Unlocking Public Climate Finance for Family Farmers Organisations

Channeling climate finance directly to small-scale family farmers is one of the most effective ways to support impactful climate action. Already today, these farmers are engaging in practices to reduce emissions and build climate-resilient food systems. Nonetheless, they received less than 1% of public climate finance flows in 2024.

This policy brief examines why. It maps 40 programs by 28 funding entities and assesses who can actually access finance. The analysis finds that only 25% of programs allow farmer organizations to access funding directly although almost all programs prioritize farmers as a target group. Key barriers include mandatory intermediaries, limited farmer representation in fund governance, insufficient support for organizational costs, opaque application processes, unsuitable debt-based instruments and unpredictable funding cycles.

Increasing farmers’ direct access to climate funding requires both immediate action and structural reform. Funders and governments should expand direct-access windows, give farmer organizations a meaningful role in governance, fund their institutional capacity, and simplify funding requirements. At the same time, they should support the development of a farmer-governed global climate finance mechanism.

This policy brief was produced with support from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, FFORA, the Agroecology Coalition, and the 11 family farmers organizations of the Family Farmers for Climate Action campaign.