From agrifood priorities to investment and action: new ASTA engagement guidelines launched

FAO and UNIDO have launched the Agrifood Systems Transformation Accelerator (ASTA) engagement guidelines, providing governments and partners with a practical pathway to turn agrifood systems priorities into coordinated action, investment and solutions designed to scale. 

Countries increasingly know where change is needed in their agrifood systems. The challenge is turning these priorities into action. Promising initiatives may remain disconnected, investments can be constrained by weaknesses elsewhere in the system, and innovations may struggle to move beyond individual projects. 

Value chains provide a practical entry point for addressing these challenges. They connect producers and businesses with markets, services, finance, infrastructure, technology and public policy. Strengthening these connections can unlock opportunities that extend beyond an individual value chain and contribute to wider agrifood systems transformation. 

The new ASTA engagement guidelines set out how governments, financial institutions, businesses, development partners and other stakeholders can engage with ASTA to move from evidence and priorities to strategies, investment opportunities and implementation. 

Connecting the pieces needed for change 

ASTA starts from the recognition that constraints within agrifood systems are interconnected. Improving production alone may have limited impact if producers cannot access markets. New market opportunities may remain out of reach without aggregation, infrastructure or services. Finance may exist, but lenders may consider new business models or producers too risky. 

Rather than addressing these constraints separately, ASTA brings stakeholders together to identify their root causes and develop integrated solutions. 

Partnerships, innovation and blended finance are central to this approach. Partnerships connect actors and initiatives that may otherwise operate separately. Innovation brings forward practical technological, organizational, institutional and market solutions. Blended finance can help reduce investment risks and mobilize capital for solutions that conventional finance may not initially support. 

Importantly, ASTA is catalytic. Its purpose is not to replace governments, businesses, financial institutions or other actors, but to help create the structures, partnerships and incentives that allow them to drive and sustain change themselves. 

Combining the strengths of FAO and UNIDO 

The strategic partnership between FAO and UNIDO is a distinctive part of ASTA. 

It brings together complementary expertise and networks across agrifood systems, sustainable value-chain development, agribusiness, productive capacities, enterprises, technology and investment. This allows technical analysis to be connected more directly with implementation and investment perspectives. 

ASTA is also an open partnership platform. Governments, businesses, financial institutions and investors, civil society, technical and research organizations, development partners and other United Nations organizations can contribute different capabilities and resources around a country-led transformation pathway. 

For governments, this offers a way to connect priorities with practical interventions and investment. For financial institutions and investors, it can help identify investment opportunities and approaches to reducing risk. For businesses and value-chain actors, it can help connect innovation and finance with the services, markets and enabling conditions needed to make investments viable. 

From country priorities to investment and scale 

ASTA is building a growing portfolio of country-led solutions across diverse agrifood value chains. In Jordan and Suriname, ASTA has progressed to implementation, bringing together public and private actors, technical solutions and financing to transform the fruit and vegetable value chain in Jordan and the pineapple value chain in Suriname. 

In parallel, ASTA’s value chain analyses and upgrading strategies are advancing work on coconut in Nigeria, dairy and beef in Bangladesh, palm oil in the United Republic of Tanzania, and soybean in Zambia. Through collaboration with FAO’s One Country One Priority Product (OCOP) initiative, the ASTA methodology is also being applied to bananas in Malawi, potatoes in Lesotho and table grapes in the Republic of Moldova, translating value chain analysis into strategies, action and investment plans, and pathways towards implementation. 

Turning ambition into action 

The ASTA engagement guidelines are ultimately an invitation to partner. 

A government may have identified a priority value chain but need a pathway from analysis to investment and implementation. A financial institution may be looking for viable and sustainable investment opportunities. A development partner may want its resources to catalyse wider change rather than support another standalone intervention. Businesses may have technologies, services or business models with potential to scale. 

ASTA provides a framework for bringing these ambitions and resources together around country priorities. The opportunity is to move from isolated interventions to connected solutions, from analysis to investment and implementation, and from promising innovations to changes that can scale and endure. 

Through ASTA, FAO and UNIDO invite governments, financiers, businesses and development partners to work together to turn agrifood systems ambitions into investable solutions and lasting change. 

Explore the ASTA engagement guidelines 
Explore ASTA country publications and investment opportunities