Mobilizing Money and Movements: Creative finance for food systems transformation

Published on April 14, 2023

The report Mobilizing Money and Movements: Creative finance for food systems transformation provides investors with a roadmap of creative finance strategies that support entrepreneurs, farmers, activists, and social movements to transform local food economies. Conducted by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food and Transformational Investing in Food Systems Initiative (TIFS), this report showcases six food-focused initiatives that have incorporated unique investment strategies that blend a spectrum of financial capital to both stimulate social enterprise and achieve sustainable, equitable, and secure food systems.

Building on the Global Alliance’s Beacons of Hope project, the report presents a number of important recommendations for the investment community, especially those with flexible capital.

The report presents a number of important insights and lessons for the investment community, especially those with flexible capital:

1. Recognize that transformational business models require blended finance models to accelerate their impacts. These Beacons of Hope initiatives have benefited from catalytic, blended, and flexible capital as well as grants and technical support.

2. Identify and apply catalytic capital to the field, redirecting existing financial flows away from harmful practices and augmenting finance for initiatives that are demonstrably incentivizing, accelerating, and amplifying food systems transformations.

3. Screen for initiatives that are modelled on shared ownership and cooperative models and are committed to delivering fair and inclusive returns for all parties.

4. Identify and build relationships with networks and communities of investors (private, public, commercial) who are actively working to support and accelerate context-specific transformational businesses and food systems initiatives.

5. Look for aligned transformational investment opportunities and actively scope possible collaborations with governments, cooperatives, farmers, banks and corporations, researchers, and others.