The Agroecology Fund has More Money than God
And why that’s a serious threat to global food security
Agroecology is a cult dogma that imposes arbitrary political restrictions on agriculture (no industry involvement, no global trade, no innovative technologies, no synthetic inputs…). As a medieval farming ideology, it embraces peasant agriculture, social justice and a holistic, communal approach to food. Often heralded as a solution in under-developed regions with no access to agrotechnology (or education), it has been politely ignored in agronomy circles as a sideshow, much like the biodynamic or permaculture ideology-based practices.
That is … until now.
Earlier this week, I did a podcast with the plant biologist, Rob Wager, who shared a story of how he crashed an agroecology conference in Kenya in 2019 and was surprised to see the financial resources behind the event. The others on the podcast could not understand how the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) could throw its support behind an intentionally low-yielding farming ideology.
Since my article in the Outlook on Agriculture journal (concluding that agroecology was a political agenda and not an agricultural solution), I have learnt how foundations work together behind the scenes via fiscal sponsors and how they finance United Nations programs. I decided to take a closer look at who was behind the agroecology movement and the campaign to bring agriculture back to the Dark Ages.
The Agroecology Fund
The largest donor to the agroecology movement is a regranting organization called the Agroecology Fund. Established in 2012 by four foundations pooling funds together, it originally aimed to support, train and promote agroecology solutions with a modest budget that had distributed $20 million in grants from 2012 to 2023. Until 2021, they were only raising around one million dollars a year. That was enough to dig some wells, hold some conferences or training sessions and a bit to support local networks and partners.
In 2022 to 2023, the fund doubled its intake but then 2024 came along and their world changed when tech billionaires discovered this sleepy little regranting group. While there are no official fundraising results for the year yet, an article from Inside Philanthropy suggests that the Agroecology Fund has received financial commitments from foundations of over one hundred million dollars during the last year. That should dig a lot of wells.
Donations to this fund, promoting an agricultural theosophy advancing backward peasant farming ideals, included $10 million from the Waverley Street Foundation (Laurene Powell Jobs) and $9 million from the Ballmer Group (Steve Ballmer). Other large foundations include the Walton Family Foundation, Lukas Walton’s Builders Initiative, Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s 11th Hour Project, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Thousand Currents, David Rockefeller Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, McKnight, W.K. Kellogg, Ikea Foundation, Oak Foundation and government-sponsored development agencies like the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development.
With these increased funds comes a widening of the earmarked activities, with the Agroecology Fund moving away from supporting peasant farming and toward lobbying and advocacy campaign work. The Inside Philanthropy article states:
“Waverley’s grant will support research and advocacy by farmers, scientists, consumer groups and policymakers. The aim is to develop policies and public support to “scale up” agroecology as a climate solution. The fund is expected to secure another $6 million in matching funds.”
With this single donation of $16 million (plus matching funds) for advocacy work, the Agroecology Fund is now one of the largest lobbyists in Washington, DC.
And the Agroecology Fund are definitely not digging wells in poor farming communities anymore. The press release to celebrate the $16 million Waverley Street donation explained how the money would be used for changing policies and regulations to favor agroecology (ie, lobbying):
“… to strengthen global agroecology and climate justice movements' approaches to food systems change… and, through them, among farmers, scientists (biophysical and social), consumer groups, and policymakers, to explore how to create an enabling policy environment to scale up agroecology as a climate solution.” … “Central to this work is support for multi-sectoral collaboratives that bring together grassroots organizations, research institutions, and advocacy coalitions. Guided by a participatory research approach, these collaboratives will pursue critical research questions and leverage data to galvanize policy changes supporting agroecology-based food systems as climate resilience strategies. The process will also contribute to strengthening the agency of civil society in food systems governance.”
Translation: This $16 million is for agroecology NGO activist campaigns to change food and farming regulations. With this kind of cash on the table, I wonder if RFK Jr will be receptive.
It is a pity that conventional farmers do not have this kind of money to influence policy debates by promoting science-based farming technologies that actually work, use less land and feed more people. The Agroecology Fund/Waverley Street press release took pains to specify that their scientists also include “social” scientists (ie, political activists).
This single donation from Steve Jobs’ widow is fueling unlimited agroecology political campaign funding in “Argentina, Brazil, European Union, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, USA, Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia”. It doesn’t take much to realize that the Agroecology Fund lobbyists are now active in the regions where ag-tech debates are the hottest. It is not going to supporting farmers and developing best practices in the fields.
