called it participatory certification, bringing farming families to the forefront of the process. More than an economic tool, one of the principles at the root of the PGS is to build relationships of trust and knowledge exchange, involving producers and consumers.”

Angela Cordeiro, Co-Director, Agroecology Fund

First, how do you get PGS going?

Jayakumar Chelaton, founder of Thanal Trust in India, said that setting up a PGS is “not a complicated process.”  

“It is a lot of participation and people taking leadership, coming together, doing collective work and also collectively bargaining for better prices for markets and access in markets.”

A minimum of five farmers are needed to form a group in India’s system, which was started by a civil society organization but is now run by the regional government, he said. The group signs a formal organic farming pledge and meets to determine its structure and processes. The government trains the group on organic production techniques and uploads the registration data to a digital platform. “Once the registration is completed, the farmer group can work on their own. If they don’t have the capacity, a Regional Council can help them,” said Chelaton.

Peer appraisals are carried out three times a year for any cropping season, and if everything is satisfactory, the group gets the certificate. Groups must meet every week or two to three times monthly, and every meeting should have 50 percent of the people attending. “We are making sure that there is a large participation of the democratic decision making in the group,” said Chelaton.

Rashida Kabanda, program assistant at Eastern and Southern Africa Small-scale Farmers’ Forum (ESAFF) Uganda, the largest small-scale farmer-led advocacy movement in Uganda, which represents more than 300,000 small-scale farmers, described a similar process. Fifteen to 20 people will typically come together to form a PGS, learn how it will function and register with ESAFF Uganda, she said. Then, the group works to design a shared vision after discussing the group’s environmental, political and economic situation.

Still image from  “Growing Together: The Journey on Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS)”, produced by ESAFF Uganda (In English)

“The whole group must agree that they’re looking for common organic markets, but the PGS is for everyone in the group. And then after that, they develop standards on how the PGS will work” and how they will govern it, said Kabanda. Group members pledge to follow the standards of the group and meet regularly to implement their plan. 

“They follow up with each other to know that each of them is producing organic products,” said Kabanda. ESAFF Uganda provides organic certificates and seals and created a resource guide for any farmers interested in forming a PGS.

Different PGS Models

PGS programs share goals of expanding sustainable land use, helping farmers find markets and educating consumers, but they can serve different communities — from rural farmers and harvesters to urban communities to seed savers.  

In Bolivia, AGRECOL Andes Foundation works with both rural farmers and urban farms, said Alberto Cardenas, who coordinates the Metropolitan program. “Unfortunately, the urban stain around the cities has been polluting the agricultural areas, so we’re implementing a metropolitan program to address this issue. It can be kitchen gardens, greenhouses, biointensive gardening… any other agroecological production method.”

Semilla Nativa Colombia meanwhile created a participatory process to guarantee that seeds are produced under agroecological mechanisms, are free of transgenics and copyrights, and are adaptable to local conditions. The group supports PGS through regional seed custodian schools. Researchers, farmers, and promoters work together on the implementation and expansion of PGS and also on developing technical capacities to resolve production problems, especially related to the new climate dynamics and government regulation, said Carol Rojas Vargas, ecologist, seed saver, and founder of Semilla Nativa. 

“With the system, we guarantee that the seeds are produced by the families who are custodians of the seeds, and they are kept in these communities, seed houses, and by local farmers.”

Semilla Nativa Colombia

The Dyikan Muras Seed Savers Network in Kyrgyzstan similarly developed a PGS for organic seeds to revitalize native vegetable production, said Aida Jamangulova, Director of the Agency for Development Initiatives in Kyrgyzstan. The network strives to improve seed quality and educate consumers about locally produced vegetable seeds. 

“There’s a bias that they’re not as good as imported seeds,” said Jamangulova. “Another challenge is the lack of knowledge on seed production, especially among small-scale female farmers, who make up the majority of their 700 members.  

In 2015, they began training women farmers in agroecological schools and cultivating seed plots.  Farmers cannot sell native seeds, but they can share them and market the agricultural product that comes from the organic seeds.  

The group implemented a PGS system after seeing India’s system, said Jamangulova. They developed PGS guidelines covering soil, biodiversity, irrigation, weeds, pests, diseases and other topics and created a PGS Committee, which includes three farmers, one consumer and one agronomist. Farmers are evaluated by the committee. 

“We like the participatory approach,” said Jamangulova, who is now working on legislation for its seed PGS to be recognized by the government.

Government recognition 

Brazilian law recognizes PGS, which, while not crucial for expansion, has helped CEDAC expand its reach. Close to 1,000 farm communities, spread across 5,000 hectares of organic agriculture and 875,000 hectares of sustainable harvesting in the Cerrado ecoregion of Brazil have developed PGS using CEDAC’s seals and scopes of certification for gender equity and agroecology — which now cover 173 native species and 100 forest products. Some of those PGS are even accepted by international markets, said Karla da Silva.  

Similarly, partnering with the government of Kerala helped India’s PGS expand its reach 10-fold, said Chelaton, gain consumer confidence and address other challenges. “There was always the issue of funding, the issue of acceptance by the government agency implementing the Food Safety Act, and how to convince the health authorities that we are organic agriculture, what our program is and how we do it.”

AGRECOL Andes Foundation, working with local authorities, utilizes two seals for ecological production with the 68 PGS groups in its network. Additionally, PGS groups sell directly to local governments, such as school breakfasts, and sign agreements with municipal governments to organize local agroecology fairs, said Cardenas.

In Ecuador, the Agroecological Collective has found that “integrating local government authorities as well as schools or academic institutions” into PGS helps guarantee greater sustainability, said Roberto Gortaire Amézcua, founder and member of the Advisory Council of the Collective.  Additionally, “local ordinances or legal frameworks that have been implemented allowing for local governments and ministries to invest in the cities and local political will,” help PGS succeed, he said. 

While government support can help groups expand their reach, it isn’t always desired because there are trade-offs that come with government recognition, cautioned Mierelles. “It’s important to get state recognition without losing sight of the principle of simplicity,” for PGS he said. “We need simplicity because it will be understood by everyone.” 

