Financing agroecological transformations for territorial agri-food systems: Beyond the myth of financial scarcity

Today’s industrial agri-food system has significant negative impacts on the environment and society, including biodiversity loss, freshwater pollution and consumption, and contributing nearly 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Agroecology offers an alternative paradigm for agriculture and food systems. Diverse agroecological practices seek to imitate the structure and function of natural ecosystems and build socio-ecological resilience at different scales. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Panel on Climate Change both endorse the benefits and huge potential of agroecology for mitigating and adapting to climate change. But the most recent estimates show that transforming global agri-food systems toward more nutritious, inclusive, and net-zero models could cost up to USD 500 billion per year. The mainstream view is that public financial resources are not sufficient to transform agri-food systems for sustainability and that private finance is therefore essential to fill the funding gap. However, evidence presented in this paper debunks this deeply ingrained myth of financial scarcity. It identifies an abundance of public and private money potentially available to transform agri-food systems for climate repair and biodiversity conservation, and help achieve other goals, such as poverty alleviation, responsible consumption and production, reduced inequities, and food security. Accessing this finance will involve (i) redirecting finance, subsidies, and research away from industrial agri-food systems and greenwashing toward re-localized agri-food systems based on short food chains and circular degrowth metabolisms; (ii) using taxation to access hitherto untapped sources of finance and discourage destructive systems; and (iii) financing inclusive and participatory democracy to counteract the power of wealthy elites at this critical moment in history. The paper concludes by calling on agroecology practitioners to defy disciplinary boundaries and obedient knowledge, and develop new social norms and transformative visions for finance outside of capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy.