Food systems are the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products, and the socioeconomic and natural environments in which they are embedded.
With up to 821 million people in the world hungry and an additional 2 billion people at risk of undernourishment by 2050, food systems in the developing world are beset by numerous challenges. Blended finance can help to address the challenges constraining investment in sustainable food systems in developing markets by de-risking agri-food transactions, both improving project bankability and mobilizing finance to bankable projects.
The brief analyzes 127 agriculture and/or SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) transactions that have been classified by the food value chain stage(s) targeted, to present how blended finance approaches have been deployed across the food value chain and illustrate the sector's ongoing challenges with scaling.
