By Joyce Chimbi
United Nations (UN) researchers find that food systems are responsible for approximately a third of global emissions. Agroecology has been fronted as an essential solution to help remove harmful gases such as methane and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester carbon in the soil.
Low-carbon agriculture is essential to ensure long-term sustainable food production and sovereignty. Agroecology helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mainly by increasing soil organic matter or carbon sequestration – the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and by not using synthetic fertilizers. Yet, there are not enough finances to transform food systems.
Daniel Moss, a co-director at the Agroecology Fund -a multi-donor fund supporting agroecological practices and policies, observed, “We had a session amongst donors who are working in agricultural development about how much they can align their portfolios of investment with the principles of agroecology. And the question that we were asking ourselves is, can donors do it?
“Can they move their money into agroecology so that we can make sure that the crises that we are facing in the world around hunger and biodiversity and climate change are able to be resolved through a key solution, which is agroecology. We know that it is not always easy for donors to move money into grassroots-led, community-led agroecology but it can be done.”
Moss was speaking during a learning exchange among grassroots organizations and networks scaling up agroecology in their territories and financiers of agricultural development. The conference is organized by the Fund in Harare, Zimbabwe September 16-19, 2024 to explore agroecology solutions in light of the multiple and complex challenges facing the world today, and more, the African continent. One of the priority issues addressed was on finance for agroecology as this is an essential ingredient to achieve food sovereignty.
Even though there is growing consensus globally and even more across the African continent that there is a need for an agriculture and food system that works in harmony with the ecosystem – protecting the environment, its biodiversity, human and animal life – recent analysis shows that there is not enough financing to grow and expand such a system or to even transform the systems entirely.
Drawing from his extensive experience in philanthropy, Moss said that it is at the “grassroots level where these financial investments are most needed. For, it is at the community level where farmers, farmers’ organizations, those working in academia, working with local authorities are scaling agroecology up and out. So today we asked donors, can you move your resources there? What is in the way of moving your resources there? How can we work together to grow the pie so that more money flows into these critical grassroots-led organizations, networks, and movements?”
Further indicating that “donors often request evidence that agroecology is really up to the job of feeding the world and really up to the job of making a more climate-resilient world. What we need is evidence, but I think the question that is key for us here at the Agroecology Fund is the question about evidence – evidence by whom, for whom?”
Moss stated that the Agroecology Fund supports organizations to generate evidence and present it to the stakeholders they intend to influence such as policymakers, donors and fellow farmers. Overall, the idea is that grassroots organizations can show the impact of their work and to even demonstrate that the agroecology way is effective in sequestering carbon, preserving biodiversity and effective in healthy nutrition.
But equally important, it is for individual organizations to form alliances, networks and organizations with each other, as donors are much more likely to finance collaborative efforts as they are ultimately – more effective, fast-acting and sustainable, he advised.
Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are among a growing list of African countries that have developed, or are working to develop, national organic or agroecology strategies or policies. African countries are increasingly adopting agroecology in their respective national agricultural frameworks. The aim is to mainstream a holistic approach to fix and transform broken agricultural and food systems to attain food sovereignty.
But transforming existing food systems in line with these strategies is a massive undertaking as huge investments are required. During a learning exchange in Harare, Zimbabwe on September 16-19, 2024 which was organized by the Agroecology Fund – a multi-donor fund supporting agroecological practices and policies – farmers and representatives of farmer organizations and networks on the continent asked donor organizations represented – can the donors do it?
The most recent estimates show that transforming food systems could cost between $300 billion and $400 billion per year. According to the World Bank, the cost to transform the global agrifood system to make it more resilient, nutritious, inclusive, and net-zero is estimated at about $500 billion per year for the next 10 years.
But research shows that while these are huge figures and the investment needed massive, the global food systems are costing the global community, and more so developing countries buckling under the wait of food and nutrition insecurity – much more. With one in eleven people across the world and one in five in Africa facing hunger according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, hunger numbers remain stubbornly high.
Nearly 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, as the number of people facing hunger remains high for three consecutive years now. Making a case for all donors, philanthropic and development as well as private and public sector, not leaving behind bilateral and multilateral financial institutions – there is a case to be made in favor of food system transformation through agroecological practices.
The enormous hidden costs of the global agrifood system, estimated at about $12 trillion per year means that existing agriculture and food systems are untenable. These systems are not producing enough food and are in fact, deepening rural poverty, hunger and malnutrition.
One in 4 children globally live in severe child food poverty. Nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 are attributable to undernutrition. In the absence of a functional food system that works in harmony with nature, not only will the world not achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, the world will continue to veer off the Sustainable Development Goals on health, education, gender equality, and ending poverty in all its form everywhere, ending hunger, achieving food security and nutrition and, promoting sustainable development all around.
