Third call CoP Finance & Outreach – July 9, 2020

On July 9, 2020, the third meeting of the Food security and COVID-19 CoP on Finance & Outreach took place online. Participating organizations were: convener NpM, ICCO, Agriterra, 2SCALE, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), SNV, OikoCredit, GAIN, Financial Access, WUR and Triodos. Representatives from the IGG and DDE departments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MinFA) joined as well: IGG is the co-convener of this CoP while the the Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP) is supporting it.

This meeting focused on several updates by participants on their ongoing activities. Agriterra gave a presentation on the proposal it submitted with partners to the MinFA on a Rapid Response and Recovery Facility and invited the other participants to join. GAIN presented their experience with the Marketplace for nutritious foods programme, focusing on SMEs and the Agri nutrition supply chain, its Nutritious foods finance facility (N3F) and its new programme Keeping Food Markets Working. RVO highlighted the role it can play for this CoP by linking to several of its long-term programmes, while there was also room for a Q&A with the MinFA on the possibilities for additional support. As a new participant in this group, also Financial Access gave a presentation about their work and track record.

Then Oikocredit, Triodos and NpM gave an update on the Term Sheet for an emergency fund they have drafted as a follow-up to the second call.
The target size for a guarantee fund in this briefing note is approximately EUR 200 million, to indirectly fund small farmers through smaller MFIs. The fund would be open and flexible so that new investors could join.

At the end of the meeting, participants shortly discussed research . After an update on the progress of the CoP Knowledge, participants of the call were asked whether similar or additional research could help their work concerning Finance & Outreach. It was decided to discuss this in more detail during the following meeting.