S2G Ventures is honored to come together with an international group of finance leaders to accelerate the mobilization of finance for healthier, more sustainable, and inclusive food systems.

As the world is preparing for the landmark United Nations Food Systems Summit kicking off today, finance leaders who have recognized the vital role of food in solving today’s most pressing environmental and social challenges, joined forces for a transition towards financing healthier and more sustainable, equitable food systems.

Our food systems touch every aspect of human existence and have the power to generate large-scale positive outcomes for the health and resilience of people, nature, economies, and financial holdings.

That said, a large portion of today’s food systems are broken, unequal and simply unsustainable. Currently, they directly contribute to 30% of the world’s anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, threaten 86% of at-risk species, deny 3 billion people affordable access to regular, safe, and nutritious food, and leave 690 million people chronically hungry.[2]

“We need to build a possible future where a just food system meets the health needs of our entire global population, and provides a lucrative financial return for all stakeholders from the woman smallholder farmer to the multinational asset managers and commercial bankers.”

- Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, President and Co-Founder of Food Systems for the Future.

Leaders in finance from across the globe have recognized the immense potential of addressing major financial imperatives linked to food systems transformation. We were joined by c-suite leaders from financial institutions in the public, private, and multilateral sectors—including Rabobank, The World Bank, United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), WBCSD – World Business Council for Sustainable Development, EAT, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), FAIRR Initiative—in a high-level roundtable, timed to coincide with meetings of the U.N. General Assembly, to launch the Good Food Finance Network.

The Good Food Finance Network will bring together public and private financial institutions, governments and businesses, across all regions of the world. Convening a Leaders’ Group and technical expert Catalyst Groups to ensure measurable, verifiable and catalytic advances, the Network will serve as a go-to platform for developing the critical innovations that will allow sustainable food system finance to become the mainstream standard.

“Working with this unique coalition of leading public and private institutions toward the creation of a more equitable, healthy, productive and regenerative food and agriculture system augments our ability to have a more substantive impact.”

- Erik R. Oken, Global Chairman of Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan.

Food systems also offer promising economic opportunities. If allocated correctly, public and private sector investments in sustainable food systems could cultivate an estimated USD 4.5 trillion per year in sustainable business opportunities by 2030.[3] If we, on the other hand, continue with a business-as-usual approach to food finance, we risk widespread destabilization of not just our food systems, but indeed the financial system itself. Sectors representing nearly half of global GDP (around $44 trillion) are directly dependent on nature, threatened by the food system like never before.[4] Additionally, the cost of undernutrition, in terms of lost national productivity and economic growth, ranges from 2% to 11% of GDP worldwide.[5]

The investments needed to transform our food and land use systems are estimated at USD 300-350 billion a year until 2030. These are big figures, but they are dwarfed by the commitments made to COVID-19 recovery, for example. More importantly, they are dwarfed by the enormous business opportunities in sustainable, healthy, equitable food investments, and the societal value that these investments can unleash.

The Good Food Finance Network will build on and take forward the finance outcomes of the UN Food Systems Summit, and is currently working to develop a multi-year Action Agenda to identify, deploy, and mainstream critical financial innovations to drive the transition to healthy, sustainable food systems.

We look forward to being a part of the Good Food Finance Network and collaborating with our members to finance food systems transformation.

References

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00225-9

2. http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/ca9692en/

3. https://www.foodandlandusecoalition.org/global-report/

4. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-global-food-system-primary-driver-biodiversity-loss

5. https://accesstonutrition.org/app/uploads/2020/06/Investor-Expectations-on-Nutrition-Diets-and-Health-FINAL.pdf