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.

Changing How We Grow Our Food

On December 13, 2024, The New York Times published “Sorry, but This is the Future of Food,” an opinion essay by Michael Grunwald. The piece is the final essay in “What to Eat on a Burning Planet”, a series that claims to explore bold ideas to secure our food supply. In the essay, Grunwald holds up outdated narratives and “solutions” while encouraging us to embrace industrial food models as the only way to feed a growing human population. It will come as no surprise to most of you reading this that the Agroecology Fund (and many partners and allies) were terribly disappointed in this narrow, and incorrect view about the future of food. 

Never pass up the opportunity for healthy debate! When these false narratives are given editorial space, it’s a chance to push back and help readers understand viable alternatives. With good science behind it, agroecology is the future of food. Agroecology Fund Co-Director, Daniel Moss submitted a response, as did many, many people who are close to agroecology movements.  Although our letter was not published, we share it as a way to deepen the conversation about the importance of investing in grassroots agroecology movements around the world. 

Below is our response:

Dear Editor, 

Sadly, Michael Grunwald, the author of “Sorry, but this is the Future of Food” seems to live in a world which precludes learning from mistakes. The acceleration of industrial agriculture is an entirely understandable historical development. Industry created a food system for a growing population centered on robust sales of their manufactured inputs. However, to suggest that today we have to put up with industrial agriculture’s contamination and public health hazards simply because of its historical role suggests that we can’t analyze and apply lessons. At the highest levels of academia and UN agencies, industrial agriculture has been criticized for multiple failings. Ample evidence of poor nutrition and climate change contributions invites new thinking.

Agroecology builds on Indigenous food systems and adds Western scientific analysis on soil health, agrobiodiversity, nutrition and more. Allying with consumers demanding food as medicine, millions of farmers around the globe are joining vibrant movements for agroecology. This groundswell has demonstrated yields commensurate with high input industrial agriculture and challenges the industry mantra that “we feed the world”. This is exactly what we need for a planet in deep crisis. It is a lack of creativity and imagination to accept a broken system.

Daniel Moss

We were thrilled to see that on January 4, 2025, The New York Times published “Changing How We Grow Our Food: Readers disagree with an essay about factory farms.” Agroecology Fund partner and ally, Anna Lappé, Executive Director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food had this response published:

“To the Editor:

Re “Factory Farms Are Our Best Hope for Feeding the Planet,” by Michael Grunwald (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 15):

As executive director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, I take issue with Mr. Grunwald’s essay. He claims that “we should think of all farming as a necessary evil.” We absolutely should not.

Around the world, our alliance supports farmers and fishers who are on the front lines of producing abundant food that helps boost biodiversity, create greater climate resilience and provide solid livelihoods. No evil required.

The kind of food production systems that Mr. Grunwald insists we must accept have been rightfully lambasted for decades by leading experts for their dependency on fossil fuels and toxic chemicals — all while actually producing very little of what you or I would think of as food. (Think high-fructose corn syrup or feed crops for livestock.)

These systems are “efficient,” as Mr. Grunwald claims, only if you ignore their true costs — to our health, environment, climate and more. As someone who has heard countless stories from communities devastated by the toxic toll of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, the air and water pollution from factory farms, and the soil loss and land degradation from industrial farming practices, not to mention the exploitation of workers and animals in these systems, this is not a future of food I will accept. Nor should you.”

Thank you, Anna!

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.

Why Philanthropy Should Back and Engage in the Committee on World Food Security

This op-ed by Agroecology Fund Co-Director Daniel Moss, and colleagues Matheus Alves Zanella and Ruchi Tripathi of Global Alliance for the Future of Food was originally published in Food Tank and can be accessed here.

In 2023, 25 philanthropies announced a collaboration to leverage investments, calling for a tenfold increase in funding to support agroecological and regenerative food systems. Such an ambitious goal is by no means an easy task. But besides intense coordination among themselves, how can philanthropies understand and agree upon what exactly falls under this type of investment?

One solution: the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). The CFS is a U.N. body that brings together governments, civil society, the private sector, and other actors to develop voluntary guidelines, policy recommendations, and frameworks aimed at ensuring sustainable and equitable food systems. It is regarded as the “foremost inclusive international platform” because of its innovative structure for participation which, beyond governments, enables self-organization of civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and the private sector. By facilitating organized, legitimate, and consistent participation through “mechanisms,” this governance structure addresses the long-standing challenge of ad hoc and opaque processes and sometimes contentious presence of ‘representatives’ in global meetings who often lack the endorsement of their peers.

On agroecology, for instance, the CFS had produced policy recommendations on agroecology and other innovative approaches. A CFS High Level Panel of Experts crafted a framework for agroecology based on thirteen principles, common ground which undergirds the multilateral Agroecology Coalition and which offers clear guidance for philanthropic investments seeking to scale agroecology up. By using internationally agreed upon language and processes, philanthropic foundations can align with a broad community of public and private funders and investors to accelerate the transition towards equitable and sustainable food systems.

This is just one example of how the CFS can strengthen philanthropic investments. Other policies of the CFS, developed over time, include: guidelines on land tenure that substantially influence land reform programs and sustainable land investment, and guidelines on nutrition, which consolidated years of debate on how to strengthen the nutrition dimension of food security by linking health and food and highlighting strategies for sustainable and healthy diets. The CFS has developed dozens of such technically-rich and globally endorsed policies—from gender empowerment, to humanitarian crisis response, to youth engagement, and on smallholder farming and market inclusion, among others. All these instruments are aligned with an explicit commitment to the progressive realization of the right to adequate food for all.

Those following global governance debates on food systems have consistently heard calls for stronger engagement of smallholder farmers, fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities. This call has been repeated on loop, in particular in climate, biodiversity and land COPs, but also in the food system summit processes, and other global food policy processes. But ensuring the legitimate representation of these groups is far from simple. Through a robust and participatory mechanism for debate, the CFS’ Civil Society and Indigenous People Mechanism (CSIPM) offers space and representation for historically marginalized groups. For philanthropies working towards inclusive, equitable, food governance, the CFS is a critical space to support and engage in, as it allows them to demonstrate commitment to supporting frontline communities deeply affected by the food crisis and which hold solutions to food, climate, and nutrition crises.

A recent innovation at the CFS was the recognition of a Philanthropic Foundations Mechanism (PFM). In a similar fashion to the CSIPM and the Private Sector Mechanism – PSM, this coordination unit serves to autonomously organize philanthropic engagement at the Committee. Through this mechanism, philanthropic foundations can collaborate and engage in ongoing policy formulation for some of the most pressing issues of our time from food and nutrition security, inequality, land tenure, women’s rights, data, urban food systems amongst others. Indeed, food systems are increasingly visible in the COPs, and therefore CFS policies have a cascading effect on related fields.

We are far from the food and nutrition security, climate, and biodiversity goals we seek to achieve in 2030. Current food systems impede their fulfillment, producing unequal outcomes, and tremendously high socio and environmental costs. And it is no secret that multilateralism is going through difficult times, threatened by nationalism and corporate interests that inhibit global collaboration.

Now is the time to invest where inclusive and evidence-based collaboration can have a tremendous impact on food policy. By engaging with the CFS, philanthropies can play a pivotal role in reshaping food systems, driving equitable change, and supporting a collective response to the complex challenges we face.

Farmer Managed Seed Systems – Why Controlling Seeds Is a Threat to Food Sovereignty

This article was written by Daniel Moss, Agroecology Fund Co-Director, for the September 2024 edition of FAO’s Agroecology Knowledge Hub – Germinate! column. You can find the original publication here. 

Diverse, localized, farmer managed seed systems are the cornerstone of a biodiverse, climate-resilient, equitable food system—and essential to achieving zero hunger. However, somewhere along the way in the “modernization” of our food system, the trend is towards less rather than more seed diversity. That diversity has been eroded by corporate and governmental policies in support of seed homogenization and privatization, such as by the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. We all pay the cost. The right to food sovereignty is undermined around the world, proprietary seeds leave farmers in debt and consumers are hurt when food supplies rely on fewer crops vulnerable to droughts, floods and pests. 

Farmer managed seed systems (FMSS) are central to the everyday practices of the small-scale farmers who feed 70 percent of the world’s population. FMSS recognize the central role farmers play in selecting, growing, saving, and sharing seeds in community. Despite this, mainstream discourse continually refers to these systems as being “informal” or “anti-modern.” Additionally, over the last few decades, many governments have moved toward embracing Green Revolution “technologies”, including GMO’s, under the misguided perception that they will lead to greater production. In some instances, open seed exchange has even been criminalized. This devalues and undermines the essential climate resilient, nutritional and equitable qualities of FMSS. 

Thankfully, there is an upsurge of community-led movements advocating for food sovereignty in the face of this corporate backed, restrictive approach to feeding the world. The Agroecology Fund invests in many of these grassroots movements. With their reach deep into communities, they advance food sovereignty, rights to land, territory and natural resources, climate resilience and biodiversity conservation. They are leading movements to protect seed sovereignty in their local communities by ensuring policies, laws, and practices affirm the role of small farmers and their right to FMSS. 

In Defence of Seed Sovereignty: Grassroots-Led Movements for Change

In Kenya, Kenyan Peasants League, has been defending peasant farmers’ rights for many years. In October of 2022, a governmental ban on GMO’s, which had been in place for a decade, was lifted. The Kenyan Peasants League quickly organized a GMO taskforce to reinstate the ban, although not permanently. The Kenyan High Court will make a permanent decision in October 2024. The push for corporate-tilted seed laws across Africa, driven by protocols like the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), commodifies seeds, which threatens the biodiversity and resilience of African agriculture. KPL mobilizes Kenyan small holder farmers and consumers to push for agrarian reforms that help ensure food sovereignty and environmental conservation. 

Photo Credit: Victoria Uwemedimo / Agroecology Fund 

In the Philippines this year, the Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (SEARICE) celebrated the decision of the Philippines Court of Appeals, upholding the lower court’s decision to stop the distribution and commercial propagation of GM Golden Rice and Bt Eggplant after much grassroots campaigning. SEARICE warned against corporate takeover of farms and patented seeds that could replace existing local crop varieties. It is their perspective that Filipino farmers have sufficient local varieties to supply food and crop needs. All they need are appropriate laws, technical and post-harvest support. Therefore, SEARICE supports farmers’ needs, not unpredictable, privatized “solutions” that leave communities disempowered and vulnerable.

Across the Americas, there are many rich movements for food sovereignty rooted in seeds. In the United States, Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA) is developing a robust Indigenous Seed Keepers Network (ISKN) to design, facilitate and implement Seed Stewardship Mentorship training that is culturally appropriate. They propose a collaborative framework for ethical Indigenous seed stewardship so that tribal communities can protect their seeds from patenting and bio-piracy. 

