Agrifood systems face a convergence of global challenges: an accelerating climate crisis, rapid biodiversity and ecosystem loss, rising fragility and conflict and geopolitical shifts, all of which are reshaping the financial and political commitment underpinning international development cooperation.

This brief examines the structural failures in climate and food systems policy and finance that leave women in climate-vulnerable agrifood contexts, from smallholder farmers to informal market vendors and post-harvest workers, most exposed and least supported.

It makes the case that these same women are central to food system resilience, and that investing in their agency and participation is an effectiveness argument, not only an equity one. It identifies specific leverage points through which policy and finance can be redesigned to reach them, including the operationalisation of the Belém Action Mechanism and regional and national food systems architecture.

Report by the Overseas Development Institute