Good Food Finance Week, April 24-28
Good Food Finance Week, April 24-28
Good Food Finance Week will bring leaders, institutions, and innovators together to discuss interconnected risks, emerging metrics and financial opportunities, and a new Co-Investment Platform.
The GFFN is hosting the Second Annual Good Food Finance Week (GFFW) April 24 – 28 2023 which will include a series of virtual sessions aiming to bring together leaders in the food and finance industries to discuss the latest trends and innovations in financing sustainable food systems.
The five-day event will provide a platform for participants to learn about the latest developments in financing sustainable, healthy, and accessible food systems and explore opportunities for investment and collaboration. Featured sessions will include keynote speakers, panel discussions, and interactive workshops.
This year’s GFFWeek will focus on GFFN’s work areas:
High-Ambition Group: Raising ambition on sustainable food systems as an investable SDG solution area.
Co-Investment Platform: Unblocking finance flows through the convening of finance actors and instrumentation of investment partnerships.
Advocacy and Mobilization through Knowledge Management: Knowledge and research for data sharing and dissemination, coordination cross-cutting projects and initiatives.
Monday, 24 April 2023
Leaders Dialogue: Catalyzing good food finance to address interconnected risks
15:00 – 16:00 CEST | Register here
The overall challenge GFFN is addressing is the lack of sustainability of globally interconnected, complex food systems, which have negative effects for climate, nature and people. While many factors contribute to this societal challenge, the finance system has been identified as one of the key levers that currently undermine efforts to transition towards sustainable food systems rather than enable these.
During this dialogue, some of our GFFN Principals and other leaders in the food finance sector will discuss the critical challenges and solutions for catalyzing mainstream capital flows for healthy, sustainable food systems. Leaders participating in the Dialogue will have the opportunity to feed insights from their experience, and their future vision, into the work of the Good Food Finance Network toward the development of key agricultural breakthroughs.
Monday, 24 April 2023
Private Sector Engagement – Part 1: Stocktaking private sector investment and hurdles in food systems transformation
16:00 – 17:00 CEST | Register here
This session will evaluate the current progress on delivering private finance to the food systems transformation agenda from the UN Food Systems Dialogue (February 2021) and the Good Food Finance Week April 2022 commitments, exploring enablers and barriers in today’s financial and social climate.
Additionally, the session will identify specific progress, gaps and opportunities in development of financial tools and instruments, partnerships, and alignment of climate and human health financing objectives to support a food systems transformation. The outcomes of this conversation will feed into the session Private Sector Engagement – Part 2: Consultation on the Co-Investment Platform (CIP)where participants will share their insights on what a platform to facilitate this transformation would look like.
Tuesday, 25 April 2023
Public Finance: Financing Food Security and Food System Transformation
15:00 – 16:00 CEST | Register here
This session, led by the members of the GFFN Public Finance working group, will focus on highlighting opportunities for public and private investment in good food investment opportunities to making nutritious food affordable and accesible, promote fiscal resilience, and long-term sustainable socio-economic growth.
The session will present the findings of the blog Good Food System Transition: Repurposing agricultural support to promote fiscal resilience, human and planetary health exploring how the potential savings can be used by Minister of Finance to repurpose some of the public and development expenditure. It will also introduce the Innovative Collobarative Funding Model as a funding mechnism for the Food Systems Transformation bringing finance and no finance stakeholder together for funding the good food transition.
Tuesday, 25 April 2023
Nutrition Impact: Delivering food systems transformation to meet nutrition and finance returns: challenges and opportunities for evidence-based investing
16:00 – 17:00 CEST | Register here
Co-hosted by GFFN core-partners Food Systems for the Future, and the Access to Nutrition Initiative, this session will count with the intervention of GFFN Principals Ertharin Cousin (CEO and Founder, FSF) and Greg S. Garrett (Executive Director, ATNI), as well as a rich panel discussion with opportunities for audience Q&A. This session aims to:
Discuss nutrition impact as an increasingly important component of the food systems transformation agenda;
Discuss the critical role of metrics for streamlining how private sector actors identify, measure, and communication nutrition impact for food systems transformation;
Highlight the progress and opportunities for engaging investors in driving private sector accountability for nutrition impact.
Wednesday, 26 April 2023
Data Systems Integration Dialogue: Blueprint for good food finance review
15:00 – 16:00 CEST | Register here
Delivering good food finance at scale, through mainstream economic activity, will require multidimensional metrics. The Data Systems Catalyst Group is working to detail a Blueprint for integration of data platforms, networks, services, and technologies, to deliver directional insight to financial decision-makers.
In this 6th Data Systems Integration (DSI) Dialogue, participants will review the updated discussion draft of the DSI Blueprint and get an early look at the multi-year Integrated Data Systems Initiative, which will begin exploratory integrations in 2024 and aim to start-up active services by 2026.
Wednesday, 26 April 2023
Co-Investment Platform (CIP) Landscapes Portfolio: Zero-draft working session
16:00 – 17:00 CEST | Register here
The Co-Investment Platform for Food Systems Transformation will serve as both a financial mechanism and a coordinating mechanism, to support the mainstreaming of good food finance, in line with human and planetary health, and climate goals. The Landscapes Portfolio will provide a map of both active and needed landscapes interventions, as well as existing initiatives and emerging opportunities for using policy or investment to restore, regenerate, and conserve agricultural landscapes and surrounding ecosystems.
