We already know how to invest in agroecology, supporting the kind of equitable and sustainable food systems that can build climate resilience. Yet while the hazards of industrial agriculture (and the opportunities offered by agroecological food systems) are equally well known, most money still bets on the status quo: increasing the use of imported fertilizers and pesticides and motorized irrigation, despite high costs and questionable returns. Ignoring potent natural fertilizers, crop mixes, and water management practices that are cost-effective ways to produce diverse crops, short-sighted thinking—accompanied by short-term investments—stymie creative solutions. By emphasizing a global food economy and export value chains that reinforce fossil-fuel dependence, local and publicly managed markets get overlooked. Meanwhile, the acceleration toward fewer foods in our diets, often grown in monocultures, hurts landscapes, cultures, and health, eclipsing a richness of diverse, localized food systems neglected by investors.

In the African context, nutritious foods eaten by hundreds of millions of people—including cassava, sweet potatoes, and millets—already demonstrate both the potential for agroecology at scale. But because agrochemical companies still effectively market their proprietary technologies with governments, farmers, and development organizations as the path forward, investors, aid agencies and governments continue to invest in and subsidize chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and “improved” seeds. They ignore the investment opportunities in—and credit needs of—value chains of diversified, local, and Indigenous crops.

Agroecology offers an alternative investment screen, one leading toward a new food economy, grounded in ancestral knowledge, that can guide philanthropy, governments, and private investors alike toward local circular economies, stable land tenure, agrobiodiversity, and healthy soil.

Here we offer agroecological investment opportunities for a true food system transformation.

1. Think Beyond Export Value Chains When Investing in Agroecology

Agricultural development strategies often share a single, well-intentioned aim: boost farmer incomes. Too often, however, the perverse consequences of this way of thinking incentivizes smallholder farmers to apply subsidized chemical inputs to their fields and encourages biodiversity-centered family farming to enter export commodity chains. Yet while high input costs and unstable contracts and prices can leave farmers vulnerable, smallholder farmers producing diverse, nutritious foods for food security face difficulty differentiating their high-quality, nutritious products in accessible markets.

Read the full article about investing in agroecology by Jen Astone and Daniel Moss at Stanford Social Innovation Review.