Regulators “demand forms to be filled out based on the social cultural norms of those bureaucrats as opposed to the peoples and communities who are working with these organic products,” he continued.

CEDAC, in fact, is facing several challenges, including getting traditional peoples’ landholdings legally recognized in government computer systems for non-timber products, as well as gaining acceptance for oral communications in the PGS registry.

Gaining Social Recognition

For Meirelles, social recognition is more important than legal recognition. “We need to create a strategy for communicating with society, communicating with people, for them to recognize the efforts we’re making to generate quality food and the effort we’re making to ensure the quality of those products.”

But getting that social recognition can be difficult, said Kabanda. “Finding markets can be hard so sometimes farmers end up selling at the same price as others who aren’t in the PGS,” she said. “They do marketing analysis, how they will find their markets for themselves and how they’ll convince these markets to buy their organic products.” 

AGRECOL Andes Foundation works to gain social acceptance through both short market and long market circuits, said Cardenas. That includes local direct sales, house to house sales, a Whatsapp group, stores, mobile stores, fairs, and markets in urban and rural areas. They also sign agreements with municipal governments. 

“There is good agroecological production. PGS is becoming more recognized,” he said. “We also work very closely with the consumers because they have to be involved in the PGS.” Activities include tastings that educate people about agroecological production and help consumers understand the problems of the rural people. 

“You can break the myth that agroecological product is more expensive and help farmers to generate their own income,” said Cardenas.

You can access the full recording in multiple languages here. The next webinar in our Agroecological Economies series, How to Finance an Agroecology Transition, will take place on May 30th, 2024. Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know when registration begins.

LEARN MORE!

To learn more about our speakers’ work, we invite you to explore the following links:

OTHER RESOURCES

We invite you to take a look at the following resources produced by Agroecology Fund allies and grantees about Participatory Guarantee Systems:

124 Food and Agriculture Organizations to Watch in 2024!

The following was published on Food Tank in December of 2023. You can read the original here. Contributing authors: Liza Greene, Elena Seeley, and Alessandra Uriarte

The food and agriculture movement made incredible strides over the last year—but our work isn’t done yet!

The ambition to transform food systems is demonstrated every day by networks building capacity for farmers and ranchers, organizations forming unusual partnerships to achieve shared goals, programs giving voice to youth, and initiatives investing in community-led innovations and solutions. These groups are continuing to push for food and agriculture systems that are economically, socially, and environmentally just and equitable. Food production and consumption that ensures everyone has access to healthy, affordable, culturally relevant, and delicious food. And they are calling on everyone to take part in their work!

As we head into the new year, here are 124 organizations to follow, engage with, and support in 2024.

1. Act4Food, International

A youth-led organization bringing youth from across the globe, Act4Food, Act4Change utilizes the power of youth to advocate for a sustainable food system. With a focus on personal actions and a set of prioritized Actions 4 Change, the campaign aims to influence governments and businesses to address food accessibility, climate change, and human rights.

2. Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), Africa

AFSA is an alliance uniting civil societies dedicated to promoting agroecology and food sovereignty across Africa. The Alliance is rooted in values for fair and inclusive development, harmonious coexistence with nature, and the empowerment of local communities. “[Social] cohesiveness is very critical when you’re attacked by a climate crisis,” says Million Belay, General Coordinator for AFSA. “You can mobilize together. You can help each other.”

3. Arrell Food Institute, Canada

The Arrell Food Institute focuses on addressing global food security challenges through research, innovation, and policy development. The Institute aims to advance sustainable and nutritious food production systems, improve food distribution and access, and contributes to policy discussions.

4. Asian Farmers Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA), Asia

AFA works to empower and strengthen the capacities of leaders and technical staff to increase resilience and combat hunger. They engage in policy advocacy, capacity building, knowledge management, and sustainability initiatives. And the organization recently partnered with organizations to host the Global Conference of Family Farmers for Climate Action in Italy.

5. Audubon Society, United States

Recognizing the link between food systems and wildlife conservation, the Audubon Society launched the Conservation Ranching Initiative. Ranchers that adhere to the program’s standards earn use of the Audubon Certified bird-friendly seal, a product label connecting consumers to conservation by confirming beef and/or bison products come from lands managed for birds and biodiversity.

6. Ayudando Latinos A Soñar, United States

Ayudando Latinos A Soñar is Latino-centered nonprofit in California that helps children and families feel pride in their identity. When record levels of precipitation triggered extreme floods that devastated agricultural communities, ALAS was among the first organizations to respond and help the region’s farm workers and their families.

7. Beans is How, International

Mobilized by the SDG2 Advocacy Hub, Beans is How is a campaign to highlight the importance of beans as an affordable and simple solution to health, environment, and financial challenges across the globe. Their goal is to double the global consumption of beans, peas, lentils, and other pulses by 2028.

8. Better Soil, Better Lives, Africa

Founded by Roland Bunch, Better Soils, Better Lives, has a goal to triple the productivity and mitigate droughts for at least 70 percent of the small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa over the next 20 years. The organization introduces beneficial plants called green manure/cover crops which fertilize the soil, control weeds, and respond to periods of drought.

9. Black Urban Growers, United States

Black Urban Growers (BUGs) is dedicated to fostering a robust community that supports cultivators in urban and rural environments, while nurturing Black leadership. The organization’s 2023 Annual National Conference was held in Philadelphia, to connect, collaborate, and delve into the world of Black agriculture and food systems.

10. Black Dirt Farm Collective, United States

The Black Dirt Farm Collective is dedicated to mobilizing personal, cultural, and technical capacities of Black agrarian communities. The Collective works to bridge gaps among generations, advocate for socio-cultural education grounded in wisdom and nature, and empower historically marginalized individuals. They are a recipient of the 2023 Food Sovereignty Prize.

11. Blackwood Educational Land Institute, United States

This nonprofit teaching farm aims to inspire the next generation of farmers and ecologists. By promoting restorative agricultural practices and instilling a strong work ethic in youth, the Institute fosters awareness of the critical role regenerative food systems play in addressing environmental challenges.