Photo Credit: Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance 

Further south in Mexico, Indigenous communities are part of a fight against the US government, that seeks to impose the importation of GMOs that risk contamination of the nearly 60 native varieties of maize that are central to Mexico’s cultural heritage. The Mexican government has restricted the use of genetically modified white corn for human consumption and glyphosate as part of its broader program for food self-sufficiency and agroecology. Last August, the U.S. government launched a trade dispute, falsely asserting that these rules violate provisions in the U.S-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which incidentally recognizes nations’ authority over their cultural heritage. Civil society groups, supported by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy have submitted responses and the Mexican government has submitted important studies denouncing the changes by indicating the degree to which GMO corn will harm Mexicans, as corn accounts for the majority of calories and protein of daily diets. The case is slated to be decided by a council of judges by the end of the year. 

Certainly, the biotech industry has the ear of many policy makers. Lobbyists (and sadly, the Gates Foundation) spend billions to adopt technical fixes that they describe as climate-smart. The truth is that climate-smart solutions emerge by working with, not against nature and those living closest to the impacts of climate change. The Agroecology Fund is honored to support remarkable community-led efforts to strengthen a truly climate-resilient food system and seeks to fortify these movements around the world by calling on private, public, and multilateral organizations to join us. 

Nurturing Seeds of Freedom in Palestine

The following article was written by Marta Vidal and published in Yes Magazine in August 2024. You can read the original here.

Growing food under military occupation has become increasingly dangerous as settler violence and repression escalate. But these farmers persist.

Surrounded by a 26-foot-high separation wall, barbed wire, and a watchtower, a group of young Palestinians prepares a 3.5-acre piece of land for the growing season in spring. The noise of their hoes shaping the soil mixes with the humming of construction cranes from the nearby Israeli settlement of Modi’in Illit. Established in 1996 on land appropriated from Palestinian villages, the Israeli settlement is illegal under international law but continues to expand.

The Om Sleiman farm in the village of Bil’in is part of a growing agroecology movement in the occupied West Bank that is turning to sustainable farming as a way to resist the Israeli occupation and stay rooted to the land. Established in 2016, Om Sleiman—Arabic for “ladybug”—aims to connect Palestinians to the produce they consume and to promote food sovereignty.

“We share the yield of the farm with 20 to 30 members, depending on the season,” explains Loor Kamal, a member of Om Sleiman, as she prepares raised beds where eggplants, tomatoes, watermelons, peppers, and beans will be sown. The farm operates on a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, model in which members pay for their share of the produce at the beginning of each season, sharing both the yield and the risks of production.

One day in April, Kamal shows us around the property, which is located in Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli military control. Here vegetables are grown alongside olive and fruit trees, but Kamal, who works at Om Sleiman with a team of five other women, mentions that a part of the land is inaccessible. “In March, we were walking around the farm, checking the carob trees inside our land, and suddenly soldiers started shooting at us,” she recalls.

Growing food under military occupation has become increasingly dangerous as settler violence and repression escalate. Even with the world’s attention focused on the war in Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 563 Palestinians in the West Bank since October.

Despite the dangers, Om Sleiman’s team is determined to continue their work. “We have to go on, even when there is fear, because our presence here is important,” says Kamal as she picks eggplants, apples, and mulberries from the farm.

An aerial shot of Om Sleiman Farm. Photo Credit: Om Sleiman Farm

The land on which they grow organic produce has special significance. The concrete wall that cuts through the West Bank expropriated hundreds of acres of Bil’in’s agricultural land in 2005. After years of protest and legal action, residents managed to regain about half of the lost farmland, a victory that turned the village into a symbol of popular resistance.

A part of the reclaimed land was donated for the establishment of this agroecology farm. For members of Om Sleiman, growing food in defiance of the encroaching wall and settlements is a way of continuing the struggle for freedom.

A volunteer poses for a photo at Om Sleiman farm in Bili’in. Photo Credit: Om Sleiman Farm

Agroecology As a Tool for Liberation

“If we want to be free, we need to plant our own food,” says Angham Mansour, who is from Bili’in and joined Om Sleiman two years ago. The farm aims to promote independence from the occupier’s economy but also to reconnect Palestinians with the land. “Farming is part of our heritage. Going back to the land is going back to our roots, to our identity,” she says.

Palestine is part of the historical region of the Fertile Crescent, seen as the birthplace of agriculture, where people started cultivating grains and cereals as they transitioned from hunter-gatherer groups to agricultural societies.

For Saed Dagher, a farmer and agronomist who started working with agroecology in Palestine in 1996, sustainable farming is a crucial tool for liberation. “As a farmer I am free when I don’t depend on outside inputs, when I produce the food in my land the way I see fit, with my own seeds, and the inputs that are locally available. I am not dependent on seed and chemical companies. And I don’t depend on the occupation,” he says.

Dagher is one of the co-founders of the Palestinian Agroecology Forum, a volunteer group aiming to spread ecological farming in Palestine. In the past decade, he has noticed a growing interest in agroecology, an approach that tries to minimize the environmental impacts of farming by using local, renewable resources. This method reduces dependency on purchased inputs and prioritizes soil health and biodiversity.

According to Dagher, Palestinian farmers have practiced forms of agroecology long before the term was invented. “Traditionally, Palestinian farmers would plant olive trees with wheat, barley, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. In the same field, we would have fig trees, grapes, almonds. It was diverse,” he says. Palestinian farmers used to rely mostly on local resources and rain-fed agriculture, helping preserve local varieties in the fields, orchards, and terraced hills.

The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948—through a violent process that entailed the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages and the forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians—meant farmers lost most of their lands and livelihoods.

Since the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, the remaining Palestinian territory became a captive market for Israeli products. The local food system was transformed from a food-producing to a food-buying one, deepening Palestinian dependence on the occupying forces.

In the decades since then, Palestine’s diverse agricultural heritage has been in decline, as Palestinian growing traditions have been increasingly displaced by monocultures and industrial agriculture, which are reliant on agrochemicals and genetically modified seeds, particularly after the Oslo Accords signed in 1993.

“Israel wants to destroy Palestinian agriculture, so [Palestinians] become dependent on them and on humanitarian assistance,” says Moayyad Bsharat, project coordinator at the Union for Agricultural Work Committees, or UAWC, an organization supporting Palestinian farmers. “If Palestinians are food secure and don’t depend on Israeli products and Israeli markets, they will dream of freedom, and Israel doesn’t want it. It wants Palestinians as slaves working for them.”

The importance of food sovereignty has been highlighted by the catastrophic situation in Gaza over the past 10 months. According to human rights reports, Israel has been using starvation as a weapon of war by deliberately blocking the delivery of food and by destroying farmlands.

As dependence on Israeli produce and agribusiness grows under occupation, so does the land grabbing. This year, Israel has declared a record 2,743 acres of land in the occupied West Bank to be state-owned—a move that paves the way for continued settlement construction.

“The occupation keeps trying to take the land from us, to restrict our access to it, and prevent farmers from reaching it,” Mansour says. “The goal is to make our lives here impossible, to make us leave. They want to uproot us.”

The systematic appropriation of land and water resources by expanding Israeli settlements, the separation wall, and the military have all alienated Palestinians from the land and caused the loss of native seeds and traditional practices. 

But despite farmers’ continuous dispossession and the widespread destruction of agricultural land, Bsharat says farmers haven’t been defeated. “We will rebuild again. We will support farmers with local seeds and continue our projects to build food sovereignty. We will use all our efforts to dismantle the colonial project by sowing local seeds, taking care of the land, and teaching our children not to forget.”

The Union for Agricultural Work Committees is collecting and distributing 60 varieties of heirloom seeds and is working on the rehabilitation of agricultural land in Gaza and the West Bank. In recent years, it has helped establish agroecology projects and training in some of the villages most affected by settler violence.

“We are still present in the land, despite the restrictions imposed on us and the violence of the settlers,” says Ghassan Najjar, who manages an agroecology cooperative in Burin, a village surrounded by extremist Israeli settlers who regularly attack Palestinian farmers, burning orchards and uprooting olive trees.

Photo Credit: Om Sleiman Farm

“Agriculture is resistance,” says Najjar, standing in a greenhouse where members of the cooperative grow cucumbers and tomatoes using agroecology techniques.

Despite the growing settler violence and repression, Dagher says he is motivated to “do more and more.” He considers the fact that many Palestinian workers have lost their Israeli jobs since last October to be “an opportunity to encourage more people to work in agriculture.”

The farmers at Om Sleiman will keep sowing the land, spring after spring. “These days when the situation is so difficult, we feel this project is even more important. We feel we have to continue, we have to be present,” Mansour says.

“Every day we come and we work the land because we have hope,” adds Kamal. “Because we believe that we will be free.”

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. 

Ucayali: Shipibo-Konibo community denounces deforestation and land usurpation by European settlers

The following article was published in Infobae in July 2024. You can read the original in Spanish here.

Although the Court of Environmental Crimes of Ucayali ordered a halt to logging in the Shipibo-Konibo community of Caimito, in the Masisea district of Ucayali, deforestation persists. Mennonite settlers continue with agricultural activities, they report.

According to an investigation by journalist Ronald Suárez Maynas, published in the Servindi portal, the responsibility falls on Mennonite settlers who, despite court orders, continue their agricultural activities, negatively impacting indigenous lands.

Among such orders is the decision of the Transitory Investigation Court for Environmental Crimes of the Superior Court of Justice of Ucayali, which issued a precautionary measure in December of last year ordering the Mennonites to stop their logging activities.

Nevertheless, deforestation persists, affecting both the environment and the livelihoods of approximately 500 inhabitants of Caimito.

Shipibo Indigenous Guard of Caimito. Photo Credit: Ronald Suárez

Why do the Mennonite farming practices impact the land?

A report by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) revealed that 929 hectares of deforestation was documented in the Masisea settlement, mostly occurring between 2017 and 2019, with a slight decrease in recent years.

According to MAAP specialists and others, the Mennonites’ intensive agricultural practices, which include the use of agrochemicals and heavy machinery, are not suited to the Amazonian ecosystem, resulting in soil degradation.

This is confirmed by Marc Dourojeanni, professor emeritus of the National Agrarian University (UNA), who, in addition to criticizing the passivity of the Public Ministry in the face of the actions of the religious organization of Swiss origin, has affirmed that their practices, although profitable in a short time, are carried out at the expense of the long-term sustainability of the land.

Since 2017, Mennonites have deforested more than 7,000 hectares of native forest, according to a report. Credit MAAP/Composition Infobae

Meanwhile, Abner Ancón Rodríguez, head of the native community of Caimito, told Servindi that in October 2023, the Shipibo Indigenous Guard of Caimito managed to stop attempts by the Mennonites to initiate their production, including soybean and rice crops in their territory.

