Photo credit: FAO/Giulio Napolitano
The Global Environment Facility’s Food Systems Integrated Program, led by FAO and IFAD, channels $282 million in GEF financing and about $2 billion in co-financing to help countries transform food systems through shifting value chains, business models, finance, policies, institutions, and landscape management.
Food systems are essential to a healthy planet with healthy people. They provide all 8.1 billion people in the world with fuel and nutrition and employ 1.3 billion people from farm to table – nearly 40 percent of the global workforce. The global supply of food, feed, and fiber relies on thriving biodiversity, predictable water supplies, and clean and healthy soils and seas. But as they’re currently managed, global food systems drive deforestation, emit account for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, and degrade tens of thousands of hectares of soil annually.
This leaves our food systems vulnerable to droughts, floods, and other shocks. Decisive action requires dedicated investment in strategic areas, and there is growing consensus on that financing resilient agrifood systems are central to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Investments in climate-smart crops and commodities, low-emission livestock, and sustainable aquaculture can yield multiple benefits: increased resilience, reduced emissions, biodiversity gains, improved food security, and enhanced rural livelihoods.
The GEF has been investing in integrated pathways to sustainable food systems for over a decade, and the Food Systems Integrated Program is the most ambitious effort yet. Led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the program channels $282 million in GEF financing and about $2 billion in co-financing to help 32 countries transform their food systems by shifting value chains, business models, finance, policies, institutions, and landscape management. It aims to restore 960,000 hectares of land, improve practices on 5.6 million hectares of landscapes, mitigate 116 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and benefit 3.3 million people directly, with direct engagement with women, Indigenous Peoples, and youth as stakeholders and beneficiaries of the program.
The Food Systems Integrated Program focuses on areas with high potential for generating global environmental benefits, and helps countries scale solutions through targeted investments in building capacity, piloting innovative approaches, and increasing access to technologies and knowledge.
In the livestock sector, improving productivity and animal health can deliver biodiversity, climate, and land outcomes, especially when paired with landscape-level forest and land-use planning. Argentina will promote forest management with integrated livestock to balance cattle production with forest conservation, thereby reducing deforestation and emissions while restoring biodiversity and improving rural livelihoods. Eswatini will restore 30,000 hectares of degraded land while promoting sustainable and innovative livestock feed, such as black soldier fly larvae as a nutritious and affordable source.
Crops and commodities play major roles in national economies, and improving the business case for farmers to adopt nature-positive approaches incentivizes sustainability. Integrated rice systems in Sri Lanka, cocoa agroforestry in Ghana, and climate-resilient wheat and maize production in Mexico are mainstreaming nature-based solutions by upskilling producers. Price-volatility early warning, traceability, post-harvest management and value addition – particularly in Small Island Developing States – enhances market access.
Aquaculture offers a fast-growing, resource-efficient way to meet protein demand while restoring ecosystems. Through the integrated program, countries are advancing sustainable aquaculture practices that link food security with environmental gains. China is scaling low-carbon, circular aquaculture systems, while Ghana is investing in aquaculture to offset declining fisheries and create jobs. Kazakhstan is modernizing its sector through new farms and stronger regulations.
Technical solutions need enabling rules and budgets to reach scale and sustainability. From problem framing and institutional analysis to political-economy insights and co-developed solutions, the program’s governance support helps countries establish the conditions for technically sound, politically feasible, and inclusive reforms. To stretch scarce public funds, FAO’s Policy Optimization Tool helps governments reallocate food and agriculture budgets for agricultural transformation that balances food security and nutrition with environmental goals.
Further, ensuring the transformation of feasible and sustainable food systems through the engagement of the private sector is a key element of the initiative. Led by IFAD, private sector engagement will be reflected through the overarching objective of unlocking financial flows for participating countries with the aim of delivering positive impacts on their food systems toward sustainability. More specifically, private sector engagement will be strengthened through the establishment of effective partnerships and incentives fostering market alignment and ensuring biodiversity conservation.
Integration from the start
FSIP builds on GEF’s history of integrated programs to achieve environmental, social, and economic benefits at scale. The program integrates action across sectors and along value chains for systems approach to transformation. Practices on farms link up to deforestation-free commodities, methane-smart rice and livestock, climate-resilient aquaculture, fair and transparent markets, and policy and finance that reward public goods. National plans align to global frameworks on biodiversity, climate, and land for to deliver on promises holistically. Good governance unblocks coordination, information systems power informed decisions, and finance flows toward high-impact solutions. Global hubs in policy and governance, investment, innovation, and knowledge and learning knit these pieces together, enabling countries to learn quickly and scale up faster.
The pathway is clear: restore degraded lands, protect biodiversity, cut emissions, and build resilient livelihoods, especially for smallholders and rural communities. Joining 80 years of FAO expertise with IFAD’s work in transforming agriculture, rural economies, and food systems under the GEF’s catalytic partnership, the Food Systems Integrated Program shows that investing in sustainable, resilient agrifood systems is necessary, cost-effective, and achievable — for the planet, for nature, and for people.