In this working session, participants will be invited to provide input into the zero draft of the Landscapes Portfolio, responding to an investigative outline and addressing the following questions:
Which sustainable landscapes initiatives should be included in a mapping of good food finance priorities?
Which emerging policies, strategies, and investment pathways can support healthy, sustainable food systems, and in which geographical or market context?
Which early actions can support the alignment of food, health, climate, and biodiversity-related goals, with mainstream financial activity?
How can cities and regions connect and align their policy and procurement priorities to amplify the reach of sustainable landscapes interventions?
Thursday, 27 April 2023
Scoping the Role of Cities in Good Food Finance – Exploratory Meeting
15:00-16:00 CEST | Register here
Cities hold special leverage to shape local food systems, through procurement practices, public health policy, regulation of local businesses, and other incentive structures. Complex interactions at the community level play a significant role in determining what kind of food choices are available and for whom.
With the closing of the Food Trails Impact Investors Living Lab, and as work toward urban-rural integrated food systems strategies picks up, partners of the Good Food Finance Network are convening a discussion to explore what role Cities can play in the transformation of food finance. The exploratory meeting will convene and connect multiple existing networks—including C40, Good Food Cities, the Food Forward Consortium, Food Trails, and the cities that have signed up to the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact—and invite participants to:
Share priorities and experiences;
Work toward a shared ambition for cities in good food finance delivery;
Review proposed principles for GFFN Cities work;
Link existing efforts to emerging good food finance opportunities.
Thursday, 27 April 2023
Private Sector Engagement – Part 2: Consultation on the Co-Investment Platform (CIP)
16:00 – 17:00 CEST | Register here
The Good Food Finance Network (GFFN) is designing a Co-Investment Platform (CIP), to be launched at COP28, which aims to scale investment in sustainable food systems and shift capital flows to the sector to align with climate, biodiversity and inequality goals. GFFN is consulting private sector investors from the financial and corporate sectors around the design of the CIP in order to ensure its effectiveness in overcoming the barriers which prevent capital from flowing to the sector and/or aligning with sustainability goals.
In this open working dialogue, we will discuss the latest on the development of the CIP to support alignment of policy action, funding commitments, and investable transformational food system interventions at different scales. We will invite participants to share their thoughts and experiences on what the role of the private sector is in accelerating and scaling up healthy and sustainable food systems, and share their insights on what a platform to facilitate this transformation would look like, particularly around the areas of:
Managing Catalytic Funding
Instrumentation – Driving Financial Innovation
Facilitating Investment Partnerships
Mutual Accountability
Friday, 28 April 2023
UNEP Publication Launch: Driving Finance for Sustainable Food Systems: A roadmap to implementation for financial institutions and policy makers
14:00 – 15:00 CEST | Register here
Food systems are key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but their current trajectory is mostly unsustainable. Current public financial resources are not sufficient to support the rapid transition of food systems. Private finance is essential to fill the funding gap. Yet, channelling private finance to food systems faces major challenges.
During this webinar event, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will introduce the Publication on ‘Driving Finance for Sustainable Food Systems: A Roadmap to Implementation for Financial Institutions and Policy Makers’. This report attempts to address this challenge by providing a roadmap for private financiers to drive significant capital flows towards food systems. It includes identifying their impacts, measuring performance, setting targets, monitoring and disclosing. It also describes innovative new instruments and financing techniques, including blended finance, and addresses the policy changes needed to create an enabling environment.
The webinar will:
Present key findings of the launched report;
Highlight good practices demonstrated and promoted by the Good Food Finance Network´s High Ambition Group;
Provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss issues, challenges and ways forward to unlock opportunities for financiers and policy makers to increase sustainable investments and lending in the agrifood sector.
Friday, 28 April 2023
Co-Investment Platform (CIP) Instrumentation Dialogue
16:00 – 17:00 CEST | Register here
The Co-Investment Platform for Food Systems Transformation will serve as both a financial mechanism and a coordinating mechanism, to support the mainstreaming of good food finance, in line with human and planetary health, and climate goals. The Instrumentation Dialogue will be an always-open space—both through scheduled meetings and background consultation—for sharing of insights about existing and emerging tools and strategies for scaling up and delivering good food finance.
In this First Instrumentation Dialogue, participants will be invited to:
Add operational detail to a preliminary list of tools and strategies, drawing on the GFFN Actionable Areas of Innovation and the Food Finance Architecture;
Share insights and experiences about the practical challenges of creating and putting into practice novel financing strategies and arrangements;
Discuss the opportunities linked to multistakeholder and cooperative financial arrangements, including innovative sustainability-linked bonds;
Prioritize financial instruments and approaches that can be supported by specific national and international policy innovations.
About the GFFN
The Good Food Finance Network is a network of high-level leaders, technical experts, and agropreneurs from the finance, business, and the public sector combining their resources and intellectual capital to promote investment and provide financial solutions for sustainable food systems. GFFN drives change in both food systems and finance systems. It is coordinated by EAT, the Access to Nutrition Initiative, Food Systems for the Future, UNEP and WBCSD in collaboration with the FAIRR Initiative, UNCTAD, Rabobank, S2G Ventures, the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank, Just Rural Transition, and other supporting partners.