12. Blue Food Assessment, International

The Blue Food Assessment is a joint initiative that brings together scientists from across the globe to support decision-makers to build equitable and sustainable blue food systems. They work to address gaps in understanding the roles of aquatic foods in the global food system, with a mission to educate and drive change in the policies and practices.

13. Bread for the World, United States

Bread for the World, a faith-based advocacy nonprofit, engages in partnership building and policy advocacy to try to address hunger in the U.S. and worldwide. The organization provides people with educational resources to help them advocate for policies and programs that will make it easier for those in need to access food. “I believe that no one wants children to go hungry. Nobody wants families to go hungry. Nobody wants farmers in urban and rural contexts to go hungry,” Reverend Eugene Cho, CEO and President of Bread for the World tells Food Tank.

14. CARE, International

CARE seeks to create an equitable world with hope, inclusivity, and social justice by working to improve basic education, increase access to quality healthcare and expand economic opportunity for women and girls across the globe. This year alone, the organization worked in 109 countries and reached 167 million women and girls from over 1,600 projects.

15. Centre d’Etude Régional pour l’Amélioration de l’Adaptation à la Sécheresse (CERAAS), Senegal

CERAAS works to improve quality of life in West and Central Africa and alleviate the negative impacts of drought and agricultural production to minimize food shortages. The organization’s goal is to increase farming productivity and economic growth by finding technologies and innovations suited to the climate and agricultural conditions of arid and semi-arid regions.

16. CGIAR, International

As the largest global agricultural innovation network, CGIAR is working to the transform food, land, and water systems. Operating as One CGIAR to take a cohesive, coordinated approach across all organizations in their network, they utilize research to drive science and innovation and tackle pressing global and regional challenges. Organizations under CGIAR include CIMMYT, which is focused on improved quantity, quality, and dependability of production systems and basic cereals. And The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT researches climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and malnutrition.

17. Chef Ann Foundation, United States

The Chef Ann Foundation offers professional development and district support to assist school districts establish, execute, and maintain self-operated, cook-from-scratch programs. Their Get Schools Cooking offers grants to districts that want to transition to scratch cooked meals. To date, the Foundation has reached 3.4 million children and 14,000 schools.

18. Community Food Navigator, United States

The Community Food Navigator fosters collaboration and strengthens connections between food growers, producers, educators, and consumers through trust and wisdom. To achieve their goal and achieve food sovereignty for the local community, they leverage digital tools that connect food systems stakeholders.

19. Community Servings, United States

Community Servings is providing scratch-made medically tailored meals to support individuals and their families who experience critical or chronic illness and nutrition insecurity. They also work closely with clients to provide nutrition education, counseling, food service job training through local foods initiatives. David Waters, CEO of Community Servings recently joined Food Tank at the Advancing Food is Medicine Approaches Summit—watch here.

20. CORAF, Africa

CORAF (the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development) is Africa’s largest sub-regional research organization to address pressing food and nutrition needs in West and Central Africa. Their work focuses on enhancing capacity, scaling technologies, facilitating access to technology, and supporting knowledge sharing to design solutions for producers. They also promote gender equity, youth empowerment, and market access.

21. Crop Trust, International

Crop Trust is dedicated to conserving plant genetic resources to promote sustainable agriculture and support global food security. The organization promotes an economically efficient global system of gene banks to ensure and advocates for an efficient global gene bank system.

22. Culinary Institute of America (CIA), United States

As a premier culinary college, the CIA seeks to encourage the next generation of leaders in the hospitality industry. “Essentially what we do is we lead the restaurant industry in terms of sustainability, nutrition, and public health and big ideas and food all through a lens of empathy, humanity and flavor,” Rupa Bhattacharya, Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives and Industry Leadership at the CIA, tells Food Tank. The school seeks ​to understand and promote its relationship to health, ​the environment, and a vibrant, and an equitable economy.​

23. DC Central Kitchen (DCCK), United States

DCCK works to combat hunger and poverty by providing culinary job training and creating living wage jobs for those facing employment barriers. The nonprofit operates social ventures, including serving scratch-cooked meals and increasing access to affordable produce — all rooted in values to build an equitable food system.

24. Decent Work for Equitable Food Systems Coalition, International

The International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and CARE International launched the Coalition to tackle poverty and inequality for food systems workers. Their work is focused on five priority areas: labor and human rights, employment creation, living wages, social protection, and social dialogue.

25. Demanda Colectiva, Mexico

The Demanda Colectiva has fought to protect Mexico’s native maize varieties, which are threatened by uncontrolled cross-pollination from genetically modified corn. This year, they were the recipient of the Pax Natura Foundation’s annual environmental prize.

26. EAT, International

EAT is a science-based organization focused on creating fair and sustainable food systems to keep the plant and everyone healthy. In collaboration with the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Harvard University, and OneCGIAR, they launched the EAT-Lancet 2.0 on healthy diets and sustainable food systems. EAT-Lancet 2.0 will be launched in 2024.

27. Edible Schoolyard Project, United States

The Edible Schoolyard Project offers experiential learning, connecting students to one another, nature, and food while addressing the climate crisis and health inequities. Founded by Chef Alice Waters, the organization has helped establish thousands of gardens across the U.S. “The foods that the kids cook really empowers them,” Waters tells Food Tank. “And they are changed by it.” Waters is also a strong proponent of leveraging the power of institutional procurement to support sustainable agriculture practices and strengthen local communities.

28. Environmental Defense Fund, United States

The Environmental Defense Fund is guided by science, economics, and a commitment to climate justice, to make the largest impact. The organization strives to tackle the climate crisis through innovative solutions to stabilize the climate, strengthen people and nature’s ability to thrive, and support people’s health. Their food systems work includes efforts to support sustainable fisheries, promote climate-friendly agriculture practices, and advance research on soil health.