“The Shipibo Indigenous Guard of Caimito [a group that emerged within the community to protect their ancestral territory against deforestation] managed to remove the machinery and the foundations of the houses they intended to build,” stated Ancón.

However, in parallel to the tensions, the Caimito community recognizes that the presence of the Mennonites has generated a notable commercial exchange among the population in comparison to the high costs of Pucallpa’s traditional markets. The settlers have developed an efficient trade that supplies the local and regional market. According to the indigenous community, the dairy and agricultural products offered by the Mennonites are valued for their quality and competitive prices.

“They are selling us quite cheap, that’s why we buy from them. Not only do they come here, but they also go to Masisea,” says Ruth Vásquez Santos, from the adjacent community of San Pedro in Masisea.

Although, Abner Ancón Rodríguez, head of the native community of Caimito, states that this commercial flow is unidirectional; that is, there is no reciprocal and fair exchange between the Mennonites and the Shipibos, which causes only one party to be favored.

Deforestation in Ucayali and Loreto, the regions most affected by this type of deforestation. Composition: Infobae

Who are the Mennonites?

A report by the Latin American SciDev.Net portal indicates that, since 2017, the religious group has deforested more than 7,000 hectares in Ucayali and Loreto, violating forestry laws and indigenous territories.

Likewise, the Amazon Conservation Association (ACCA) reports that five Mennonite colonies in Peru, Vanderland, Osterreich, Providencia, Chipiar and Masisea, deforested 2,426 hectares between January 2022 and August 2023.

Faced with this situation, the Masisea Indigenous District Organization (ORDIM) declared their territories in a state of emergency, using collective security mechanisms to protect themselves.

They also denounced problems such as illegal logging, coca leaf cultivation and resource exploitation by external companies that threaten the Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation in the Amazon region.

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

How Malaysian seed guardians preserve agricultural heritage and biodiversity

By Beatrice Yong

The following article was published in The Star in February of 2024. You can read the original here.

In Malaysia, farmers and communities across generations have engaged in the age-old practice of preserving seeds as a means of protecting traditional agricultural heritage.

However, the practice of seed saving has slowly been fading in Malaysia over the years.

For one, intellectual property protection regulations from trade agreements may pose more constraints on traditional seed-saving practices.

The prevalence of commercial seeds, combined with a lack of awareness among farmers about the benefits of seed saving, compounds the issue. Furthermore, a dependence on imported or foreign vegetable varieties has diverted attention from preserving and utilizing locally adapted varieties.

A networking session with Kongsi Co-op, Pesawah, Idris Association, TWN and other NGOs, in conjunction with International Seed Day. Photos: Inisiatif Rizab Benih Komuniti

Addressing these challenges is pivotal in fostering agricultural resilience, preserving biodiversity and ensuring food security. It is within this context that a transformative movement is taking root in the heart of Malaysia.

Inisiatif Rizab Benih Komuniti (IRBK), which translates to “Community Seed Reserve Initiative”, is a seed-saving project under the Food Security and Sovereignty Forum (FKMM), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works to promote seed heritage, seed sovereignty, farmers’ education and community development.

As a response to the challenges faced by traditional seed-saving practices, IRBK is actively sowing the seeds of positive change within the Malaysian agricultural landscape.

Seed-saving is important to protect traditional agricultural heritage.

In our discussion with two key members, NurFitri Amir Muhammad, 39, and Izzeady Amir, 34, we explore the grassroots initiatives of IRBK and its impact on Malaysian agriculture.

As the project leader of IRBK and a microbiology graduate, NurFitri focuses on the preservation of heritage seeds in Malaysia. His comprehensive report, “The Potential Impact of International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) 1991 on the Malaysian Seed Sector, Farmers, and Their Practices”, published in June 2023, sheds light on the farming practices impacted by intellectual property protection of seeds in Malaysia.

Izzeady acts as the field manager, advocating for climate solutions in rural landscapes. With a background in environmental science, specifically in biodiversity and conservation, Izzeady offers insights into how IRBK champions and empowers individuals to safeguard traditional seeds through formalising the informal seed system.

Q: What is IRBK and what does your organisation do?

Izzeady: Rizab Benih is a platform we started in 2021 to document our informal seed system in Malaysia. We identify and visit seed guardians and do an inventory of seeds that they keep, and we teach them how to use the online form on our website to record their inventory. We have recorded 70 seed guardians and almost 2,000 different crops and seeds over the past two years. We label the seeds and encourage people to save, share or sell seeds.

Q: What is the difference between a formal and informal seed system?

NurFitri: There are two types of seeds in the supply chain. Formal seed systems are seeds that have been produced by companies. The contract farmers produce seeds for companies, and these seeds are protected by plant breeders’ rights. Most of the seeds are protected by this law and farmers can only save and multiply these seeds for their own use in very limited conditions. They cannot share or sell the seed to others like in the past as a part of their tradition. Most farmers would obtain their seeds from these companies.

Izzeady: An informal seed system is a system where seeds are being preserved by people themselves. Seed guardians are part of these informal seed systems, and they could be home gardeners, farmers as well as community farms all over Malaysia.

Jarum Galah paddy seeds kept in a glass bottle.

Q: What is the primary goal of FKMM, the NGO that initiated Rizab Benih?

NurFitri: FKMM is a platform set up to help farmers fight for themselves. Farmers in Malaysia are not doing so well, with the exception of those with big capital. Individual farmers in villages do not have a voice to bargain.

They have to accept what is decided by the market, middleman or the consumer. You can imagine that a cucumber naturally will have variations in shape, and not all will grow straight. But the price difference (between a straight cucumber and a naturally curved cucumber) can be more than five times. We want to help farmers get a fair price for their produce.

Q: Why did you start Rizab Benih under FKMM?

NurFitri: This project was started to support FKMM’s vision of ensuring food security and sovereignty for Malaysian farmers. Instead of relying on one source of seed supply, we try to diversify the supply.

Izzeady: Having worked with many indigenous communities and villages, I found that much of the traditional knowledge regarding plants and ecosystems held by the older generation is more oral and not well documented, and we, the younger generation, are losing this kind of knowledge.

Recently, an Orang Asli from the Temiar group in Kelantan passed away and it was a great loss. He had brought me on a tour to show me all the herbs that he used to (purportedly) cure many diseases.

It’s amazing because depending on the state, different plants are used. For example, for small cuts in Perlis, they use this plant called “Kapal Terbang” but in Kelantan, they use “Selaput Tunggul”.

The IRBK committee members during a retreat at Ulu Yam.

Q: What seeds does IRBK try to preserve?

Izzeady: We record mostly edible plants, herbs for medicinal purposes, flowers and fruit trees. We try to highlight heirloom seeds, native plants and interesting varieties – for example, moringa with extra long fruit or a petola (loofah) which is more fibrous and suitable to be used for scrubbing.

Q: What are the benefits of seed saving in Malaysia?

Izzeady: The tradition of saving seeds is mostly done by those who live in changing seasons. Here in our Malaysian climate, we are evergreen and have no need to keep seeds.

That is why we are a bit behind in the seed industry because we don’t see it as a problem.

The seeds that are being sold in the farming industry are sold as a package together with pesticides and herbicides as well.

This takes away farmers’ resiliency as they will be more dependent on the system, which is not good.

The first commercial seed that we started saving was rice padi. In Malay communities, we have the “jelapang”, which refers to a small hut built next to the house where all the padi seeds are kept until the next season.

However, because most padi seeds are controlled by Bernas, you are not allowed to save the seeds or commercialise it.

Q: What is the danger in relying on the formal seed system too much?

NurFitri: Formal seed systems tend to supply seeds that are protected. A protected seed is a plant that has been given plant breeders’ rights, meaning in 20-25 years, no other person can reproduce the plant. The danger is it can undermine agrobiodiversity, with less variety planted by the farmers because those who decide what to plant are the companies, and not the farmers themselves. It will reduce biodiversity and the industry’s resilience to climate change and increase potential threat by diseases and pests.

Izzeady: In the US, there have been some cases where protected corn seeds have cross pollinated with some farmers’ own corn seeds in the open farm; and because they have the same genetics as the patented seeds, the company can claim that the farmer has stolen from them.

Q: Is the government currently encouraging farmers to seed-save and become seed producers?

NurFitri: The government currently is not encouraging farmers to save seeds because it is in the process of making seed-saving and seed-sharing more restricted with the proposed Seed Quality Bill, which obligates farmers and anybody who wants to process seeds to have a license. The amendment of the Protection of New Plant Varieties Act 2004 will give more monopoly to seed companies so that the government can join the UPOV 1991. These two laws will restrict farmers’ rights more.

Q: How would you encourage more people to become seed guardians?

Izzeady: Don’t throw away your fruit seeds; try and grow it on your own. Focus on non-hybrid seeds and preferably what is grown organically. Seeds are one of the basic necessities or foundations in farming and gardening. It is very important for us to empower our own resources for our future resiliency. On April 26, Inisiatif Rizab Benih Komuniti and FKMM will be organising an Agroecology Conference on Community Seed Systems 2024 (AECoSS24) in Bangi, Selangor, in conjunction with the annual International Seed Day. This event will be a platform to discuss strategic action focusing on food security and sovereignty, farmers’ rights and seed rights.

If you have a special variant of seed you would like to register with Benih Komuniti, find out more at www.benihkomuniti.com or follow them on Facebook.

‘Women farmers are invisible’: A West African project helps them claim their rights — and land

By Jack Thompson

The following article was published in The Seattle Times in March of 2024. You can read the original here.

ZIGUINCHOR, Senegal (AP) — Mariama Sonko’s voice resounded through the circle of 40 women farmers sitting in the shade of a cashew tree. They scribbled notes, brows furrowed in concentration as her lecture was punctuated by the thud of falling fruit.

This quiet village in Senegal is the headquarters of a 115,000-strong rural women’s rights movement in West Africa, We Are the Solution. Sonko, its president, is training female farmers from cultures where women are often excluded from ownership of the land they work so closely.

Across Senegal, women farmers make up 70% of the agricultural workforce and produce 80% of the crops but have little access to land, education and finance compared to men, the United Nations says.

“We work from dawn until dusk, but with all that we do, what do we get out of it?” Sonko asked.

She believes that when rural women are given land, responsibilities and resources, it has a ripple effect through communities. Her movement is training women farmers who traditionally have no access to education, explaining their rights and financing women-led agricultural projects.

Across West Africa, women usually don’t own land because it is expected that when they marry, they leave the community. But when they move to their husbands’ homes, they are not given land because they are not related by blood.

Mariama Sonko Mariama Sonko poses in the seed hut of her agroecological training center in the Casamance village of Niaguis, Senegal, Wednesday, March 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Sonko grew up watching her mother struggle after her father died, with young children to support.

