Social
Structural inequalities in the food system have resulted in widespread social inequalities for producers and consumers. Farmers, whose livelihoods are increasingly vulnerable to climate uncertainty, earn low and unreliable incomes and lack access to partnerships and market transparency. Consumers are impacted by a lack of education, product misinformation and limited access to healthy food options.
Portfolio companies addressing Social KPI
About Social
Today’s agrifood system has created a double social burden felt on both ends of the food system, from farmers to consumers. As farmers increasingly bear the social, economic and financial pressures of an industry that has grown exponentially without regard for their livelihood, the industry faces major challenges attracting new talent to become the next generation of farmers. As healthy food choices remain out of reach for millions of people, consumers’ socioeconomic status increasingly defines their access to nutritious and fresh food.
Adopting climate-smart agricultural practices can improve farmer livelihoods in the EU region by up to €9.3 billion annually by 2030.
Farmers
In spite of their essential role to societies worldwide, 78% of the world’s poorest people are farmers. Low incomes are also often exacerbated by unreliable payments from distributors and difficulties in accessing credit, inputs, storage, labor and transport. New technologies and innovative financing solutions are essential to ensuring the economic and social attractivity and viability of farming in the long term.
Consumers
Education is key to achieve the universal adoption of healthy and sustainable diets. One third of the world’s population does not have access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food year-round. Improving access to healthy food and combatting food deserts is essential to enhancing the livelihoods of people across the world. Consumers also can play a role in ensuring fair compensation of farmers by choosing suppliers that shorten the value chain, build more direct relationships with farmers and grow the demand for products with positive environmental and health effects.
Our Focus
We invest in solutions that connect farmers directly to buyers and consumers, provide innovative financing mechanisms to empower farmers, provide education on sustainable and healthy diets to all consumers and increase access to healthy food.
To quantify the impact of these solutions, we measure how they improve the producers’ well-being through an
increase in farmer remuneration, the number of farmers receiving access to transaction security and financing and the stress relief brought by improved financial stability. For those solutions whose focus is to increase awareness of healthier and affordable diets, their impact is quantified by the number of consumers educated and number of consumers reached.