29. Fairtrade International, International

Co-owned by more than 1.8 million farmers and workers, Fairtrade is a global organization working to ensure fairer prices for producers and support environmental sustainability. The Fairtrade system is made up of three regional producer networks that represent farmers and workers along with more than 25 national Fairtrade and marketing organizations and an independent certifier.

30. FAIRR Initiative, International

The FAIRR Initiative is a global network of investors that raises awareness of the environmental challenges and opportunities in the food sector. They focus on providing research and coordinator policy action for their members so that investors can make informed decisions and unlock the resources needed for food systems transformation.

31. Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), United States

FLOC empowers farm workers to have a voice in decisions that impact them. What began as a small group of farm workers in northwest Ohio has since grown to include thousands of workers around the country. The union educates farm workers on their labor rights, resolves grievances on farms, and creates community organizing committees.

32. Fed By Blue, United States

As a science-based communications initiative, Fed By Blue aims to transform blue food systems through empowerment, education, and policy and practice. In 2024, PBS will air Hope in the Water, a three part documentary series that is part of a larger impact campaign led by the organization. The series uncovers creative solutions that can protect threatened seas and fresh waterways while feeding future generations.

33. First Nations Development Institute, United States

The First Nations Development Institute works to empower Native economies and promotes economic development for individuals and communities. With diverse support, the institute focuses on financial empowerment, investment in youth, stewarding native lands, and fostering sustainable growth for Native Americans.

34. Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), International

FOLU’s global community of change-makers strive to revolutionize the system by promoting equitable access to food, fostering social justice, and strive for a net-zero, nature-positive world. The organization relies on evidence and science-based solutions to empower farmers, policymakers, businesses, investors, and civil society in driving widespread change.

35. Food Chain Workers Alliance, United States & Canada

The Food Chain Workers Alliance is a coalition of labor-focused organizations working to improve working conditions and wages for those employed in the food chain. The Alliance advocates for fair compensation and recognition for all food workers, to ensure livable wages, promote cooperative ownership, and healthy and affordable food production.

36. Food Is Medicine Institute, United States

This year, the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University launched its Food is Medicine Institute. With a focus on Food is Medicine interventions, the Institute will serve as a catalyst to drive change, improve health, reduce health disparities, and establish a more equitable health system that prioritizes the power of food.

37. Food Recovery Network, United States

This collective of youth-led chapters engage college students in food recovery efforts. By redirecting surplus food to those in need, the organization strives to fight hunger, reduce food waste, and promote equity in food and agriculture systems. They operate on 179 campuses in 44 states and Washington D.C.

38. Food Systems for the Future, International

Food Systems for the Future envisions a world free of malnutrition where environmentally and economically sustainable food systems provide equitable access to affordable, nutritious food for all. Their work focuses on business acceleration, public policy and education, partnerships and community engagement, and investment capital. “It is essential to unlock the capital that is necessary for food systems transformation as well as the capital for a humanitarian response,” says Ertharin Cousin, President and CEO of Food Systems for the Future.

39. Forum For Farmers and Food Security (3FS), International

3FS is a global coalition dedicated to driving tangible action to transform food and agriculture systems. Together, we seek to improve global food and nutrition security while illuminating the inextricable link between food systems, both on land and sea, and climate resilience. “Let’s make sure the farmer is making money and living well,” Craig Cogut Founder, Chair, and CEO of Pegasus Capital—a partner of 3FS—tells Food Tank, “and then we can have nutritious, reliable food for all.”

40. Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), United States

FFAR supports collaboration to advance scientific research that provides every person with access to affordable, nutritious food produced on thriving farms. The Foundation funds research on topics including soil health, urban food systems, and sustainable water management in agriculture. They also offer fellowship, grant, and award programs to invest in developing the future scientific workforce.

41. Future Economy Forum, International

Launched by NOW Partners, the Future Economy Forum is a global platform working to raise awareness and scale solutions to create a new economic mainstream. Working together with partners, they develop Solutions Initiatives, which model and scale solutions to address critical challenges. Some of these Initiatives help to scale regenerative agriculture and B Corp Certification.

42. Future Food Institute, International

The Future Food Institute sees food as the primary form of cultural expression and a catalyst for change. The Institute has identified themes that must be to create prosperous food systems. These include circular systems, water safety and security, climate, nutrition security, and sustainable cities. At COP28, Sara Roversi, Director of the Future Food Institute joined Food Tank for a conversation on healthy and sustainable diets. Watch here.

43. Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), International

GAIN works to advance nutrition outcomes by improving the consumption of nutritious and safe food for all. They are one of the organizations behind the Initiative on Nutrition and Climate Change (I-CAN), which aims to accelerate transformative action at the intersection of climate and nutrition. During COP28, I-CAN released a baseline report to track solutions that integrate climate and nutrition.

44. Global Alliance for the Future of Food, International

By uniting philanthropic foundations, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food looks to build food systems that are renewable, resilient, equitable, healthy, and diverse. During COP28, the Global Alliance and their partners launched a toolkit to help countries translate global commitments into ambitious local action. “We’ve turned a page on climate denial. Now we must be careful not to submit to climate doomism and climate dithering,” says Anna Lappé, the organization’s Executive Director.

45. Global FoodBanking Network (GFN), International

Active in more than 50 countries, GFN uses food banking to nourish eaters and contribute to a world free of hunger. By supporting the capacity of food banks, they also work to reduce food loss and waste and strengthen the resilience of communities.

46. Global Seafood Alliance, United States

The Global Seafood Alliance is the nonprofit behind two certifications helping consumers choose more sustainable seafood: Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) and Best Seafood Practices (BSP). They also engage in advocacy and education to advance better seafood production practices and host the annual Responsible Seafood Summit.

47. GRACE Communications Foundation, United States

GRACE Communications Foundation aims to advance solutions to the greatest challenges in the food, environment, and public health sectors. GRACE is behind FoodPrint, a project that raises awareness of food systems issues through reports and other resources. One of FoodPrint’s latest publications looks at the impact of forever chemicals on food systems.

