Food giants back new €120m fund to help smallholders

Food giants Danone and Mars have set up a new fund to help companies to learn how to sustainably source the materials they need from smallholder famers while at the same time delivering large-scale social and economic impact to those farmers and their communities.

The Livelihoods Fund for Family Farming (Livelihoods 3F) will implement projects that will simultaneously restore the environment and put degraded ecosystems back on track while improving the productivity, incomes, and living conditions of small rural farmers in developing countries.

Livelihoods 3F aims to invest €120m in the next 10 years to implement projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“Livelihoods 3F is based on the conviction that sustainable farming, climate change and poverty are closely linked,” said Bernard Giraud, president of Livelihoods Venture, a service company that will implement the fund.

“It is an open investment fund. All businesses that want to source agricultural and natural goods in a sustainable and responsible way are encouraged to join us and increase the breadth of our learning and our impact.”

Livelihoods 3F will operate as a mutual investment fund with shared risks and results-based returns. Financial return for the fund’s investors will be provided by a coalition of private and public third party companies, public utilities, governments, development institutions, etc. that will purchase the goods and positive impacts (such as carbon credits or water savings) generated by the projects.