In 2023, 25 philanthropies announced a collaboration to leverage investments, calling for a tenfold increase in funding to support equitable agroecological food systems. Such an ambitious goal is by no means an easy task. But besides intense coordination among themselves, how can philanthropies understand and agree upon what exactly falls under this type of investment?

One solution: the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). The CFS is a U.N. body that brings together governments, civil society, the private sector, and other actors to develop voluntary guidelines, policy recommendations, and frameworks aimed at ensuring sustainable and equitable agroecological food systems. It is regarded as the “foremost inclusive international platform” because of its innovative structure for participation which, beyond governments, enables self-organization of civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and the private sector. By facilitating organized, legitimate, and consistent participation through “mechanisms,” this governance structure addresses the long-standing challenge of ad hoc and opaque processes and sometimes contentious presence of ‘representatives’ in global meetings who often lack the endorsement of their peers.

Recommendations for Equitable Agroecological Food Systems

On agroecology, for instance, the CFS had produced policy recommendations on agroecology and other innovative approaches. A CFS High Level Panel of Experts crafted a framework for agroecology based on thirteen principles, common ground which undergirds the multilateral Agroecology Coalition and which offers clear guidance for philanthropic investments seeking to scale agroecology up. By using internationally agreed upon language and processes, philanthropic foundations can align with a broad community of public and private funders and investors to accelerate the transition towards equitable agroecological food systems.

This is just one example of how the CFS can strengthen philanthropic investments. Other policies of the CFS, developed over time, include: guidelines on land tenure that substantially influence land reform programs and sustainable land investment, and guidelines on nutrition, which consolidated years of debate on how to strengthen the nutrition dimension of food security and equitable agroecological food systems by linking health and food and highlighting strategies for sustainable and healthy diets. The CFS has developed dozens of such technically-rich and globally endorsed policies—from gender empowerment, to humanitarian crisis response, to youth engagement, and on smallholder farming and market inclusion, among others. All these instruments are aligned with an explicit commitment to the progressive realization of the right to adequate food for all.

Read the full article about equitable agroecological food systems by Matheus Zanella, Daniel Moss, and Ruchi Tripathi at Food Tank.