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For many, agroecology is the way to guide and approach transformation of the food system. But funding is short for sustainable food systems and is often delivered in unhelpful ways.  Financing for agriculture is often structurally unable to support small, and locally based investment opportunities and inflexible with a focus on scale and replication that is not tailored to the local environment. With growing interest and additional money in agroecology, it’s important to make better use of the funds allocated. 

The policy briefing by CIDSE and the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) of Coventry University is addressing the question: When donors do decide to target sustainable agroecological food systems, how can we transform the modes and approaches of financing so that it actually enables agroecology? 

The research involved 19 interviews and 4 focus groups sessions with 35 donors working on agroecology as well as recipients. The analysis developed 12 areas through which to better understand the dimensions of financing transformative agroecology, from a spectrum of “working against” to “working for” transformative agroecology. Based on these 5 sets of recommendations where drawn: 

1. Engage in iterative reflection and examination of donor practices
2. Transforming relationships between funders and recipient
3. Change funding modalities, methodologies and foci for delivering funding
4. Create and adopt more appropriate measurement and evaluation tools
5. Address the big picture issues that undermine a more just and sustainable food system

Have a closer look at the policy brief by CIDSE and CAWR: Making Money Move fo Agroecology.

The webinar accompanying the launch of the policy brief you can find on YouTube.

This policy briefing follows the first the publication  “Finance for agroecology; more just than a dream? An assessment of European and international institutions’ contributions to food system transformation”