Opinion: Food aid is in crisis. So let’s stop funding agrochemicals

The sudden dismantling of global aid budgets — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and of course, USAID — has plunged communities grappling with hunger and poverty into deeper crises. But as this crisis unfolds, it has surfaced uncomfortable questions about the role of aid. In far too many food and agriculture projects, decades of donor support have not built the resilient systems needed to prevent hunger and dependency. Devex’s interview with journalist Roger Thurow rightly stated: “We’ve been solving hunger wrong for decades.” Since the 1960s, donor support has focused on food aid — often flooding markets with subsidized grain that decimated local production — and in many cases subsidizing costly inputs like pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, often under the banner of food security. The EU and U.K. collectively poured over $1.8 billion into the now-defunct New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition to promote food security through pesticides and fertilizers, criticized by an independent audit as “little more than a means of promotion for the companies involved.” Private philanthropy, such as the Gates Foundation, has spent over $6 billion on agriculture, while 85% of grants were spent on promoting the industrial agriculture package: fertilizers, pesticides, and modern seeds. These “food security” projects haven’t achieved their goal — reducing hunger. From Latin America to Asia, Africa to the Caribbean, this intensive, input-heavy agriculture model has created dependency on global agribusiness, degraded soil, poisoned farmers, and saddled them with debt. In India, it has been linked to a suicide epidemic among farmers. We must not downplay the harm caused by slashing food aid budgets overnight but this crisis offers a chance to reimagine a transition toward funding agroecological practices that boost local economies, promote stronger land tenure rights, center Indigenous knowledge, and build climate resilience for the long term. Powerful examples of locally focused funding models from Mexico to Kenya are showing results. Philanthropic funders are coming together to work with governments to increase spending on the transition to agroecology by tenfold to catalyze a transition to 50% regenerative and agroecological systems by 2040, and to ensure all agriculture and food systems are transitioning by 2050. Farms in the global south can thrive without agrochemicals A recurring question by many — often those close to agribusiness and its interests — is whether we can feed the world without agrochemicals. Yet, during my 30-year career supporting grassroots farming in the global south, from Bangladesh to Mozambique, Kenya to the Philippines, I’ve seen that farming communities can thrive without them with the right support and enabling conditions. One experience at the start of my career stands out. Some 30 years ago, I went on my first mission in Bangladesh to visit a community that had collectively banned agrochemicals. Nayakrishi Andolon, meaning “New Agriculture Movement” in Bangla, is a movement which now has over 300,000 families participating. I, a young Indian master’s graduate, was greeted with shimmering rice paddy greens, fields like mosaics filled with textured plants. I saw how the community valued Indigenous knowledge, cared for biodiverse seeds, and their bottom-up collective resistance. This was not just going back to the old ways. This was a transition to food systems fit for the age of climate change. This approach is not only viable — it is essential. It is one that empowers farmers, promotes biodiversity, and is central to tackling the climate crisis. After all, food systems contribute to one-third of anthropogenic global greenhouse gas emissions, and while there is growing awareness, food remains a marginal part of the climate conversation, and only 2.5% of public climate funding addresses them. Agrochemicals are the glue in a climate-destructive food system Agrochemicals — synthetic fertilizers and pesticides — are the glue that locks this destructive food system together. The manufacture of chemical fertilizers needs massive amounts of natural gas, causing 2.1% of global emissions, and pesticides are derived from fossil fuels. Yet these emissions are just the tip of the iceberg, and it’s what they enable that matters. Cheap and often subsidized synthetic fertilizers and pesticides make it viable to grow vast monocultures of crops, and feed them to animals and for industrial uses. This enables intensive livestock systems, which come with cascading climate costs. In Brazil, soy production is now one of the main drivers of deforestation, releasing vast stores of carbon. The livestock sector adds further pressure: Mismanaged manure is responsible for up to 7% of global farming emissions. And methane emissions from ruminants, such as cattle, are another significant source of climate impacts. In short, agrochemicals have enabled us to soar past our ecological limits. A better system needs better support This transition to chemical-free farming cannot happen overnight. Sri Lanka’s sudden and poorly planned ban of fertilizers and pesticides, compounded by factors such as the country’s debt crisis and rising global fertilizer prices, is a cautionary tale. With no transition support for farmers, rice production dropped by over a quarter and the country faced a food crisis. On the other hand, when transitions are done with ample support and led by communities, the results are powerful. Donors must fund researchers and universities to improve alternatives to chemical farming as the evidence to scale agroecology is growing. We could view the current dismantling of aid budgets as a crisis to be endured before returning to the status quo. Or it could be a turning point to shift toward agroecological and regenerative approaches that support bottom-up-led, biodiverse, and self-determined communities, such as the one I met in Bangladesh.