AgriFood Finance and Trade represents a key Community for Action that already has traction but has been forced to slow momentum through 2025 given the current global trade tensions absorbing much of the attention of this Community’s members. 

The ambition of this Community is framed by a conviction that finance and trade must be positioned as positive  levers of food systems transformation. Making this possible is complex and requires collaborative action by multiple actors with an ability to i) look beyond the short term shocks of 2025 and ii) lean into the controversies that agrifood finance and trade inhabits towards a collective understanding of the systemic barriers to change and authentic opportunities for actionable solutions. This is a hard task!

This AgriFood Finance and Trade Community has its roots in two separate parallel communities: The Financial Flows Community, hosted by EAT and with co-convening partners FOLU, IFPRI and the World Bank, met a number of times in 2024 and developed an initial Action Brief. The AgriFood Trade Community, hosted by Nexus Action (formerly the Montpellier Process) with co-convening partners IDDRI and OECD, developed a series of use-cases that were socialised at CBD COP16 and then re-convened as a community on the sidelines of GFFA-Berlin 2025 and Nutrition for Growth - Paris 2025. In all, 75 individuals and 50 organisations make up this Community for Action.

The AgriFood Finance and Trade Action Brief

The AgriFood Finance and Trade Action Brief is still in its early stages. It is calling for further curated dialogues of a truly inclusive and informed community, the harvesting of concrete examples of action and progress from the Community itself,  and common inclusive language that unpacks the key issues at hand. This Community has also not yet had the dialogue space to explore, improve and directly input into the current draft Action Brief. It would be hard to call it fully co-created and co-developed at this stage! 

With your collective enthusiasm, our intention is to re-convene this Community before the end of 2025. We have had clear messages from many of you that the work of this community is i) vital if tricky ii) timely, iii) in need of this risky-safe space for effective multi-actor-sector-scale dialogue that other mechanisms are unable to provide. 

Below is an indication of the calls to action this Community is mobilising around:

1. Redefine success in finance and trade. Shift away from short-term profit toward resilience, equity, and sustainability. Align subsidies, incentives, and trade policies with public health, environmental stability, and systemic resilience.

2. Build inclusive and accountable systems. Ensure fair access for smallholders, vulnerable groups, and diverse knowledge systems. Establish fiduciary and accountability criteria for impacts on health, livelihoods, and planetary boundaries.

3. Standardize data, metrics, and rules. Create transparent, harmonized systems of measurement and mandatory disclosure. Establish global sustainability-aligned trade rules (e.g., Codex Planetarius) to prevent fragmentation and disguised protectionism.

4. Mobilize capital and partnerships.  Deploy catalytic finance from governments, DFIs, and philanthropies to de-risk investments, strengthen data systems, and accelerate innovation. Foster collaboration across finance, trade, science, and local communities to unlock systemic change.

5. Reframe trade and finance as enablers of transformation. Champion a new narrative: finance and trade can safeguard ecosystems, improve diets, and strengthen resilience when guided by evidence and collective accountability.