FARM Knowledge Series presents the case study of FARM India: Farmer training models that work. Watch the series here! Driving behaviour change among farmers is key to transitioning to safer alternative solutions to pesticides, yet many struggle to envision the transition despite understanding the importance of biocontrol techniques. See how FARM India works in addressing this issue. Rahul Ponnan Tanu Sethi Shreya Pandey

Is Big Ag breaking apart, splitting services into more targetted businesses? Do these more targetted business facilitate more contextualisation of expert advisory? Does this in turn simplify advisory and raising finance for a more clearly articulted market and vision for the future? Does it "isolate" risk?

Africa, have your say !!! The African Development Bank, through its Environmental and Social Safeguards Department, is leading the development of the Africa ESG Hub—a digital platform to support ESG, sustainable finance, and responsible business practices across the continent.

From the AFDB:

To ensure the platform meets the priorities of stakeholders, we are conducting a brief survey tailored to different stakeholder groups. Participation in the survey is entirely voluntary but deeply valuable.

Whether you are striving to enhance ESG integration in investment decisions, navigate disclosure expectations, improve market access, or shape policy, your input will influence the development of a platform built for Africa’s sustainable future. Your responses will help enhance the features and impact of the Hub in improving access to sustainable finance, partnerships and global value chains for African businesses.

The survey consists of 5–6 questions and will take no more than 5 minutes to complete. All responses will be kept confidential.

We kindly ask for your support in helping us amplify the reach and impact of the survey. Specifically, we would greatly appreciate if you would participate in the survey and also share with your networks and encourage relevant stakeholders to participate.

Ethiopia: African Development Bank provides $400,000 for Public Disclosure Platform to boost capital market

The African Development Bank Group and the Ethiopian Capital Market Authority (ECMA) have signed a grant agreement for $400,000 for the set up of a public disclosure platform and rollout of new financial products including exchange traded funds and green bonds at the Ethiopian Securities Exchange

The grant, which will support the Ethiopia Capital Market Development Support Project, is being provided by the Capital Markets Development Trust Fund (CMDTF). The initiative builds on previous African Development Bank Group support including creation in 2021 of Ethiopia's capital market legal framework in 2021.

Recording of FARM Knowledge Series: Financing Smallholder Transitions to Healthier Agriculture Practices is available here.

Thank you to participants who attended the webinar. We thank Santiago Rosero Mario Rodas Madhuri Nanda and other speakers for their time.

Speakers will respond to some of the unanswered questions posed in the webinar by 7 October 2025.

See you in the next edition of the FARM Knowledge Series!

Producing "green" isn't a technical problem. It's a political-financial problem.

I would argue we will reach an "agricultural sector Minsky moment" before a "natures moment".

A sudden system collapse as risks explode. Failure to account for ecosystem service dependency across agricultural landscapes means inefficient and inadequate allocation of resources to this "sector". Worse perverse subsidies flow to negative externalities that generate systemic risk that is poorly quantified and even less well understood.

Your financial institution may not see the agricultural sector as "material", you may not even invest in agriculture, but the very stability of all other sectors depends on it. That means.....it's material to everyone.