“If she had land, she could have supported us,” she recalled, her normally booming voice now tender. Instead, Sonko had to marry young, abandon her studies and leave her ancestral home.

After moving to her husband’s town at age 19, Sonko and several other women convinced a landowner to rent to them a small plot of land in return for part of their harvest. They planted fruit trees and started a market garden. Five years later, when the trees were full of papayas and grapefruit, the owner kicked them off.

The experience marked Sonko.

“This made me fight so that women can have the space to thrive and manage their rights,” she said. When she later got a job with a women’s charity funded by Catholic Relief Services, coordinating micro-loans for rural women, that work began.

“Women farmers are invisible,” said Laure Tall, research director at Agricultural and Rural Prospect Initiative, a Senegalese rural think tank. That’s even though women work on farms two to four hours longer than men on an average day.

But when women earn money, they reinvest it in their community, health and children’s education, Tall said. Men spend some on household expenses but can choose to spend the rest how they please. Sonko listed common examples like finding a new wife, drinking and buying fertilizer and pesticides for crops that make money instead of providing food.

Mariama Sonko and other members of the “Nous Sommes la Solution” movement take part in a lemon balm pecking workshop in the Casamance village of Niaguis, Senegal, Wednesday, March 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

With encouragement from her husband, who died in 1997, Sonko chose to invest in other women. Her training center now employs over 20 people, with support from small philanthropic organizations such as Agroecology Fund and CLIMA Fund.

In a recent week, Sonko and her team trained over 100 women from three countries, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Gambia, in agroforestry – growing trees and crops together as a measure of protection from extreme weather – and micro gardening, growing food in tiny spaces when there is little access to land.

One trainee, Binta Diatta, said We Are the Solution bought irrigation equipment, seeds, and fencing — an investment of $4,000 — and helped the women of her town access land for a market garden, one of more than 50 financed by the organization.

When Diatta started to earn money, she said, she spent it on food, clothes and her children’s schooling. Her efforts were noticed.

“Next season, all the men accompanied us to the market garden because they saw it as valuable,” she said, recalling how they came simply to witness it.

Mariama Sonko and other members of the “Nous Sommes la Solution” (We Are the Solution) movement take a census of the different varieties of rice in the Casamance village of Niaguis, Senegal, Wednesday, March 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Now another challenge has emerged affecting women and men alike: climate change.

In Senegal and the surrounding region, temperatures are rising 50% more than the global average, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the UN Environment Program says rainfall could drop by 38% in the coming decades.

Where Sonko lives, the rainy season has become shorter and less predictable. Saltwater is invading her rice paddies bordering the tidal estuary and mangroves, caused by rising sea levels. In some cases, yield losses are so acute that farmers abandon their rice fields.

But adapting to a heating planet has proven to be a strength for women since they adopt climate innovations much faster than men, said Ena Derenoncourt, an investment specialist for women-led farming projects at agricultural research agency AICCRA.

“They have no choice because they are the most vulnerable and affected by climate change,” Derenoncourt said. “They are the most motivated to find solutions.”

On a recent day, Sonko gathered 30 prominent women rice growers to document hundreds of local rice varieties. She bellowed out the names of rice – some hundreds of years old, named after prominent women farmers, passed from generation to generation – and the women echoed with what they call it in their villages.

Mariama Sonko and other members of the “Nous Sommes la Solution” (We Are the Solution) movement take a census of the different varieties of rice in the Casamance village of Niaguis, Senegal, Wednesday, March 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

This preservation of indigenous rice varieties is not only key to adapting to climate change but also about emphasizing the status of women as the traditional guardians of seeds.

“Seeds are wholly feminine and give value to women in their communities,” Sonko said. “That’s why we’re working on them, to give them more confidence and responsibility in agriculture.”

The knowledge of hundreds of seeds and how they respond to different growing conditions has been vital in giving women a more influential role in communities.

Sonko claimed to have a seed for every condition including too rainy, too dry and even those more resistant to salt for the mangroves.

Last year, she produced 2 tons of rice on her half-hectare plot with none of the synthetic pesticides or fertilizer that are heavily subsidized in Senegal. The yield was more than double that of plots with full use of chemical products in a 2017 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization project in the same region.

“Our seeds are resilient,” Sonko said, sifting through rice-filled clay pots designed to preserve seeds for decades. “Conventional seeds do not resist climate change and are very demanding. They need fertilizer and pesticides.”

The cultural intimacy between female farmers, their seeds and the land means they are more likely to shun chemicals harming the soil, said Charles Katy, an expert on indigenous wisdom in Senegal who is helping to document Sonko’s rice varieties.

He noted the organic fertilizer that Sonko made from manure, and the biopesticides made from ginger, garlic and chilli.

Plants grow at Mariama Sonko’s agro-ecological training center in the Casamance village of Niaguis, Senegal, Wednesday, March 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

One of Sonko’s trainees, Sounkarou Kébé, recounted her experiments against parasites in her tomato plot. Instead of using manufactured insecticides, she tried using a tree bark traditionally used in Senegal’s Casamance region to treat intestinal problems in humans caused by parasites.

A week later, all the disease was gone, Kébé said.

As dusk approached at the training center, insects hummed in the background and Sonko prepared for another training session. “There’s too much demand,” she said. She is now trying to set up seven other farming centers across southern Senegal.

Glancing back at the circle of women studying in the fading light, she said: “My great fight in the movement is to make humanity understand the importance of women.”

Pre-Pesticides, Pro-Farmer: The Rise of Agroecology

Reasons To Be Cheerful recently interviewed Daniel Moss for this recent article. Read the original article here.

By Meg Wilcox

Rice, the food that feeds the Philippines, is in climate change’s crosshairs. Sea-level rise, hotter temperatures and extreme weather are putting one of the country’s top crops at risk, as drought, floods and encroaching saltwater threaten rice paddies and the livelihoods of those who tend them.

In a bid to future-proof this agricultural staple, one effort is borrowing from farming’s past.

 A farmer-led network and collaboration with scientists and others called MASIPAG (Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura) has bred dozens of native rice plants, over several decades,  to be more resistant to drought, saltwater, pests and diseases. MASIPAG then trained many of the 30,000 farmers in its network how to grow these more resilient varieties using organic cultivation methods. 

Agroecology has “a huge role to play” in both mitigating climate change and promoting climate justice. Photo courtesy MASIPAG

The idea was to help them “relearn the Indigenous and local production processes which were almost erased by the Green Revolution,” says Kathryn Manga, international solidarity officer and project coordinator at the Asian People’s Exchange for Food Sovereignty and Agroecology, an umbrella organization for groups including MASIPAG. The Green Revolution, which spread across the developing world in the 20th century, replaced ancient farming techniques with modern ones like genetic engineering and pesticides — practices that in some cases reduced hunger, but also disrupted ecosystems and left many poor farmers behind. MASIPAG’s effort to return to the old ways — this time with more resilient plants — worked. “It was the local [rice] varieties which were left standing after the strong winds and rains of the typhoons in 2022,” Manga says. 

It’s just one instance of a growing global movement to use agroecology principles to improve farming practices, enhance farmers’ living standards, and increasingly, adapt agriculture to the planet’s changing climate. Agroecology — farming with nature — is similar to regenerative agriculture, which focuses on soil health. But its 13 principles go further by eschewing the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and by including social and political values that embrace land rights, open access to seeds, fair and humane working conditions, and sustainable livelihoods. Research, along with real-world examples like MASIPAG’s, shows that agroecology holds promise for strengthening farming communities and conserving nature.  

While it faces policy headwinds and barriers to entry, agroecology has “a huge role to play” in both mitigating climate change and promoting climate justice, says Ernesto Mendez, professor of agroecology and environmental studies at the University of Vermont and head of the university’s new Agroecology Institute. “We have these methods that can support practices for mitigation and adaptation, but we also want to incorporate and have experience bringing in equity and justice issues.”

Justice in the Philippines means “genuine agrarian reform with free land distribution,” says Manga, lamenting that Filipino farmers are killed for exercising their rights to land. “Only by giving them full control of such resources can they … serve the country in its fight against the climate crisis,” she added. 

In other words, Manga would like to see the landless poor who work on large plantations, often in unjust conditions, farm their own land using agroecology principles, which she believes is the best response to climate change. The Philippines passed an agrarian reform law in 1988 but has dragged its feet on enforcement. 

agroecology farming
Agroecological practices can sequester more carbon in soil, use less water, reduce dependence on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and promote biodiversity, while generating higher farmer incomes and greater food security. Photo courtesy MASIPAG

The free exchange of seeds between farmers is also essential to justice, says Lucil Ortiz, unit coordinator of the research, education and training unit of the MASIPAG National Secretariat. Discussions are underway to change Filipino seed law to prohibit farmers from breeding and sharing seeds, including through MASIPAG’s participatory rice breeding program, she said. But forcing poor farmers to buy the more limited seed varieties from agribusinesses keeps them in debt, and it doesn’t help them build climate resilience. Farmers are better equipped to identify and breed varieties that thrive in their regions than transnational seed companies, says Ortiz.

Similarly, in Kenya, the Seed Savers Network promotes the exchange of seeds from native crop and tree varieties, which are more resilient to climate change impacts. Tree crops like passion fruit add biodiversity to farms while increasing farmers’ food security.

Agroecology’s ecological practices focus on restoring and conserving organic matter in soils. They employ crop and pasture rotation techniques, organic fertilizers like manure and compost, combining trees with farming, and using crop varieties that are adapted to the climate. 

Studies show that, in comparison to the intensive production, chemical inputs and monocropping that define conventional agriculture, agroecological practices can sequester more carbon in soil, use less water, reduce dependence on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and promote biodiversity, while generating higher farmer incomes and greater food security. Research also documents that farming communities practicing agroecology recover faster from extreme weather events, in part because they are organized. Farmers in these communities are well-connected to resources and networks, and they help each other out.

agroecology farming
“With all the evidence that agroecology improves nutrition, landscapes and farmers’ incomes, can we make course corrections?” Photo courtesy MASIPAG

A study of the organically grown MASIPAG rice varieties found those farms to be more resilient to climate change than conventional rice farms.  The researchers assessed 54 components of farming systems, including household, production, environmental, social and economic dimensions. Not surprisingly, the organic systems scored higher because of their focus on ecological practices that improve soil health, water quality and farm biodiversity. Heterogenous landscapes with trees, mixed crops and healthier soils demonstrate better buffering during extreme events. But the organic systems also scored higher on social indicators of climate resiliency, such as the capacity for building human capital, which is measured by household health, knowledge of land improvement strategies, access to infrastructure, active participation in groups, household equality and investment in human capital, such as education. 

At the meta-level, a recent review of 80 agroecology studies assessed its ability to tackle climate change and found “strong evidence … that agroecological approaches can achieve high productivity and profitability without the environmental externalities of conventional agriculture.”