48. GRAIN, International

Working across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, GRAIN supports small farmers and social movements trying to achieve community-controlled food systems that prioritize biodiversity. Their programs aim to deepen public understanding of the forces shaping food systems by focusing on corporate control, land grabs, people’s control of seeds, and food sovereignty as a solution to the climate crisis.

49. Green Bronx Machine, United States

Green Bronx Machine offers health, cooking, culinary, and gardening programs to foster students’ interest in STEM, address food insecurity, support workforce development, and inspire healthy living. The nonprofit has partnered with EXPLR to support the 2024 National STEM Challenge, which will celebrate student-developed innovations that bring positive change to communities.

50. GrowNYC, United States

Through farmers markets, waste collection sites, educational programs, and more, GrowNYC aims to help New Yorkers lead healthier lives. They operate more than 50 farmers markets and 16 farm stands across New York City’s five boroughs. Earlier this year, GrowNYC workers successfully formed a union with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

51. Gwassi Integrated Farmers Advocacy, Kenya

Working in Homa Bay County in Kenya, the Gwassi Integrated Farmers Advocacy works to improve agricultural practices for improved food security and nutrition. The organization focuses on community organizing and grassroots advocacy, with an emphasis on youth involvement to support the next generation of farmers.

52. Harlem Grown, United States

Harlem Grown brings hands-on education in urban farming, sustainability, and nutrition to youth. The nonprofit is working to inspire the next generation to lead healthy lives. They currently have 13 urban agricultural facilities, school gardens, hydroponic greenhouses, and soil-based farms.

53. HEAL Food Alliance, United States

HEAL Food Alliance is a coalition of 55 multi-sector organizations working to build a more sustainable and equitable food system. They strive to build collective power that supports food producers while protecting the air, water, and land that everyone depends on. The organization recently released a report to advocate for value-based food purchasing to challenge corporate control in institutional procurement.

54. Healthy Schools Campaign, United States

The Healthy Schools Campaign develops program and policy recommendations that support healthy schools at the local, state, and national level. They also offer support to parents, students, and school staff and administrators to develop their leadership skills and help them advocate for health and wellness in the education sector.

55. Heifer International, International

By supporting and investing alongside local farmers and their communities, Heifer International is working to end hunger and poverty. Through the development of local partnerships, the organization supports farmer trainings that contribute to economic empowerment, particularly among women producers.

56. Heirloom Collard Project, United States

The Heirloom Collard Project is bringing attention to collards to ensure that they receive the recognition and respect as an important component of U.S. food culture. The researchers, farmers, chefs, artists, gardeners, and seed savers who contribute to the project work to preserve the seeds and stories of dozens of collard varieties.

57. IndigeHub, United States

Chef Bleu Adams founded IndigeHub to help Indigenous communities develop self-sufficiency and long-term success. “We thrive when we’re in balance, the Earth thrives when she’s in balance,” Adams tells Food Tank. “And that’s what we need to strive for.” To achieve this goal, the organization focuses on farmers and producers to address food insecurity and reintroduce Indigenous crops.

58. Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Americas

IICA works to encourage, promote, and support their 34 Member States achieve agricultural development and rural wellbeing. During COP28, the agency facilitated the Sustainable Agriculture of the Americas Pavilion, which featured conversations with food systems leaders including U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development Manuel Villalobos Arámbula, and Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture Karen Ross.

59. International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), Kenya

ICIPE conducts research on insects and other arthropods to develop and communicate affordable, accessible solutions to tackle crop pests and disease. At the start of 2024, Dr. Abdou Tenkouano, formerly the Executive Director of CORAF, will become the organization’s new Director General.

60. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), International

The research center of CGIAR, IFPRI focuses on providing research-based policy solutions to address poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. Their work encompasses five research areas: a climate-resilient and sustainable food supply, healthy diets and nutrition for all, inclusive and efficient markets and trade systems, the transformation of agricultural and rural economies, and strengthening institutions and governance.

61. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), International

To address the widening gap between the rich and the poor, the specialized U.N. agency IFAD supports rural communities’ efforts to increase their food and nutrition security and their incomes. The organization recently helped launch the Decent Work for Equitable Food Systems Coalition to tackle poverty and inequality for food systems workers.

62. International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), International

IPES-Food brings together an international group of researchers to inform the debate on global food systems reform. Recent reports from organization cover the relationship between the debt crisis and global food insecurity and the ways local governments are tackling the climate crisis through food. “Local governments…offer a blueprint for real people-centered climate action,” writes Nicole Pita, a Project Manager for IPES-Food.

63. James Beard Foundation (JBF), United States

JBF works to celebrate American food culture while pushing for new and better standards in the restaurant industry. They help chefs engage in policy advocacy around issues they are passionate about through opportunities including their Chef Bootcamp for Policy and Change and lobby days. JBF also celebrates achievements in the culinary arts, hospitality, media, and broader food system through their restaurant and chef, media, and leadership awards.

64. Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, United States

Operating out of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Center for a Livable Future is working to transform food systems and protect public health. Their work tackles a range of food systems issues including food equity, animal agriculture, urbanization, food waste, seafood, and healthy and sustainable diets. They also conduct research and outreach to reduce the negative impact of food systems on the environment and support climate resilience and adaptation strategies.

65. K’allam’p, Ecuador

By offering support to Indigenous communities, K’allam’p is working to inspire resilient food systems while strengthening the sovereignty of the Andean people of Ecuador. Their goal of K’allam’p is to spread its regenerative framework, and the sovereignty that follows, across the Andes region and beyond.

66. Kitchen Connection Alliance, International

The Kitchen Connection Alliance engages youth as protagonists of food systems change through advocacy, events, and educational resources. They aim to empower eaters and help them contribute to a better food empowerment. To educate young readers about the food system, they are planning the release of a new children’s book. The Alliance’s Director Earlene Cruz recently joined Food Tank at the Food and Agriculture as a Solution to the Climate Crisis Summit, held during NYC Climate Week—watch here.

