ANNOUNCEMENTS
Regenerative agriculture has the potential to address the food security issues while addressing the growing menace of climate change. The conundrum of feeding the climate change and then attempting to find solutions to mitigate its affects is a fallacy that only human species can boast of. The agri-food sector, although critical to the economic and social security, is a major contributor of the greenhouse gases, negatively impacts the water table and drives deforestation and biodiversity loss. The shift needed to transition from traditional, resource intensive, output focused agriculture towards a nature focused, socially inclusive and climate resilient agriculture will need immense funding, intent in the form of policy reforms and intensive capacity building initiatives. The funding gap to address climate change is vast and compounding with every decision of inaction. There is a critical need to collude and collaborate by major players and blended finance helps provide the flexibility of combining multiple instruments to address the concerns of risk vs returns while focusing on deploying adequate funds for the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Further, there is a need to relook at the current agricultural subsidies that are contributing to the unsustainable agricultural practices. Thus, it is imperative to adopt a design thinking approach of subsidizing that not only looks at the short-term economic impact of agricultural subsidies but also considers the medium- and long-term impact of Agri-footprint. This study attempts to synthesize the scope of blended finance instruments for the growth of regenerative agriculture while using the subsidy tools to catalyze the scale of regenerative agriculture.
KEYWORDS: Regenerative Agriculture, Blended Finance, Agricultural Subsidies, Climate Action, Sustainable Development Goals, Sustainable Finance, Subsidy Reform, Soil Carbon.