The wide adoption of agroecology isn’t stymied so much by the method’s challenges as by government policy and private investment practices, which often skew towards industrial agriculture and biotech fixes, according to Daniel Moss, co-director at the Agroecology Fund, which provides grants to agroecology movements worldwide. Still, Moss sees signs of progress, citing the Agroecology Coalition which brings together philanthropists, governments, private investors, and multilateral and bilateral donor agencies to support a global transition to agroecology-based food systems. The coalition works with governments developing and implementing agroecology transition plans to share knowledge and seek finance. Coalition members share a common database to track investments and ensure funded projects pair climate-beneficial farming practices with social equity, such as through social enterprise.

Countries like India, Senegal, and Brazil are advancing policies to enable agroecology, according to Moss. Brazil passed a national policy for agroecology in 2012. The Jair Bolsanaro administration reversed or weakened many of its provisions, and the country is still playing catch up, says Angela Cordeiro, co-director of the Agroecology Fund and a Brazil-based agronomist. But a hallmark of Brazil’s policy is a requirement that at least 30 percent of the food sourced for the mandatory school feeding program that serves 40 million kids come from family farms, and “farmers practicing agroecology receive a higher price for the product,” said Cordiero. That policy alone invests hundreds of millions of dollars into agroecology.

In the US, agroecology is practiced in pockets of Vermont, California, and other states, but policies don’t favor it, said Mendez. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is, however, doing “interesting work that aligns with agroecology around climate and equity, including support for BIPOC farmers which tend to have smaller diversified farms,” he noted. 

Participatory research between academic institutions and farmers, social equality, and a return to indigenous practices are key features of agroecology in the US. For instance, the Local Hampton-Frank Pinder Center for Agroecology focuses on helping southern Black farm communities, historically locked out of financial and technical agricultural support, respond to climate disruption and social inequality by teaching them agroecology practices, building “resiliency networks” and fostering cooperative models of economic organization. The Traditional Native American Farmers Association meanwhile works to revitalize traditional indigenous agriculture such as by providing workshops in seed saving, health and wellness, sustainable farming practices and traditional food production.

But to advance agroecology in the US, farm policies need to change, subsidies need to be redirected and academic institutions need to give it more focus, says Mendez, and that won’t be easy with industry pushback.

“The industry tries to say that ‘all your ideas are romantic and won’t work’ and that we need their technology to feed millions of people that are hungry,” said Helda Morales, senior researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur in Mexico. But Morales flips that around, noting that the current system is already failing, with 783 million people facing chronic hunger worldwide. She points to research that shows that scaling agroecology at the country or regional level can produce enough food to feed people, with the caveat that diets must become more plant based.  

Maybe it’s time for adaptive learning, suggests Moss, noting, “This whole industrial agriculture system with its heavy subsidization is only 150 years old, and gosh that’s just a blip” in the history of farming. “With all the evidence that agroecology improves nutrition, landscapes and farmers’ incomes, can we make course corrections?”

For Manga the course is clear. “Local knowledge together with scientific learnings have proven to be the answer to the climate crisis in the countryside,” she said. “Those on the frontlines have the solution. It is up to their governments to listen to them and support them in their endeavors.”

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

Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems and Agroecology: Synergies and Convergences

Cultural Survival recently published an artincle on a webinar organized by the Agroecology Fund (AEF). Read the original article here.

By Isapi Rúa (Guaraní) 

Indigenous food systems are systems of production, distribution, and consumption of foods based on Traditional Knowledge and practices of Indigenous Peoples. These systems are characterized by their diversity, sustainability, and resilience, which makes them preferable to conventional industrial food systems.

In a webinar organized by the Agroecology Fund (AEF) in November 2023, representatives of Indigenous Peoples and non-governmental organizations and governments from Asia, Africa, and Central America shared reflections on food systems, strengthened by projects that are developing with the support of AEF investment. Their experiences reaffirm that Indigenous food systems share a series of common principles with agroecology among which stand out: intimate relationship with the environment and community management of natural resources. 

The first principle that is essential for these systems is the close relationship of Indigenous Peoples with nature and the natural resources from the territories they have ancestrally inhabited. These relationships center respect and reciprocity. Their agricultural and hunting-gathering practices are not extractive and do not deplete ecosystems. This relationship is anchored in a spiritual connection, with water, forests, animals, and plants. 


Spiritual Connections to the Land

Milka Chepkorir, of the Senwger Indigenous Peoples in the Kapolet Forest, describes how the spiritual connection of hunters with trees and natural resources transcends simple sustenance: “The respect we give is the same respect we give to a pregnant mother, because they give life, just like women.”

In the Ogiek Peoples of the Mau Forest, in the Rift Valley of Kenya, honey is not only their essential food but is also part of their rituals and medicinal practices, explained Daniel Kobei, Director of the Ogiek Peoples Development Program (OPDP), a non-governmental organization that works to guarantee the human and territorial rights of Indigenous Peoples in Kenya and Africa. In the agricultural activities of the Maya Peoples of Guatemala, rituals are part of the agricultural cycle and are expressed in the relationship with elements of nature and the cosmos.

“Women have a spiritual connection with Mother Earth, we observe the phases of the moon, to see the changes in the climate to define the planting times,” said María Pedro, leader of Maya Q’anjob’al of the Association of Eulalense women and member of the Coordinator of Territorial Women Leaders of Mesoamerica.

Community management of natural resources is a distinctive feature of Indigenous food systems. This model rooted in ancestral wisdom and sustainable practices is supported by specific methods.

Pedro, member of the women’s association, highlights techniques such as rotating planting areas to allow the land to rest, associated cultivation and the use of organic fertilizers instead of agrochemicals. These practices, promoted by the association, are fundamental for the preservation of these systems.

Both the Maya and the Karen Peoples in Burma have adopted rotational agricultural strategies in their forests to ensure food production. This practice does not imply converting their forests into exclusive cultivation areas; rather, it is based on cycles of natural rotation and restoration that span long periods.

Saw Paul Sein Twa, of the Karen Social and Environmental Action Network (KESAN), highlights the role of leaders in guiding the community to collectively care for lands and forests in a sustainable way. “Emphasis is placed on teaching how to take care of natural resources, facilitating their use through diverse agricultural systems, where the main premise is responsible care. The commitment to the protection of lands, forests, and waters encompasses present and future generations,” he shared.

In the specific case of the Koeveneg Peoples, as Chepkorir describes, the careful management of their territory involves dividing them into zones for different activities, such as extracting bee panels, collecting plants and herbs, and harvesting fruits. This approach respects the cyclical processes of food production dictated by nature, avoiding excessive exploitation of the same place or the entire area.

Furthermore, pastoral communities develop food systems that include careful grassland management. According to Chepkorir, they migrate from one place to another respecting the natural cycles of the soil and ensuring the restoration of essential resources such as water. This practice contributes to the sustainability of the production of foods such as milk and meat.

Challenges facing change and preservation

However, these systems face threats that impact Indigenous food systems. Climate change has generated a considerable impact on these systems worldwide. Extreme climate events, such as droughts, floods and heat waves, are affecting agricultural production, causing food shortages and biodiversity loss.  Saw Paul Sein Twa from the Karen Peoples in southeastern Burma said, “In the natural park where we have community rice crops, they have been negatively affected by natural disasters.” The armed conflict and the military junta in Burma is also another factor that hinders the development of practices that guarantee the sovereignty and food security of their communities. 

Kovei added that unpredictable changes in weather patterns and events such as prolonged droughts adversely affect bees, crucial in honey production.”Kovei also highlighted the violation of the right to land and territory, pointing out the influence of factors such as carbon offsets. He highlighted that “in Africa, Kenya generates the majority of compensations and intends to expand them, which affects land ownership and access of Indigenous Peoples to their ancestral territories.” He added that “carbon trading is endangering the survival of Indigenous Peoples in their territories due to government agreements with companies, without consulting the communities or granting them benefits as guardians of the forest.”

These factors influence forced evictions of communities, such as the Ogiek Peoples in Kenya, for conservation projects. This, according to Kovei, leads to the loss of their territorial landscapes, fundamental to their traditional food systems.
Sara Moncada, from the Indigenous organization Cultural Conservancy, in relation to the Yaqui Peoples in Northern California, mentioned that the pressures on the Yaqui Indigenous territories make the development of their agricultural practices difficult. They continue working for the recognition and vindication of the rights over their ancestral territories.

Pedro also highlighted that in Guatemala, there is a corrupt system that enacts regulations that disadvantage Indigenous Peoples, for example, the Monsanto law that favors the privatization of native seeds and others related to the privatization of water.

Logumek Women Group received Indigenous vegetable seeds as part of OPDP’s agroecology project. Photo by: VICTORIA UWEMEDIMO/AEF.

Resilient responses and community strengthening

Despite the challenges that hinder the development of food systems, organizations continue to make progress in strengthening them through specific projects. The Agroecology Fund has contributed to community participatory research and documentation projects on the food systems of the Ogiek Peoples. These efforts are channeled through the Ogiek Peoples Development Program, which seeks to preserve and transmit this knowledge to new generations. In addition, pilot projects have been supported in communities to improve their economic situation and support their claims to the land.

Among the actions led by the OPDP is the exchange of community knowledge, as mentioned by Kovei, who highlighted how “Hunter-gatherer communities in Kenya have managed to revive their traditional food systems.”
In Burma, Karen communities have restored an extensive network of fish conservation areas to protect rainforests. In addition, they are developing practices for seed preservation and exchange.

In Mesoamerica, the Coordinator of Territorial Women Leaders has been working hard to strengthen agroecological practices based on Indigenous ancestral knowledge. They have achieved local agroecological production ventures that benefit family economies, offering technical support and promoting the implementation of family gardens in their communities. Pedro highlights: “Family gardens not only help manage food but also guarantee a nutritious diet.”

In California, Cultural Conservancy is focused on access to land for its communities and restoring landscapes to grow traditional seeds. This approach not only supplies local communities but also urban centers. In addition, the knowledge of the elderly is being rescued to guide production towards conscious eating. Moncada, from the Cultural Conservancy, explains: “A small project can have a big impact. We have restored tribal ties that have little access to fresh food in North San Francisco. There are children who have never tried fresh fruits. We have introduced them to natural Indigenous foods and, for the first time, they have learned to plant and grow crops to take home.”

“Addressing climate change and other challenges that the world currently faces must also involve addressing food production in an agroecological manner based on the principles of Indigenous Peoples and the way in which the land is respected,” concluded Chepkorir.

–Isapi Rúa is a Guaraní communicator based in Camiri, Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

The full conversation can be accessed here. 
Original Content Author Isapi Rua, Available in Spanish 
The Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems and Agroecology: Synergies and Convergences. Translated to English and edited for brevity by Agroecology Fund. 