67. La Via Campesina, International

Composed of more than 180 organizations across 80 countries, the international peasant movement La Via Campesina advocates for food sovereignty, environmental justice, and peasants’ rights. “If people don’t control the food, they don’t control the power,” Morgan Ody, the General Coordinator for La Via Campesina, tells Food Tank. This year, they officially expanded into the Arab and North Africa region, establishing the organization’s 10th region.

68. MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, United States

MAZON is an anti-hunger organization guided by Jewish values and ideals. They tackle food insecurity through policy advocacy, community engagement, community response fund, and strategic partnerships. In 2023, they launched their virtual Hunger Museum, which explores the history of food insecurity in the U.S. to inspire hope for a hunger-free future.

69. Milken Institute’s Feeding Change Program, United States

Feeding Change brings together food systems experts within the Milken Institute to build more nutritious, sustainable, resilient, and equitable food systems. Their Food Is Medicine Task Force aims to integrate food is medicine interventions into policy and finance to support nutrition security.

70. Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP), Haiti

With approximately 60,000 members, MPP is the largest peasant movement in Haiti. The grassroots organization advocates for the rights and interests of the country’s peasant farmers and rural communities. They are a recipient of the 2023 Food Sovereignty Prize.

71. Movement for Community-led Development in Liberia, Liberia

The Liberia chapter of the Movement for Community-led Development (MCLD) launched in 2020 to develop home-grown solutions to the country’s most pressing challenges. Through land redistribution and training programs, they are working to strengthen community bonds and increase producers’ collective power.

72. Muloma Heritage Center, United States

The Muloma Heritage Center is being developed to honor the past, present, and future of African Atlantic culture, cuisine, and traditions on St. Helena Island in the South Carolina Lowcountry. The project was co-founded by a group of chefs, agriculture experts, and artists including Adrian Lipscombe, Michael Twitty, and Tonya and David Thomas. Through the Center, the founders hope to make St. Helena an eco-tourism destination that can promote African Atlantic culture worldwide.

73. National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA), United States

A coalition of Black-led organizations, NBFJA is dedicated to developing Black leadership, supporting Black communities, organizing for Black self-determination, and creating the infrastructure needed for Black food sovereignty and liberation. Their work focuses on self-determining food economies, land, and Black food sovereignty.

74. National Young Farmers Coalition, United States

The National Young Farmers Coalition is working to shift power and change policies to empower the next generation of farmers. Their work addresses issues including land access, mental health, student loan debt, immigration and labor, and the climate crisis. Through their One Million Acres for the Future Campaign, they are calling on Congress to make a historic investment in the equitable access of 1 million acres of land for the next generation of farmers.

75. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), International

NRDC works to defend all life on Earth and the natural systems that support it. As part of their food systems work, they engage in advocacy to stop food loss and waste. They also launched the Chefs for Healthy Soils Program, an initiative that engages chefs to raise awareness of the link between soil health and resilient food systems. “Chefs are a compelling voice who can use their influence for good by advocating for policies that promote soil health,” Lara Bryant Deputy Director of Water and Agriculture for NRDC tells Food Tank.

76. Niman Ranch Next Generation Foundation, United States

Niman Ranch established the Niman Ranch Next Generation Foundation to help the children of farmers and ranchers continue their education. The Foundation has provided almost US$500,000 in grants to farmers like Aaron Williams, a sixth generation pig farmer.

77. North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS), North America

Chef Sean Sherman, the 2023 recipient of the Julia Child Award, created NATIFS to re-establish Native foodways and address the economic and health crises affecting Native communities. The organization recently established the Indigenous Food Lab, a professional Indigenous kitchen and training center, which also runs the Indigenous Food Lab Market.

78. One Fair Wage, United States

One Fair Wage works to eliminate sub-minimum wages across the United States and improve the working conditions for workers in the private sector. With their 25 by 250 Campaign, the organization is advocating for legislation and ballot measures in 25 states that will raise wages for millions of workers by 2026, which marks the 250th anniversary for the U.S.

79. Participant Media, United States

Participant Media is behind Oscar-nominated and Emmy-award winning documentary Food, Inc. and its sequel Food, Inc. 2. The films underscore the influence of corporations on the U.S. food system and the innovative leaders pushing for a more sustainable, equitable, resilient food future. Participant also helps eaters inspired by the films get involved through calls to action.

80. Planet Forward, United States

Planet Forward is a project of the Center for Innovative Media at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. Because they believe that environmental and science communication is needed now more than ever, they teach and celebrate environmental storytelling by college students.

81. Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), United States

By cultivating a network of producers across the state of Iowa, PFI is working to build resilient farms and communities. They support farmer-led research and education, offer personalized assistance to help farmers reach their goals, and conduct outreach to raise awareness to diversify the state’s agriculture system.

82. Project Bread, United States

Project Bread is on a mission to end hunger in Massachusetts through a combination of advocacy and programmatic work. Thanks to the advocacy work of Project Bread and their partners, Massachusetts became the 8th state in the U.S. to implement permanent universal free school meals.

83. Project Drawdown, United States

Project Drawdown aims to help the world stop and reverse the effects of the climate crisis as quickly, safely, and equitably as possible. They do this using three key strategies: advancing effective and science-based climate solutions; fostering bold, new climate leadership; and promoting new narratives to promote stories of possibility and opportunity.

84. ProVeg International, International

By 2040, ProVeg International wants to reduce the consumption of animal products globally by 50 percent. They hope to do this through awareness campaigns that will help consumers understand the impact of their dietary choices on the environment and embrace plant-based protein alternatives to meat and dairy products.

85. ReFED, United States

ReFED uses data-driven solutions to help end food loss and waste in the U.S. In the last year, the organization updated their Insights Engine, a tool that provides insight into the latest data on food loss and waste in the country as well as a database of solutions.

86. Regen10, International

Guided by 10 core principles that aim to center farmers, equity, and inclusion, Regen10 was established to create regenerative global food systems. They believe the most effective way to scale regenerative food systems is to build evidence and create a shared understanding of how to deliver positive outcomes in different contexts.

87. Regenerate America, United States

Launched by Kiss the Ground, Regenerate America is a coalition of farmers, businesses, and nonprofits working to include more resources for regenerative agriculture in the next Farm Bill. Through the widespread adoption of these practices, they believe it’s possible to improve food and water security while strengthening climate resilience.

88. Teens for Food Justice (TFFJ), United States

For 10 years, TFFJ has used school-based hydroponic farming to reduce hunger, improve nutrition education, and engage youth in New York City. Working in 19 schools, they distribute more than 20,000 kilograms of student-grown produce and offer more than 97,000 servings of leafy green vegetables.

89. Rainforest Alliance, International

The Rainforest Alliance works at the intersection of business, agriculture, and forests to create a new standard for business operations. They work with companies along the agricultural, food, and forestry supply chains, helping them implement practices that are better for workers and the planet. Their Rainforest Alliance seal signifies that certified ingredients were produced in a way that supports social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

90. Rodale Institute, United States

Since 1947, the Rodale Institute has led research on regenerative organic agriculture. Together with Dr. Bronner’s and Patagonia, they launched the Regenerative Organic Certification, a new certification program that encompasses soil health, animal welfare, and workers’ wellbeing.

91. Rural Mental Health Outreach Program, United States

Created by Ted Matthews, the Rural Mental Health Outreach Program provides mental health services to farmers, ranchers, and farming families in Minnesota to help them grapple with the unique pressures and challenges of the agriculture sector. The services are offered at no cost to producers thanks to funding from the state.

92. Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS), India

RySS is an organization developed to build farmers’ empowerment in India. They are implementing Andra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF), a training program that helps producers farm in harmony with nature. Hear from Vijay Kumar, Executive Vice-Chairman of Ryss at COP28 here.

93. Senegalese Association for the Promotion of Development at the Base (ASPRODEB), Senegal

ASPRODEB is an association of farmers and fishers working to strengthen food systems across West and Central Africa. They help to facilitate farmer-to-farmer sharing and connect producers with agricultural innovations. “Farmers are knowledge producers,” Ousmane Ndiaye, Director of ASPRODEB tells Food Tank. “Not only doctors have knowledge.”

94. Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, International

Since 2010, the SUN movement has worked to end malnutrition in all its forms. They unite stakeholders from across the food system including civil society, U.N. entities, the donor and philanthropic communities, businesses, and researchers to achieve this goal by 2030.

95. Seed Savers Network, Kenya

Seed Savers Network Kenya is working to strengthen communities’ seed systems to conserve agrobiodiversity and improve food sovereignty. The organization operates their Farmer Training Centre and community seed banks. They also promote equity for women farmers through gender mainstreaming and advocate for farmers’ rights by amplifying their needs.

96. Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India

Established in 1972, SEWA unites 2.5 million self-employed women workers in the informal economy. The Association recognizes the essential role its members play as food producers, distributors, vendors, cooks, and caregivers, and seeks to transform food and agriculture systems to increase their collective strength.

97. Sicangu Food Sovereignty Initiative (SFSI), United States

The Siċaŋġu Food Sovereignty Initiative is a community-based effort to indigenize the food system. Their core projects include a community garden, farmers market, and local food subscription program, which support food security; an internship program to introduce youth to local food production; and community events that center the preservation of traditional Lakota food knowledge and practices.

98. Slow Food International, International and Slow Food USA, United States

Slow Food is a global movement that is advocating for everyone to have access to high quality, sustainably produced food. Through their work, they try to defend biological and cultural diversity, educate and inspire eaters, influence policies and programs to support food systems transformation, and develop Slow Food’s network. Slow Food USA is the national movement in the U.S. working to advance the Slow Food mission.

99. SMART Training Platform, Canada

The SMART Training Platform emerged as a collaborative project that is engaging student researchers who want to build more resilient food systems. The Platform focuses on the implementation of the scientific method and allows students to create scalable solutions to real world challenges including food insecurity and food waste.

100. Sociedad de Historia Natural Niparajà, Mexico

Sociedad de Historia Natural Niparajà is a conservation organization that has worked for more than 30 years to preserve water resources. Their Marine Conservation Program works with a variety of stakeholders to manage and protect marine ecosystems. And their Sustainable Fishing program works closely to develop sustainable fisheries.

101. Solidaridad, International

Solidaridad is a civil society organization working to create fair and sustainable supply chains to make sustainability the norm, not the exception. Their Small Farmer Atlas is a new report informed by interviews with small-scale farmers in 18 countries, which looks at issues including prosperity and income, bargaining power, and land use.

102. Soul Fire Farm, United States

Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm that strives to uproot racism and establish sovereignty in the food system. They offer educational programs and distribute fresh produce to end food apartheid. This year, Soul Fire Farm’s Co-Founder Leah Penniman released her second book Black Earth Wisdom, a collection of essays and interviews that explores Black people’s spiritual and scientific connection to the land.

103. Sustainable Food Trust, United Kingdom

The Sustainable Food Trust aims to create the necessary policy, economic, and cultural environment to accelerate food systems transformation. Their key focus areas include True Cost Accounting, sustainable livestock, food security in Britain, antibiotic use in the animal agriculture sector, measuring sustainability, and local food systems.

104. Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University, United States

At Arizona State University, the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems is working to drive social progress, economic productivity, and ecosystem resilience through food systems transformation. They advance organic research and policy, enable True Cost Accounting, educate the next generation of food systems leaders, and engage the private sector.

105. The Nature Conservancy (TNC), International

TNC is an environmental organization working around the world to create a world where all life thrives. To help feed the world sustainably, their goal is to conserve 10 billion acres of ocean, 1.6 billion acres of land, and 620,000 miles of rivers. As part of their work on aquatic ecosystems, TNC partnered with shellfish farmers to create the Shellfish Growers Climate Coalition to help producers take climate action.

106. The Rockefeller Foundation, United States

The Rockefeller Foundation is working to advance more regenerative, nourishing, and equitable food and agriculture systems. The Foundation’s food systems work includes initiatives focused on school meals, food is medicine, procurement, and regenerative agriculture. And through their Periodic Table of Food Initiative, they are building a global ecosystem and providing tools, data, and training to catalog the biomolecular composition of the world’s food supply. In 2023, they co-hosted Pre-COP Food Day at the U.N. General Assembly to build momentum around food systems in the leadup to COP28.

107. Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance (UCFA), United States

UCFA is a collective of new and established growers who cultivate and distribute heirloom seeds and grow culturally meaningful crops. Through this work, they hope to provide more opportunities and support for growers from historically oppressed and marginalized communities. To support their efforts, they also sell seeds through their business, Ujamaa Seeds. “Seeds are living things,” Ira Wallace, a seed saver and advisor to Ujamaa tells Food Tank. “You can’t just put them away.”

108. U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), International

UNDP works in 170 countries and territories to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality. They work with countries to develop policies, leadership skills, partnering abilities, and more. They operate 10 programs and initiatives dedicated to supporting the transformation of food and agricultural commodity systems, which they believe is essential to sustainable development.

109. U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), International

UNEP aims to inspire, inform, and enable people to improve their quality of life and conserve natural resources for future generations. Their work encompasses a range of issues including oceans and seas, forests, youth and education, and gender. UNEP’s food systems work includes efforts to address food loss and waste and support for farmers through strategic partnerships.

110. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International

Working in more than 130 countries, FAO is the specialized agency of the U.N. that leads international efforts to end hunger and improve food and agriculture systems worldwide. During COP28, the FAO launched the first part of its Global Roadmap, which outlines a path for investors and policymakers to reduce the negative environmental impact of food and agriculture systems.

111. U.N. Global Compact, International and U.N. Global Compact Norway, Norway

The U.N. Global Compact is a voluntary initiative based on CEO commitments to implement universal sustainability principles. They work with the private sector to achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, including those to end hunger, promote sustainable consumption and production, and protect aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The U.N. Global Compact Norway is one of the country-level, local networks that has seen the greatest growth. This network is tackling solutions focused a range of issues including health and sustainable food systems.

112. U.N. World Food Programme, International

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, has a presence in more than 120 countries and territories to bring food to those in need. Their work encompasses a range of focus areas from emergency relief and nutrition to climate action and resilience building.

113. Urban Growers Collective, United States

Urban Growers Collective works in Chicago, Illinois to build a more just and equitable local food system. Through urban agriculture, they aim to address the inequalities that persist in food and agriculture systems. “You can’t unpack food justice without addressing structural racism, historic inequities,” says Erika Allen, Urban Growers Collective’s Co-Founder & CEO – Strategic Development and Programs.

114. U.S. Hunger, United States

U.S. Hunger is a hunger relief organization that is leveraging the power of technology to connect people in need to healthy, nutritious food by delivering it to their front door. The organization’s CEO recently joined Food Tank at the “Advancing Food as Medicine Approaches” Summit to discuss the importance of both qualitative and quantitative data in solving the hunger crisis.

115. US Food Sovereignty Alliance, United States

The U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance brings together organizations across the United States that are pushing for food sovereignty. Every year, they award the Food Sovereignty Prize, which recognizes two grassroots organizations dedicated to advancing food sovereignty and justice. The 2023 Prize went to Black Dirt Farm Collective and Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP).

116. Volgenau Climate Initiative (VCI), United States

VCI is a leadership program dedicated to accelerating nature-based climate action. They convene small groups for retreats designed to bring people together in natural settings, develop strong networks, and encourage new ways of thinking. Events topics have included diet and climate, land stewardship, and scaling diversified regenerative agriculture.

117. Wholesome Wave, United States

Wholesome Wave is an organization that strives to address diet-related diseases by helping low-income Americans buy and eat healthy fruits and vegetables. The organization recently launched the for-profit brand Wholesome Crave to provide plant-based meal solutions to large scale dining facilities and bring in revenue that can support Wholesome Wave’s work.

118. Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics and Agriculture (WANDA), United States

Founded by Tambra Raye Stevenson, WANDA is working to achieve nutrition equity in the U.S.by uplifting the voices of Black women and girls in food. The organization recently conducted the Black Food Census to collect better data on Black foodways in the country. Stevenson hopes the data will inform positive changes in the U.S. food system.

119. Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Canada

The Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty (WGIFS) works to increase awareness and mobilize communities around Indigenous food sovereignty. The WFIGS organizes regular meetings and discussions and facilitates capacity building within communities. “To have sustainable food and sustainable water means having a sustainable world for all of us to coexist with each other,” says Lisa Kenoras, Communications Coordinator for the WGIFS.

120. World Central Kitchen (WCK), International

World Central Kitchen (WCK) provides chef-prepared fresh meals to people around the world affected by humanitarian, climate, and community crises. In recent months, WCK has worked in dozens of areas including in Mexico, the state of Tennessee, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, and Ukraine. The recent film “We Feed People” documents the work of WCK’s Founder, Chef José Andrés.

121. World Farmers Market Coalition, International

Since launching in 2021, the World Farmers Market Coalition has grown to represent more than 20,000 markets and 60 associations from more than 50 countries to highlight the role of farmers markets in sustainable food systems. This past year, they held their first General Assembly of the World Farmers Market Coalition in Rome.

122. World Resources Institute, International

A global nonprofit, the World Resources Institute (WRI) uses research-based approaches and coalitions to protect and restore nature and stabilize the climate. Their food systems initiatives include projects on climate-friendly diets and food loss and waste. At COP28, WRI’s work was featured in several panels on food waste.

123. World Wildlife Fund (WWF), International

WWF works to conserve the Earth’s natural resources and help people around the world make more climate-friendly decisions. They advocate for eaters everywhere to reconsider food and agriculture systems to produce enough to feed the growing population in a sustainable way. WWF recently released a new framework to drive food systems transformation forward.

124. WorldFish, International

WorldFish is a research and innovation organization focusing on the role that aquatic foods play in supporting the livelihoods and wellbeing of millions of women, men, and children. They produce evidence-based solutions that target six intersecting themes: nutrition, gender, climate, sustainability, economy, and COVID-19.

Photo courtesy of Michael Pfister, Unsplash