A Multi-Donor Fund

ABOUT US

The Agroecology Fund is a multi-donor fund that supports just and sustainable food systems. Such systems promote the wellbeing and human rights of small farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and their communities, replenish soil and water resources, and help mitigate climate change. 

Using a unique participatory philanthropic model that relies on guidance from international advisors and long-term partners embedded in civil society networks, we link highly effective practitioners, scientists, and movement builders working across the globe with the necessary resources to help them achieve global food systems transformation. 

Since our four funding donors launched the Agroecology Fund in January 2012, we have grown sharply. Today, our donor community includes over 40 active funders committed to advancing agroecology while leveraging even more outside funding to support agroecology movements worldwide. 

From 2012-2023, through our global grant program and our regional funds, we have awarded a combined total of $20 million through 370 grants in 88 countries.

OUR VISION

We are a force of many and diverse voices, mobilizing resources to build power that transforms food systems and fosters the wellbeing of people and the planet.

Our vision for the year 2050:

Robust rural and urban communities with thriving economies will offer dignity and livelihoods for all food producers, as well as the ability to adapt to and mitigate environmental change. Biodiversity and the earth’s ecosystems will be conserved not only in wild areas, but in cultivated areas as well. Local cuisines will be celebrated, produced by people gleaning knowledge of agroecology from elders and scientists alike and drawing on the creativity of all. Governments and financial institutions will fully support regenerative and restorative economies and ecosystems as well as rights protections for human beings and nature. Everyone will have access to healthy, affordable, and diverse foods harvested from fair food systems that are governed locally by both producers and consumers.

Cultural diversity and the role of food producers as stewards of natural resources will be encouraged and respected. Fair food economies will be good for people and the planet, contributing to halting climate change. Agroecology will be the model for food systems, while industrial agriculture will be remembered only in history books and museums.

OUR THEORY OF CHANGE

The primary protagonists at the center of the Agroecology Fund's theory of change are agroecology movements. We seek to fortify these multi-sectoral movements around the world.

Agroecology movements organize constituencies, conduct real-time field research, construct “new economy” food systems and apply political pressure to win agroecology-friendly public policies and programs. They are composed of a diverse groundswell of allied organizations advocating for equitable and sustainable food systems and resisting policies, institutions and vested interests that undermine such systems. 

For these localized movements to succeed, collaborations of constituencies must be supported to engage in strategies as diverse and complementary as researching soil carbon sequestration, creating agroecology schools and seed banks, offering new models of agricultural extension, passing local land and water use ordinances, and critically, resisting systematic and intentional barriers to agroecology, such as corporate control of seed systems. 

We apply our pooled resources to the intersection of these movements, where farmers, consumers, scientists, policy-makers, and environmentalists collaborate.

OUR NICHE

We amplify agroecological solutions through three overlapping niches:

1. We pool and grant funds in support of agroecology movements through a participatory process grounded by the expertise of grassroots advisors.

2. We influence and collaborate with non-Agroecology Fund donors to support agroecology movements.

3. We provide a learning platform to the Agroecology Fund community (donors, advisors, and grantees).

Grantmaking remains at the heart of our ethos and operations – we seek to grow our grant pool and donor base, making more and larger grants. But just as our own grantmaking has grown, so too has our influence across a diverse donor landscape spread across multiple intersectional issues (e.g., climate change, biodiversity, human rights) and within various donor categories, including bilateral and multilateral funding agencies. 

Our mission is to “move money to agroecology” and as such seeks to exert influence on the philanthropic and donor community. However, even in donor peers' spaces, we aim to keep a low profile, making sure the prominent voices are those of our partners – when this role interests them.

We do not engage in policy advocacy but support social movements and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in their policy advocacy at local, national and international level. 

Just as we remain committed to granting out the vast majority of our resources – that is our true north – we have also deepened our capacity to offer support to grantees in other ways. We are finding a programmatic niche in: (a) leveraging more non-Agroecology Fund funding in support of the work of grantees and allies; (b) supporting grantees’ evidence-building capacities; (c) supporting grantees’ communications capacities; and (d) supplementing a global fund with interconnected regional funds.