Agroecology

Work Package 3: Inclusive business models and financing strategies

Contacts: Carolina Gonzalez and Manuel Narjes (Alliance Bioversity-CIAT) 

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Results from rapid value chain analyses (publications Webpage) helped identify bottlenecks and opportunities for integrating agroecology principles into eight prioritized value chains in six countries (Burkina Faso, India, Kenya, Peru, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe). Opportunities and/or enterprises were identified, for which business models are being diagnosed with a holistic business model assessment suite. This integrates the agroecological performance diagnosis of Biovision’s Business – Agroecology Criteria (B-ACT) tool into a conventional business model canvas (BMC). The results inform the upgrading or co-design of investment-ready business models that reflect the logic by which enterprises will create, distribute, and/or capture value by integrating agroecology principles.

The WP3 team produced a global report that synthesizes findings from the rapid value chain analyses in each country to highlight important similarities and differences in how the prioritized value chains may contribute to agroecological transitions. In addition, the Initiative is partnering in Kenya and Zimbabwe with CGIAR’s Food Systems Accelerator, a work package of the regional initiative Diversification in East and Southern Africa, to support agribusinesses in scaling agroecological and climate-smart innovations that address food system challenges in eastern and southern Africa.

In Peru, for instance, substantial advances have been made since 2022 in collaboratively upgrading the business model of an organic cacao producers’ cooperative. The cooperative will incentivize cacao farm diversification and increase its centralized capacity to compost organic matter by offering member producers the possibility to process rice and/or sugarcane into added-value products and leave the recyclable residues to be composted in the cooperative’s facilities. The Initiative also analyzed financial instruments and mechanisms that have potential to scale agroecology innovations in Peru and conducted a prefeasibility study on the potential of local cacao-based agroforestry systems and avoided deforestation from cacao-associated forest-carbon stocks for participation in carbon markets.