Adapt to Thrive shows agroecology working across Africa. Food, Land & Money follows the finance behind industrial agribusiness.
Adapt to Thrive
October 2026. Transforming food systems in Africa: the case for investing in agroecology. ActionAid briefing.
Agroecology is working on farms across Africa. This briefing draws on a review of agroecology in 10 countries: Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It lays out the evidence and what governments and funders need to do to scale it up. A study across three Kenyan counties found a
- 37.8% rise in profit among farmers using agroecological practices. Separate research found profits matched conventional farming from year three, and ran up to 53% higher with an organic premium.
- Up to 100% higher maize yields on agroecological demonstration plots than on conventional plots in Zambia. In Tanzania, pigeon pea and sorghum yields almost tripled.
- 80% and 50% of agricultural budgets were spent on input subsidies in 2023 and 2024 in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Most of the inputs are synthetic fertilizers and hybrid seeds imported from outside the region.
- 15 African countries have developed or are developing national agroecology strategies.
Women are central to this work. In sub-Saharan Africa, 66% of women’s employment is in agrifood systems, compared with 60% of men’s. Closing productivity and wage gaps would reduce global food insecurity by about 45 million people.
What the briefing asks for
- Reform policy and regulatory frameworks to align incentives with agroecological outcomes.
- Build inclusive markets and value chains that connect producers and consumers.
- Strengthen local input systems, particularly farmer-led seed systems and bio-input production.
- Invest in knowledge systems, including extension, research and peer learning.
- Mobilize long-term, accessible finance and shift public and donor investment.
Food, Land & Money
September 2026. Produced by Friends of the Earth U.S., with support and endorsement from ActionAid and a dozen civil society organizations.
The industrial food system is doing what it was built to do: concentrate wealth in the hands of a few corporations and the financiers who own them. The report calls this fusion of agribusiness and global finance the Agribusiness Financial Complex.
Retail and trading drive the numbers: over a third of the 100 largest food and agriculture companies run supermarkets, convenience stores and wholesale outlets, and finance is the core business for the large food traders. The UN Trade and Development Report 2025 estimates that 75% of their income now comes from financial activities, including lending, trading financial products and speculating on food prices. Meanwhile, another food system already exists. Small-scale farmers, Indigenous Peoples, fishers and local food enterprises feed much of the world, yet they receive only a small share of public investment and finance.
What the report finds
- The 100 largest food and agriculture companies generated $4.5 trillion in agrifood revenue in 2022. The top 10 accounted for 28% of it.
- 22% of those 100 companies owned by just three asset managers: Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street.
- 20 grain, fertilizer, meat, and dairy companies paid $53.5 billion to shareholders in 2021 and 2022. That is more than the UN-estimated $51.5 billion it would cost to feed 230 million people at greatest risk of hunger.
- Walmart’s 2025 profit was $22 billion. That is $5 billion more than the World Food Program needed to feed 110 million people that year.
Four pathways for change
The report proposes four strategies that reinforce one another.
- Discredit the legitimacy of the Agribusiness Financial Complex.
- Defund harmful industrial agribusiness by redirecting public subsidies and investment.
- Definancialize food and land systems by removing speculative finance’s influence.
- Repair and rebuild through long-term support for agroecology, food sovereignty and community ownership.