Blog – FIN4DEV DIALOGUES SIDE EVENT: Stabilizing Agrifood Systems Amid Trade, Energy and Market Volatility

During a recent Fin for Dev Dialogue side event at the ECOSOC Financing for Development Forum, “Stabilizing Agrifood Systems Amid Trade, Energy and Market Volatility” on 22 April 2026, development experts gathered to discuss how coordinated policy and financing can help stabilize agrifood systems in an increasingly uncertain world.

Ongoing tariffs, trade tensions and energy-related shocks increasingly jeopardize the stability of global agrifood systems, threatening food affordability and placing additional strain on public budgets. Without coordinated policy responses and cohesive financing instruments, these pressures risk accelerating food insecurity and undermining rural livelihoods, particularly in countries that are highly dependent on food imports or vulnerable to price volatility.

Despite decades of overlapping crises – FAO said – agrifood systems have proven more resilient than expected, avoiding extreme famines similar to those in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Notwithstanding this, policy responses remain an area where learning has been slow.

The current volatility in energy markets and trade routes continues to create uncertainty, as food systems remain highly tied to energy markets. Recent disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, key for global energy and fertilizers trade, have triggered sharp price increases for fertilizers, natural gas and crude oil. Although food prices have not yet been negatively affected by these shocks, this should not be mistaken for stability.

In this unstable context, as the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) noted, the multilateral system is an essential anchor for stable and resilient agrifood systems. “The multilateral, rules-based system provides a shared framework of predictability and trust,” helping to keep supply chains and trade flowing while reducing the risk of sudden unilateral actions. The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures is an example, setting global standards on food safety and animal and plant health, to ensure health protection and enable developing countries to benefit more fully from trade.

A key message throughout the event was the need to move beyond reacting to crises and instead invest in long-term resilience. Ethiopia, for instance, has recently tested a new policy they refer to as “clustering”, whereby smallholder farmers have been organizing themselves by way of unions, so that the Government has been more easily able to provide technical support and financial resources, and farmers can more easily access fertilizers. This level of coordination requires leadership at the federal, local and village levels.

Clearly, if volatility is becoming the new normal, then resilience can no longer be treated as a side objective, speakers agreed. It must become the organizing principle of how we think about trade, energy and investment in agrifood systems.

• The need to de-risk investments into underserved rural areas and at scale around strategic value chains, including fertilizers.
• The need to leverage concessional financing more catalytically as a long-term investment platform, to bring in private capital and partners, such as multilateral and national development banks.
• The importance of trade corridors, such as those of the EU Global Gateway, and prioritizing free trade across the African continent.
• The need to diversify supply chains, to reduce exposure to energy and commodity market disruptions, by becoming less dependent on fossil fuels.
• The need to recognize scalable solutions that can both congregate corporate interests and be clearly communicable to policymakers, demonstrating agrifood systems are not lagging behind sectors such as energy, digital technical or critical raw materials.
• The importance of strengthening the value for money narrative for agrifood systems, demonstrating the link in efficiency gains with better alignment at global and local levels.
• The need for long-term investment in hard and soft infrastructure (data and information, such as price monitoring) as an essential public good with a high rate of return.

Multilateral institutions must continue to evolve to become more agile and responsive in a fragmented global environment. Without sustained investments to transform our agrifood systems, we run the risk of repeatedly responding to short-term crises and not building long-term resilience. As FAO noted, “When we have a global problem, selfishness is not an option.” More collective efforts are required to protect the poorest countries, which cannot be asked to bear the burden of market adjustment to shocks.

Leonard Mizzi,  Adviser Food Systems, Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA), European Commission. (Co-Chair, GDPRD)

“Multilateralism should be at the core of solutions, and we need to enhance coordination in a context where ODA is under a lot of pressure and where we need to find innovative solutions.”

H.E. Tesfaye Yima Sabo, Permanent Mission of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to the United Nations

“We need small, targeted, concrete, deliverable financing linked to the national financing, financial institutions.”

David Laborde, Director, Agrifood Economics and Policy Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

“We have seen a succession of large-scale shocks and crises; however, it has also shown how resilient our overall agrifood system is. If the first response is not the best one, we can adapt.”

Marlynne Hopper, Head a.i., Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) Secretariat, World Trade Organization

“The multilateral, rules-based system provides a shared framework that provides predictability and trust, and keeps food and other supply chains functioning and trade flowing, and reduces the risks of sudden unilateral actions.”

Rodrigo Carcamo, Chief a.i., Agricultural Commodities Section, Commodities Branch, United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

“Food prices have risen more modestly so far, but this should not be mistaken for stability.”

Courtney Hood, Head of Office, IFAD New York Liaison Office

“We’re really looking to leverage our concessional financing as more of a global long-term investment platform.”

Jim Woodhill, Director, Agrifood Systems and Futures Hub, University of Reading, and Lead of the Global Foresight4Food Initiative. (Senior Advisor, GDPRD)

“This [dialogue] underscores how critical it is to be making the investments in the fundamental changes that are needed in our global food systems. We run the big risks of coping with this short-term crisis but not building a long-term resilience.”

Maurizio Navarra, Secretariat Coordinator, GDPRD

“From the perspective of the Donor Platform, we need to continue acting as a neutral space that helps reduce this fragmentation, align incentives, and ultimately, what we need really is to lower the transaction costs across donors.”

Vincent De Graaf, Counsellor, Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations, representing Thijs Woudstra, Head of Food and Nutrition Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as the Co-Chair of the GDPRD.

“Multilateralism remains a key component in increasing resilience, and that’s not only coming from international organizations, but definitely also from states in different parts of the world.”