Top photo: Daniel Kovei, planting trees. Photo by Ogiek Peoples Development Program.

Agroecology Movements Turn Digitization on its Head

The following article was published on Food Tank in November of 2023. You can read the original here.

Like a hoe or a tractor, digital tools in agriculture may offer farmers opportunities. But as any farmer knows, some tools are better than others.

Digital tools can help farmers monitor field conditions in real time, understand soil quality, plan their planting—and connect directly with consumers. Digital tools can also be costly and out of reach for smaller farmers. Data ownership and privacy are big concerns. Will the big data that underpins digitalization lead to even greater corporate control over agriculture?

From the perspective of Veronica Villas Arias of the ETC Group shared during an Agroecology Fund webinar, “when new technologies are introduced into societies who are already facing injustice and inequality, they’re just going to widen and increase those injustices and inequalities.”

Grassroots agroecology movements—recognizing that digitalization can facilitate learning and is here to stay —are asking, how can we use digitalization to strengthen farmers’ understanding of the ecosystems in which they work, their connections with other farmers, their relationships with consumers, and even their ability to access native seeds? Perhaps most fundamental to a truly sustainable food system grounded in agroecology, they’re asking, how do we use these tools to ensure equity and sustainability?

While many concerns with digitization persist, grassroots organizations are developing digital tools to help their members and scale agroecology worldwide. Ironically—and unfairly—because agroecology is proudly born from Indigenous Peoples food systems, it is sometimes painted as anachronistic and anti-technology. Agroecology, however, is rooted in adaptive learning and technologies. It is deeply scientific, and its efficacy has been proven by researchers in dozens of peer-reviewed studies.

One new technology, FarmFit, developed by Thalavady Farmers Foundation in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, India connects buyers and sellers in India, in eight different languages.

Thalavady Farmers Foundation Co-founder Kannaiyan Subranamian created the tool during the COVID-19 pandemic when lockdowns prevented people from moving freely between villages to sell their crops. Subranamian himself had three acres of cabbages to sell but was unable to travel to find a market.

A first step was to talk with other farmers to find out what features and functionality they might want in such an app.

“It was a very difficult job,” says Subranamian, speaking on a recent webinar organized by the Agroecology Fund. “I know how to do farming, organizing people and fighting in different places including in the World Trade Organization, but I did not know how to make a software that would work for the farmers.”

Subranamian sought support from other people outside of the farmer movements, found a tech provider he could trust, and produced a very useful tool.

FarmFit “has brought a revolution among the farmers and buyers,” he says. It has helped farming communities learn who is growing what and where, enabling them to buy seeds from neighboring growers.

The farmers group plans to further develop its application, such as by adding livestock and chickens, a crop advisory function and market information in real time. It also plans to expand use of the tool, across Tamil Nadu and India, and eventually all over the world, Subranamian said.

Schola Campesina & Partners in Eastern Europe and Central Asia developed a mobile application called BILIM (which means knowledge in Central Asian languages) to facilitate learning exchange on agroecology across more than 10 different countries.

The region has a rich history of practicing agroecology, said Maria Anisimova, Co-Founder of Schola Campesina, which works to promote farmer to farmer knowledge sharing, especially among women and youth.

Developing the application was challenging because of the vast number of different languages in the region, which spans the Balkans, Central Asia, Syria, and Turkey.

The group conducted user centered design workshops, both remotely and live, to develop the tool.

BILIM allows users to choose and receive all content in their native language. Users can post a topic, create a discussion or group, or send a private chat.

Çiğdem Artık, chief of Çiftçi-Sen farmers union in Turkey says that Turkish farmers appreciate exchanges with farmers from countries like Pakistan, Tajikistan, or the Balkans. “Generally, we don’t hear their voices and it’s a good advantage for us to hear their experience and knowledge.”

And the Seed Savers Network, a grassroots network of community-based organizations and cooperatives representing 74,000 Kenyan farmers developed the Seed Exchangers app to help remote farmers access native fruit tree seedlings, like dragon fruit, passion fruit, or loquat.

Indigenous fruit trees are at risk of disappearing in Kenya because of a shift in market demand toward more exotic trees. Wambui Wakahiu, a program officer at the Seed Savers Network, warns that this threatens biodiversity, food security and farmers’ ability to adapt to climate change because indigenous varieties are more climate resilient.

Farmers want to incorporate Indigenous varieties on their farms, she said, but they face many challenges accessing the seedlings.

Nursery operators and farmers in the seedlings business have trouble accessing central marketplaces where they can reach buyers, so they set up nurseries along roadsides where passersby can find them. Kenyan authorities, however, won’t certify these roadside nurseries or recognize them as legal businesses.

The Seed Savers Network developed its mobile application to address these problems. The app provides buyers with information on how to care for the plants and access to extension services.

“We are empowering smallholder farmers and small nursery operators. We are enhancing agricultural diversity, contributing to tree cover, and helping in adapting to climate change,” said Wakahiu. The group is also working to make it easier for nursery operators growing native trees to become certified.

While these are inspiring initiatives, there are barriers too. Many farmers in remote areas have poor—if any—internet connection. Ironically, the webinar in which these organizations shared their experiences faced its own connectivity challenges!

Farmers often have older phones that are incompatible with the apps. Older farmers in particular struggle with digital literacy; the average age of farmers worldwide is 57 years. Agroecology groups address these challenges with training programs. Some, like AlterMundi in Argentina, are tackling the issue of connectivity with community-led internet development projects in remote areas.

Still, some groups are hesitant to embrace digital tools, stressing concerns about the technology’s reliance on conflict minerals, companies using farmers’ data to sell them ever more expensive and addictive inputs and a broad concern that technological fixes mask deeper inequalities.

“Hunger will not be resolved by data. Digitization will also not solve structural problems of poverty and injustice,” says Arias.

That is certainly true. But what if the new digital tools are designed with principles of agroecology built into their operating systems? Agroecology rests on practices of applied learning and collaborative co-creation. And as these groups demonstrate, when digital tools are controlled by farmers and consumers, they may be able to facilitate both and ensure that digitization benefits those who technology often leaves behind.

Photo courtesy of Diego Moreira, Wikimedia Commons

In Kenya, Food Sovereignty Is Alive and Well

The Bittman Project featured an article about the Agroecology Fund in January of 2024. You can find the original article here.

Strengthening community-led agroecological practices and fighting the vested interests that undermine them are the keys

Careful readers of The Bittman Project will note that we are increasingly giving active support to some of our especially like-minded partners. Among these is Agroecology Fund, a participatory grantmaking fund that supports agroecology movements from Mexico to Mali to Malaysia.

This global network comprises a diverse, ground-up movement of allied organizations all geared to building sustainable and equitable food systems, while advocating for policies that enable agroecology and, of course, railing against the vested interests that undermine it.

Agroecology Fund applies its resources to the intersection of these movements, where farmers, eaters, scientists, journalists, policy-makers, activists, and environmentalists collaborate for grassroots-led change. Collaborations include strategies as diverse and complementary as researching soil health, creating agroecology schools and seed banks, offering new models of agricultural extension, passing local land and water use ordinances, and resisting barriers to agroecology, such as corporate control of seeds.

Agroecology Fund fortifies these multi-sectoral movements around the world to build power and transform the food system. This photo essay shares how grantee partners in Kenya are creating food sovereignty by strengthening community-led agroecological practices and solutions.

The above photo is of Samuel Maina, who uses Organic Agriculture Centre of Kenya (OACK)’s biofertilizer at his organic farm, which sits on a hill in Kiamakara Village, Muranga County. In the valley below, farmers produce Kenyan tea — one of the country’s main exports — with chemical fertilizers.

Local demand for Samuel’s organic produce is huge. Nonetheless, he spoke of the safety he feels in diversifying his income. He, too, has a lot in the valley where he grows non-organic tea, a product which he claims Kenya has strict regulations around. “It’s not organic, because we have that policy,” he explains. “You have to use the [chemical] fertilizers that they give you to control the taste of tea, so that it will not be different with every farmer.”

Duncan Ndirangu, of OACK, holds a bottle of organic “soil conditioner” manufactured by his organization. OACK sells this biofertilizer to local farmers at a lower price than the chemical fertilizers peddled by industrial giants. Many of these corporations are seeking to expand by influencing farmers in rural Kenya, where 70% of the population is engaged in agriculture. OACK is a member of PELUM Kenya.

Gladys sells OACK’s biofertilizer, as well as other organic products at her small shop at Kangari Market Centre in Muranga County. The grassroots group’s product is extremely popular with local farmers, and OACK’s already impressive operation can barely keep up with demand. Duncan Ndirangu emphasized the pressing need for more affordable credit options in order for OACK to grow and to coax local farmers away from the short-term — and ultimately counter-productive — ‘solutions’ offered by chemical fertilizer companies.

At his farm, which is spread out over several levels around his house, Samuel Maina practices mixed organic farming, producing dozens of varieties of fruits, vegetables, and herbs, including guava, chamomile, and oregano.

Samuel belongs to the Kangari Organic Marketing Group, a local network which grows, processes, packages and sells organic produce. He is supported by OACK and PELUM Kenya.

Beatrice Nyambura lives and farms on the hill opposite Samuel. She, too, is part of the Kangari Organic Marketing Group. Her farm in Gakuyu Village, Muranga County, includes a solar tunnel dryer which local farmers pay to use.

Beatrice’s farm is supported by OACK, who last year constructed a water tank for her to help during a period of intense drought.

Peninah Mckenzie (above, left) and Dorothy Nzisa (above, right) are members of the Mwende Women Collective. Their work is supported by the Kenyan Peasants’ League (KPL), a farmer movement whose primary goal is to “promote peasantry and agroecology as a means to ensure food sovereignty.” KPL’s members are organized in “clusters” or “collectives,” to ensure solidarity and joint production.

Peninah and Dorothy weave baskets and bags from natural fibers and leftover dried produce. Their products are now being sold internationally.

KPL also supports the Mwende Munyanyau Cluster, a group of local farmers who are practicing land restoration through terracing and water conservation.

Susan Owiti, Secretary of the KPL Women’s Collective, manages a program which offers free accommodation for vulnerable peasant women, including widows and domestic abuse survivors. The program also offers training in organic farming, providing the women with long-term, practical knowledge and skills.

Due to the nature of KPL’s work, those involved with the group face serious security risks, including online hacking and threats to their personal safety.

Here, Nteleyo Saikong, a Mayianat-Maasai community member, addresses her community in a discussion about land restoration and reseeding in Makurian. These Indigenous people are historically pastoralists — communities whose way of life revolves around breeding and herding livestock such as cows and goats, typically in extensive grazing systems.

