Everyday, we are confronted with the reality that the World population is increasing at the rate at which food production cannot match it. Worse still, farmers who are the only solution that can solve this challenge do not have adequate resources to cultivate sufficient food to meet the food needs of the growing population. One of the key resources is access to affordable financing to scale production. This is because there are several risks related to agricultural production such as pests, climate change, marketing, transportation amongst others, which has made access to finance either to become unattractive due to high interest rates or unrealistic requirements for producers/farmers to comply with which have become big barriers (such as collateral, credit history etc.). Sadly, financial institutions in their usual way put these barriers to mitigate identified risks, which make financial products and services unattractive to producers. Funnily enough, the majority of the financial products and services are not designed to meet the needs of actors in the agricultural sector, which requires certain conditions and realities that might not be acceptable to them.

It is important that financial institutions mobilizing finance for the agricultural industry need to have the requisite knowledge on the operations of the various value chains and its activities, coupled with the understanding of the importance of timing. In other words, patient capital is the most needed in the agricultural sector or else, it would defeat its intended purpose. Producers need more financial aid to scale up as the cost of production is increasing due to the high inflation and many producers are scaling-down, which has increased food insecurity. Food is becoming more expensive now than it was 10 years ago, and at the same time the quantity of food produced is gradually declining. This sad reality needs to be tackled head-on. Food production is important, likewise mobilization of investment and financing to the support services in the agricultural sector in order to scale up to the current capacity. There is a need to access affordable financing and increase patient capital in order to achieve the desired impact needed. Zero hunger is achievable when all stakeholders make it a common goal to pursue. No one should be left behind, let us match our actions with our words. The change must be NOW.

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