By Joyce Chimbi
Conventional food production models are increasingly vulnerable to climate change and their long commercialization channels often succumb to food waste, energy inefficiency and corporate concentration. Food waste is a market failure where at least $1 trillion worth of food is thrown away every year. Long commercialization chains, often dependent on shipping food around the globe, exacerbate climate change.
And yet, this industrial agriculture model does not, as it claims, feed the world. Up to 783 million people are affected by hunger each year, and 150 million children under the age of five suffer stunted growth.
The Agroecology Fund – a multi-donor fund supporting agroecological practices and policies –held a four-day long learning exchange at Kufunda Village, in Harare, Zimbabwe from September 16-19, 2024.
Kufunda means learning and the event sought to provide actionable insights and recommendations to bolster local agroecology economies and advance transitions towards sustainable and fair food systems and, gather valuable feedback to refine the Agroecology Fund’s strategic plan of aligning with countries’ needs and aspirations.
In many African countries where local food systems face threats from changing land tenures including land grabs, an aggressive push for monoculture, plantation farming and soil erosion, experts such as Daniel Moss – a co-director at the Agroecology Fund – says agroecology practices are the most promising route to strengthen smallholder farmer’s autonomy and contribute to bolstering farmers’ income and families’ nutrition.
Agroecology is sustainable farming that works with nature. It helps to protect, restore and improve agriculture as well as food systems in the face of climate shocks and stressors, and has significant potential to reduce rural poverty. It seeks to restore biodiversity and add back into diets nutritious, indigenous foods that are being lost.
“Agroecology has travelled a long journey – as a science, practice and movement – country to country and across the globe. It is a journey that comes from our ancestors, but it’s moving forward into the future as well and, the journey will continue,” Moss said.
Speaking to the over 100 farmers and agroecology advocates from more than 20 countries across Africa, Moss stressed that the “advances that we’ve seen in agroecology, all the evolutions, changes, power and the creativity that we have seen in this learning exchange are due to your work and allies collaborating in this broad agroecology movement.”
Furthermore, he said that agroecology is the most reliable vehicle to equity and sustainable food systems, and especially in light of the multiple and complex global challenges that include climate change, human rights violations, biodiversity loss, human rights, gender inequities, poor nutrition and so much more.
In an effort to move funds where they are most needed – at the grassroots level – the learning and exchange conference closed with the inauguration of the Agroecology Fund’s African Regional Agroecology Funds – a decentralized financing mechanism to extend financing to grassroots organizations and entrepreneurs across Africa that are scaling up agroecology.
The funds’ coordinator, Tabara Ndiaye who is based in Dakar – Senegal said “this is the first time that the Agroecology Fund is launching in Africa with two regional funds – one for West Africa and another for Eastern. One of the key strategies of the Agroecology Fund is to mobilize funding and through these funds, we are mobilizing funding for Africa’s agroecology.”
Ndiaye further stated that overall, “the aim is to ensure that the Regional Funds reach out to local grassroots movements that we cannot fund through the Global Agroecology Fund because the requirements are high. At the same time, the Regional Funds will be a channel for the funders to support and reach out to local movements and networks doing agroecology in line with their own sets of requirements and capacities.”
The Funds are timely as experts across the African continent have raised concerns over challenges grassroot networks and local communities face in scaling agroecological solutions. Dioma Komonsira, an action-learning and advocacy coordinator for West Africa at Groundswell International spoke about how access to finance could help redesign or rethink the entire value chain for agroecological products.
Emphasizing that while the market for agroecology products is big, the supply is still significantly lower than demand based on a market survey conducted in Mali and Senegal. Against this backdrop, some of the topics explored during the learning exchange included brainstorming on agroecology economies to improve productive practices, generate value addition at the local level, and expand local markets.
To resolve some of the challenges that family farmers face in marketing and selling their products, the participants spoke about how the Participatory Guarantees Systems are revolutionizing trade in organic products produced by smallholder farmers in Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
As an emerging model for agroecology markets, the Participatory Guarantees Systems are alternative certification models that are affordable to smallholder farmers as they are significantly cheaper than the Third-Party Certification (TPC).
The guarantee system is built on trust and a structured network of farmers who guarantee each other and the local markets, that they are all indeed producing their foods in line with the 13 established agroecology principles anchored in natural resource governance, soil health, and animal welfare, among others. In all, agroecology as a form of agriculture is inexpensive since it avoids chemical inputs, provides food for the family and the market, and preserves natural resources.
Beyond challenges related to certification, participants espoused on other critical challenges such as access to credit and financing, and lack thereof and, highlighting innovative financial solutions within the reach of family farmers. These financial models include the farmers cooperatives ongoing in various African countries including Kenya.
There are also revolving funds, such as the table banking movement, which is anchored on a group fund-raising strategy in which a group of farmers come together to save and borrow from the pool of collected funds.
Other innovative strategies discussed include the solidarity calabash local communities fund raising strategy ongoing in Senegal. Rural Senegalese communities developed the solidarity calabash to combat hunger and debt.
Today, the calabash is a tool to mobilize local capital for the “self-financing” of group members’ activities related to agroecology such as farmer- led experimentation, innovation, mutual learning and accessing natural inputs. At the same time, participants spoke about the need to advocate with governments and banks for affordable credit. In all, the conference explored in depth the economic dimension of agroecology, including business planning for agroecological entrepreneurship, improved infrastructure, and strengthening of territorial markets.