But nearby conservation efforts — including exclusive, private resorts — have fenced off large areas of these communities’ pasture lands. This has, in turn, upset the natural cycle of grazing and restoration — a delicate balance which pastoralists have maintained for centuries.

Indigenous youth here face increasing pressure to migrate to urban areas, and to turn away from traditional practices which some consider “backward.”

Mali Ole Kaunga is the founder of the Indigenous Movement for Peace Advancement and Conflict Transformation (IMPACT) in Kenya, and works with these communities to secure their rights, support their land stewardship, and fortify their food security. Mali stresses the urgency of intergenerational knowledge transfer. “We are losing people to institutions which are designed to undermine them,” he explains.

Lekinyaga Maa (above, far right) is a young musician, who writes songs praising his ancestral land, and describing the unprecedented struggles now faced by his people.

Women in the group emphasized the need for female empowerment in their community and in farming efforts. Here, Joyce Morijoh, Chairlady of Rapunye Cultural Manyatta and a member of the Nyumba Kumi initiative, addresses her community.

Joyce Mamai is a beadworker and member of Twala Tenebo Cultural Manyatta, which encourages financial independence for Indigenous women through organic farming, traditional practices, and tourist activities such as baboon walks. The group was born out of a need to address female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage, which were considered core to the community’s cultural identity. Approximately 90% of the girls in this community once faced these harmful practices — today, they have been completely eradicated. Twala Tenebo Cultural Manyatta’s work is also supported by IMPACT Kenya.

Rosemary Nenini Putunoi, a survivor of FGM and child marriage herself, is the founder and manager of Twala Tenebo. She speaks of how difficult it was to change men’s minds about the deeply-embedded patriarchal traditions which were keeping women in her community oppressed. When trying to educate men away from child marriage she would ask them: “Why are you eating uncooked food where there is cooked food?”

The group’s organic aloe vera farm, one of several agroecological interventions in this community, provides local women with a reliable stream of income.

Having overcome the significant obstacle of community acceptance, they now face another challenge: elephant attacks. Neighboring conservation work has affected wildlife migration patterns and cut animals off from their typical food sources. This puts farmers and pastoralists at a higher risk of animal attacks.

Mworia Mwenda and his wife are beneficiaries of organic farming training conducted by Pastoralist Women for Health and Education (PWHE). They have found agroecological farming to be very fruitful and lucrative. They harvest 500 kilograms’ worth of crops weekly from their three acres of land.

Sadia Mohamed, a Matendo Women chairperson, has started practicing organic farming at her compound in Kambi Juu, with support from PWHE. She has planted an extensive kitchen garden, complete with zero-grazing goats.

PWHE also supports food producers who are at the very beginning stages of agroecological farming. This starts with education. Mumina Jillo Konso (above, right) is a former member of the County Assembly. While she is from a pastoralist community, she also owns a 32-acre farm. Shoba M. Liban (above, left), PWHE’s CEO, knows Mumina from political circles, and has been encouraging her to transition to agroecology.

Indigenous groups in Kenya such as the Ogiek (above, with Maines Chebet, leader of the Logumek Women Group, in the forefront) are often overlooked — and, at times, aggressively marginalized. Despite their historical role in maintaining the land, they are excluded from local and national decision-making and policy development surrounding agriculture.

This Ogiek community in Nessuit is supported by the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program (OPDP), an organization which defends the rights of Indigenous Peoples. OPDP is currently finalizing legal proceedings against the Kenyan government, whom they are suing for reparations for the displacement of Indigenous groups in Kenya.

This community in Nessuit has a strong female farmer presence, named the Logumek Women Group (members pictured, above), who received indigenous vegetable seeds as part of OPDP’s agroecology project. However, due to an extended drought, they have struggled to produce crops. Their beehives, too, are empty.

Many of the men in this community are engaged in conventional agriculture, growing maize, potatoes and beans with chemical fertilizers.

The community’s soil is so degraded that the women feel they now have to follow suit and to resort to using chemical fertilizers in order to produce a yield significant enough to sell. They have decided to use manure only for the small kitchen gardens that feed their families.

Here, schoolchildren attend a farmers’ fair organized by Slow Food Kenya to learn more about agroecology. At this stand, Florida Muthoni (nicknamed “Sonia”) speaks to the children about her involvement with organic food production.

Slow Food Kenya is an affiliate of Slow Food International, a global, grassroots organization which promotes food biodiversity and advocates for traditional knowledge-supported food systems.

Sonia uses locally-produced, organic ingredients such as pearl millet, roasted groundnuts, and dried arrowroot, to make “porridge,” a hearty fermented drink that she serves in gourds out of her shop in Naukuru town.

At other stalls, food producers and farmers display organic products – from beans to natural remedies.

Many of the youth present at the fair explained that they were establishing agriculture cooperatives and producing crops to sell to nearby hotels. One young farmer speaks of his own positive experience of agroecology. While he is a tailor and makes clothes to supplement his income, he sees the long-term value in organic farming.

Donor support boosts agroecological fixes to climate, food crises

An opinion piece by Daniel Moss  published on devex.com, 14 November 2023

Agroecology, recognized in most parts of the world as a climate and hunger solution, is gaining traction worldwide, as demonstrated by increased donor support. This support must keep flowing to grassroots movements.

A global grassroots agroecology movement is shifting policies, practices, and investments toward climate-friendly food systems. With industrial agriculture responsible for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions, the need is urgent. Led by women, Indigenous people, youth, and smallholder farmers, powerful decentralized networks are giving rise to climate-resilient and equitable food systems. A wide range of donors, including governments, are now supporting agroecological solutions — and who gets these funds and how is key to consider.

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Agroecology, recognized in most parts of the world as a climate and hunger solution, is gaining traction worldwide. Perhaps a new term to some, it helps to encourage people to dissect it — agro (soil, crops) and ecology (natural systems). Farming with nature.

When you remind people that modern, or industrialized, farming is just a blip in the over 10,000-year history of agriculture, the inevitability of our fossil fuel-heavy food system becomes less certain. Questions follow: How did we box ourselves into a food system that is estimated to be responsible for more than a third of all global anthropogenic GHG emissions? And more urgently: How do we rebuild food systems that put people and the planet first?

Curiosity about agroecology solutions is palpable, but so is skepticism. A few points I often hear are: Agroecology may have sustained Indigenous peoples in the past, but can it really fill 8 billion bellies? Or: Agroecology is anachronistic, yields are insufficient, land is too scarce, and genetically modified seeds are needed for climate resilience and nutritional fortification.

Never mind that these arguments have been debunked in peer-reviewed literature and that low-input, smallholder farming accounts for 70% of the global food supply. The facts speak for themselves. Good nutrition depends on diversified, culturally appropriate local diets. Fossil fuels are not needed to manufacture fertilizers and pesticides; costs and resources can be saved using local biomass. Climate-smart agriculture doesn’t rest on proprietary patents but rather on scientifically validated natural techniques that regenerate rather than degrade ecosystems.

Greenwashing and regenerative agriculture vs. agroecology

That doesn’t stop the increasingly common practice of greenwashing — providing misleading information about the impacts of a company’s work on the environment. Meanwhile, the term “regenerative agriculture” has gained popularity in the United States over the past decade as a way to grow food while sequestering carbon. It appears in popular documentaries like “Kiss the Ground” and pilot programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Agricultural input companies like Bayer endorse a medley of regenerative agriculture practices, a cousin of agroecology, while also noting that “there is no commonly agreed definition of regenerative agriculture.” It is often conflated with agroecology, or leaves some wondering about how they are different. Yet, while regenerative agriculture features techniques such as no-till farming and cover crops to build healthier soil, the core difference is that a focus on these practices alone is “stripped of social justice dimensions.”

Agroecology is more than farming techniques; it seeks the transformation of entire food systems, embracing a holistic approach from land rights to inclusive governance to fair and dignified livelihoods. It is championed by farmer movements like La Via Campesina claiming: Small farmers cool the planet.

Photo by: La Via Campesina

Of course scale is critical for agroecology to help stabilize the climate. While industrial agriculture (misnamed the “Green Revolution”) spread quickly when global seed and chemical suppliers captured public agricultural programs, agroecology takes a different path.

Grassroots-led agroecology

Grassroots movements are the “secret sauce.” These networks can’t match big agriculture’s lobbying and marketing moves, but they can create powerful coalitions to manage farmer field schools, shift narratives, direct funding to emerging agroecological businesses, and influence governments to adopt agroecology-friendly legislation.

This growing movement can succeed in redirecting the roughly $635 billion in global agricultural subsidies from industrial to agroecological practices. This heavy subsidization pampers and sustains industrial agriculture. Philanthropic networks like the Agroecology Fund and the Global Greengrants Fund have a theory of change that channels resources to climate justice action grounded in the right to healthy food.

While compelling, this bottom-up, decentralized change requires significant time and resources. Given the urgency to identify impactful climate solutions, we need large-scale solutions now. Donors rightly ask whether grassroots-led agroecology is up to the job.

Growing donor support to scale agroecological solutions  

In a thought-provoking essay in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Lior Ipp challenges the notion that big changes mean supporting big organizations (from the global north). A funder interested in systemic change should consider investing in local initiatives that interweave and aggregate efforts rooted in territories and cultures, Ipp suggests. The global agroecology movement provides a big tent for those territorial efforts.

Take the case of India. With 1.4 billion people, nearly 30% of land degraded, and water supplies shrinking alarmingly, innovations abound. The state of Andhra Pradesh, home to 50 million people, is investing $255 million in agroecological practices known as natural farming. The National Coalition for Natural Farming is pushing the agenda forward in other states.

Farm-grown nutrients eliminate costly and harmful chemical fertilizers and pesticides that have pushed farmers into debt and spurred a farmer suicide epidemic. Powered by local women’s self-help organizations, 630,000 farmers have become natural farmers, experiencing 11% increase in yields while maintaining higher crop diversity.

In West Africa’s Sahel desert, farmers are reeling from climate change. With bilateral, multilateral, and philanthropic donor support, grassroots farmers’ networks are working with community chiefs to strengthen a “Great Green Wall.” This is not a plantation-style monoculture forest but a proven technique for truly climate-smart agriculture called “farmer-managed natural regeneration,” where a diversity of tree species helps farmland to regenerate, improving soil quality, moisture retention, and carbon sequestration.

In Brazil, the government is leveraging its formidable purchasing power to bring agroecologically produced foods into schools, hospitals, and municipalities. These guaranteed markets provide a powerful incentive for farmers to transition away from unsustainable techniques. Cooperatives affiliated with the Landless Workers Movement have become the country’s largest producer of organic rice.

These on-the-ground successes are making their way into global conversations and commitments.