The New Supranational Player
Where else could this money be going? Unlike the WHO, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) does not declare who is supporting its projects but in a recent report on agroecology, the FAO vowed to work with public-private projects to help promote and lobby governments to expand agroecology.
The FAO recently hosted an Agroecology Fund conference in Rome, Italy aimed at generating more public funding to finance agroecology. The Willy Sutton Rule (go to where the money is) can be the only logical explanation for an international agricultural organization’s decision to support a political movement that openly campaigns against farming technologies that could advance farmers and food security.
The FAO even amplified the Inside Philanthropy article on their official website, celebrating the increased donations to the Agroecology Fund.
It should be added that the Agroecology Fund is playing into its newfound supranational role, telling governments what to do on behalf of their clients (the large foundations). In attendance at their Rome agroecology financing event were a large number of the foundations who are financially supporting the fund.
How did the Agroecology Fund Raise so Much so Fast?
How did the Agroecology Fund move from a decade of raising around one million dollars a year to raising over $100 million in the last year? The story they like to tell, and amplified in the Inside Philanthropy article, is that they positioned themselves into the tech billionaire philanthropists’ “climate tick-box” category by presenting agroecology as a climate resilience solution (Editor’s note: It is not). Couple that with the regrantor’s support for indigenous populations, peasant farmers and rural development in under-developed countries, and the Agroecology Fund could be presented in a manner worthy of a philanthropist’s annual report.
This could justify maybe a tripling of their fundraising, but not a hundredfold increase.
It may be interesting to note that the Agroecology Fund does not do its own fundraising but outsources it to a fiscal sponsor. A fiscal sponsor is a consultancy that acts as a go-between, linking multiple foundations with organizations, campaigns or ideas. They also offer management services, networks and advice (all for a hefty fee) and, as the Firebreak has been reporting, have become a significant development in the last decade to help the large number of the new tech philanthropists give their money away more efficiently. Fiscal sponsors are also as discreet as they are well-connected.
It may be interesting to note that in 2021, the year the Agroecology Fund’s fortunes started to swing upwards, they changed their fiscal sponsor, awarding the fundraising contract to a new group: the Global Greengrants Fund. This fiscal sponsor no doubt repositioned the Agroecology Fund’s funding strategy to be able to tap into the tech-billionaire climate funder honeypot within the fiscal sponsor’s philanthropic network.
This demonstrates the power of a kick-ass fiscal sponsor working in the background to siphon off unthinkable amounts of money presently inundating the foundation world. The only problem now is that the Agroecology Fund has to find a way to spend it all (and I don’t suppose they are going to be digging any more wells).
The Danger for Global Food Security
Failed political-driven farming ideologies in the past all had built-in fail-safes: starvation, economic collapse and famine. Agroecology, returning to 18th century farming practices, with strict rules against the use of technologies, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or seed innovations did not succeed 200 years ago, and with today’s far greater population and climate stresses, will no doubt face similar consequences as Lysenko’s Soviet Union, Cuba and Sri Lanka. In these cases, the farmers were the first to suffer.
But in the global political battles at the heart of the agroecology activist movement (radical socialists infusing farming practices with their anti-industry, anti-globalization, and anti-capitalist dogma), a group like the Agroecology Fund, with hundreds of millions in the bank for lobbying and farmer support, can allow the activists to create a perception of a successful agronomical foundation.
Yields will go down in developing countries prioritizing agroecology but the peasant farmers will have the funds to be able to send their children to school. Rural development may slow the urbanization trends that tend to follow emerging market industrialization transitions, and there may be more farmers (growing almost enough to feed themselves), but food imports for urban consumers will likely distort development. Industrialization starts first in the agricultural sector so urban poverty in the developing world may increase.
I believe it is very dangerous for an ideology-led campaign that rejects scientific evidence and best farming practices on the basis of an anti-capitalist political dogma to be allowed to prop up its failed food production system with hundreds of millions of dollars donated by misled technology billionaires.
Supporting peasant farmers while denying them the tools to feed larger populations will create stresses in the food system.
Promoting a non-global food system incapable of adapting to potential crop failures will amplify regional vulnerabilities in developing economies, increasing the risk of famines.
Arbitrarily denying peasant farmers access to technologies (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tech…) that other farmers take for granted (and linking funding to that ideology) is not a long-term solution to advance agriculture in the developing world.
Spending millions on lobbying campaigns against conventional farming practices, creating fear about our food and resistance toward agricultural innovations does not promote trust in the food chain.
I don’t think it is unreasonable to worry about what $100 million donated to a group of zealots and moralizing sociopaths could do to humanity. One more reason why the foundation funding system needs transparency, oversight and reform.