Who gets funding and how is key to agroecology and climate justice

Opinion: Why our UAE COP 28 presidency is hyperfocused on food systems

Efforts to make our food and agriculture systems more equitable, accessible and sustainable will receive unprecedented attention at COP 28 later this year, writes the UAE’s Mariam Almheiri.

This September, at Climate Week in New York City, the dots began to line up with multiple philanthropies, private investors, and public donor agencies committing to invest in climate-friendly food systems.

A new tool to track investments in agroecology was recently launched by the Agroecology Coalition during the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Committee on World Food Security meeting. A sneak peak at the upcoming U.N. climate summit, COP 28, agenda featured a draft declaration to put food systems transformation squarely on the table. A rising tide of investments is anticipated.

But it’s not simply about increasing funding flows. It matters a great deal how it flows and to whom it flows. For nearly a decade, at the Agroecology Fund, we’ve grounded our support to agroecology movements, often led by women, Indigenous people, youth, and smallholder farmers, through participatory, decentralized mechanisms that bring funding decisions closer to the ground. That is who these increased flows of funding need to focus on supporting.

As multiple crises deepen and technological fixes can’t deliver solutions, the need to lift up grassroots leadership for agroecology and climate justice becomes more obvious. It’s an urgent and unprecedented moment to invest in their blossoming and visionary movements.

Food reform can’t distract from fossil fuels at COP28

This article first appeared on Context in November 2023.

By Anna Lappé

What’s the context?

Food reform is finally on the table for the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, but it must go hand in hand with cuts in fossil fuels

Anna Lappé is a sustainable food advocate, author, and the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

The urgent need to tackle the climate crisis has become incontrovertible. Yet one of its key drivers, food systems—which globally are responsible for a staggering one third of greenhouse gas emissions—has so far been largely left out of climate change negotiations. This year, that looks set to change.

At COP28, the UN climate change meeting starting in Dubai on November 30, the leaders of more than 100 countries are expected to commit to making food and agricultural reform central to their climate action plans, alongside energy and transport.

This is welcome—and long overdue. And yet, many people – including myself – are deeply alarmed that COP28 is being hosted by the UAE, a petrostate arguing for the “phasing down” rather than “phasing out” of fossil fuels. Only last year the UAE announced a $150 billion investment to accelerate oil and gas production, despite the scientific consensus being that new exploration should have stopped two years ago.

And it’s not only scientists and environmentalists that are concerned about this dissonance. Last week 130 leading global businesses published an open letter urging governments attending COP28 to commit to a timeline to phase out fossil fuels completely. under fire

The truth is, you can’t have food systems transformation without fossil fuel phase out – and vice versa. While there are significant sources of emissions in food systems that aren’t directly related to fossil fuels, such as methane from livestock and deforestation, the reliance of the sector on fossil fuel input is a critical piece of the puzzle.

New research published today by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food – the organization I lead – finds that food systems account for at least 15% of global fossil fuels burned each year, equivalent to total emissions from the EU and Russia combined.

Fossil fuels are used across all stages of the food supply chain. Petroleum is used to make synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and plastic food packaging. And fossil fuels are also burnt to produce energy to manufacture ultra-processed foods and to transport food around the world.

Our report shows that decoupling food production from fossil fuels is vital to prevent catastrophic climate change. Even if all governments delivered on their 2030 climate pledges, fossil fuel use in our food system would still blow our 1.5C carbon budget by 2037.

The oil companies know this but, as fossil fuel use for power and transport is expected to decline with the uptake of renewable energy and electric vehicles, industry is looking for ways to maintain their growth and profits.

A primary focus is the petrochemicals and plastics used to make and package food. The International Energy Association (IEA) predicts that petrochemicals will drive nearly half of oil demand growth by 2050, outstripping sectors like aviation and shipping. And food-related plastics and fertilizers account for approximately 40% of all petrochemical products.

Companies are seizing the opportunity. In 2016, the American Chemistry Council projected that the fossil fuel industry would spend $164 billion from 2016 to 2023 in the United States alone to construct new, and expand existing, petrochemical projects.

It’s clear the fossil fuel industry—and countries that derive huge revenues from fossil fuel production like the UAE – have a vested interest in maintaining an industrialized, energy-intensive food system. And so where does that leave us, on the eve of COP28 with food systems on the official summit agenda?

First, it’s vital that policymakers, funders, researchers, campaigners, businesses and other experts work together across food and energy issues, rather than looking at them in silos. That means pushing for language on phasing out fossil fuels to be included in the declaration on food and farming that will be announced at COP28.

It also means going further and faster than the minimum bar set by the COP28 host. It’s promising that an alliance of countries who will commit to driving systemic change on food systems through taking a whole-of-government approach is expected to be announced at the summit.

In addition, individual governments will pledge to update their domestic climate plans – or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – to include further action on food and farming. This is something my organization has been calling for, especially considering food-focused strategies currently missing from over 70% of countries’ climate plans.

Countries that are serious about tackling the climate crisis should show they have ambitious plans to wean their food systems off fossil fuels. This should include phasing out fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides; shifting to renewable energy for processing, cooling, and drying food; supporting minimally processed, less-energy intensive foods and plant-rich diets; and encouraging the uptake of locally-grown food.

Shifting away from industrial methods of food production towards more sustainable ways of farming – including agroecology and regenerative approaches – would not only protect the planet, but also would help address the roots of hunger, create jobs, improve health and protect biodiversity.

The upcoming summit is an opportunity, but one we must not squander. We want to be walking away from COP28 with concrete commitments to decouple food production from fossil fuel use as quickly as possible, as part of an overall climate change policy agenda that is ambitious, comprehensive, and backed by genuine political will.

The time for empty talk is long gone.

The Guardians of the Future: It’s Time for Indigenous Voices to Lead the Climate Fight

Photographs by Camila Falquez
Text by Isvett Verde

The following article was published in The New York Times in October of 2022. You can read the original here.

The natural resources that Indigenous peoples depend on are inextricably linked to their identities, cultures and livelihoods. Even relatively small changes in temperature or rainfall can make their lands more susceptible to rising sea levels, droughts and forest fires. As the climate crisis escalates, activists fighting to protect what remain of the world’s forests are at risk of being persecuted by their governments — and even at risk of death.

For decades Indigenous activists have been sounding the alarm. But their warnings have too often been ignored. So, they organized.

Indigenous peoples and communities, working in the Americas, Indonesia and Africa joined forces and together became the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities. They work to protect their rights and territories, amounting to nearly 3.5 million square miles of land across the planet.

“For us, the plants, the trees have life, they have a spirit, that’s why we have to respect it, take care of it and protect it. The women in my community have planted trees, bananas, cassava. We are dressing Mother Earth.”

— Briceida Iglesias, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Panama

“Guna Yala is where we come from. It is not just a territory; it is more than that. It is a community — a family. ‘You are the next generation,’ my father told me. ‘And you must fight for your future.’ That gave me the drive to finish college and return to work for my community.”

— Yaily Castillo, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Panama.

“Everyone agrees on the conservation of nature, on fighting climate change. But in practice they say that where you put the money you put the heart, and governments are not putting the heart. We want to be seen as partners in this fight.”

— Gustavo Sánchez, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Mexico.

“Our spiritual, ritualistic and cultural practices are closely linked to the flow of nature. We use the rivers as a means of transport, but the rains have become scarce, isolating many communities. Several species — flora and fauna — are disappearing, which has led to a shortage of food and has limited our ability to perform certain rituals. This has had a dramatic impact on our culture. The cause is partly climate change, but these changes can also be linked to our government’s dismantling of environmental policy.”

— Dinamam Tuxá, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Brazil.

“The oil that comes out of the Amazon, the gold — these natural resources feed development models, but we are left with garbage, oil pollution and mercury in the rivers. It is very sad that the United Nations only speaks to the presidents because their governments do not listen to us. The voice of the people must be respected. I call on the world to join our fight.”

— Gregorio Mirabal, Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin, Venezuela.

Working across multiple languages and political and legal systems, the alliance settled on five priorities: land rights, free prior and informed consent before any intervention into their territories, direct access to climate funding, protection of people from violence and prosecution, and the recognition of traditional knowledge in the fight to defend the planet.

In September, members of the alliance and their allies visited New York to meet with policymakers and donors during Climate Week, which brings together international leaders to push for global climate action.

They harnessed the power of speaking as a united voice, describing promises made by governments and international bodies that have failed to materialize into action. They explained how even though money to fight climate change so often doesn’t reach them, they have managed to develop programs that are helping communities mitigate and adapt to a changing climate. Imagine what could be possible with more funding and support.

“We have no more land to put our animals, to grow our medicinal plants. We want our trees back. We want to give our children our own medicine. We are part of the solution. We have our local knowledge, and we have ancestral knowledge. Give us a chance to bring our knowledge to the table.”

— Aissatou Oumarou, the Network of Indigenous and Local Populations for the Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa, Chad.

“Hope always needs to be nurtured. Everything is a process and, like any slow process, it has its time. Just as things in nature also have their time. And we only ask the creator for strength to give us wisdom, discernment. But we don’t feed on hope. So day after day, we fight.”

— Cristiane Julião Pankaruru, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Brazil.

“My community and territory has already been destroyed by palm oil plantations. There is only a very small forest left. The loss of the territory, the forest, the traditions, the cultural rituals — these things are what makes us who we are. When we lost that, we lost everything.”

— Mina Susana Setra, the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago, Indonesia.

“Indigenous youths are the future leaders and policymakers. We are doing their part to keep the knowledge alive and language alive, and I think that’s really the face or the picture of what hope is.”

— Monica Ndoen, the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago, Indonesia.

“We hope that society as a whole can rethink its attitudes. Simple, everyday acts can go a long way. Rethink your rampant consumption. Rethink this capitalist way of living — relentless development. We want this philosophy of life to become part of everyday habits.”

— João Víctor Gomes de Oliveira, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Brazil.

“We have to re-naturalize ourselves. We have to have more awareness of our actions, more awareness of nature. Unite this divorce that exists between man and humanity and nature. Because what happens to nature, happens to us. It will take its toll on us.

— Tuntiak Katan, Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin, Ecuador.

“My grandparents were forcibly evicted to make way for the construction of a hydroelectric plant. As a result, our relationship with our sacred sites changed, as did our way of highlighting our identity through our language. It’s an example of how a development can destroy the very life of Indigenous peoples. I worry that we are all going to lose the cosmogonic spiritual wealth that we have within our Mother Earth.”

— Sara Omi Casama, the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Panama.

“If we don’t preserve our traditional knowledge, it will disappear. We are cultivating intergenerational dialogue to enable our elders to share the knowledge that they have with the younger generations, so we can protect and preserve it for generations to come.” 

— Aehshatou Manu, the Network of Indigenous and Local Populations for the Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa, Cameroon.

Camila Falquez is a photographer and visual artist living in New York. Isvett Verde is a staff editor in Opinion.