Andrea Zinn oversees a coalition of investors focused on building better futures for agricultural enterprises and the communities they support. Credit: Andrea Zinn
Andrea Zinn has worked in the agriculture finance sector for nearly a decade. She knows that the agricultural finance gap is too massive for one organization to tackle alone.
Today, Andrea directs the coalition of mission-driven lending institutions known as the Council on Smallholder Agricultural Finance (CSAF). CSAF, co-founded by Root Capital in 2012, brings together lenders and field-building partners to champion inclusive and sustainable financial markets for small- and medium-sized agricultural businesses.
With CSAF, the aggregation of its impact is greater than what any single organization can accomplish on its own.
The Challenge
In the early 2010s, several impact investors were confronting similar challenges in lending to small- and medium-sized agricultural businesses.
“Risks were high, and the finance sector for small- and medium-sized agricultural businesses lacked comparable data, benchmarks, and learning,” explains Andrea.
Lenders in our segment were operating in silos.
“They were working in the same space, sometimes with the same borrowers,” says Andrea. “And while there was mutual respect, a shared mission, and common challenges in the sector, there was also limited trust and knowledge exchange.”
Specialty Coffee Association Expo panelists Tommaso Ferretti, Ph.D. (left) and Diédericks Gadea (second from right with Andrea Zinn (second from left) and Root Capital’s Head of Lending, Latin America, Daniel Rivera (far right). Credit: Andrea Zinn
Our Collaboration
CSAF was born out of the desire to bring together agricultural lenders working in the missing middle—serving enterprises that are too large for microcredit and too small for conventional finance. The goal was to share learnings to catalyze greater impact. As Andrea points out, Root Capital “was instrumental in establishing the initial structure and momentum.”
The aim, she says, “was to establish sector infrastructure, harmonize standards, report on sector growth and challenges, promote responsible lending practices, and share lessons learned between peers.”
CSAF launched with seven members, and today it comprises 19 member organizations that represent a significant segment of the sector. Andrea highlights that one of CSAF’s strengths is that it is practitioner-driven, so “lenders are leading the conversations and directing the sector approach.”
“CSAF members have a wide footprint to improve the livelihoods of farming families and build climate resilience,” explains Andrea. Over 11 years, they have cumulatively loaned $6.9 billion to over 1,700 cooperatives and businesses that supported 7 million smallholder farmers.
The Impact
“Although competitors, CSAF members have built significant social fabric and trust over the years,” Andrea says. “This has allowed us to have transparent exchanges and dialogues, which have resulted in very concrete contributions to the sector.”
For example, CSAF members:
- Co-developed and adopted a set of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) lending principles to ensure they work with businesses that generate positive impact on—and do no harm to—rural livelihoods and the environment.
- Offer access to their aggregated data on the CSAF website. This is a tremendous resource for all stakeholders in the sector to utilize.
- Publish an annual report on the state of the sector. The report compares data across the member organizations to identify overall trends and is crucial for addressing systemic challenges.
CSAF members also convene annually at a workshop for peer-to-peer learning. Through these exchanges, they track lessons learned to establish best practices and build evidence around barriers to sector growth.
“Coalitions like CSAF play a crucial role,” says Andrea. “They bring together collective knowledge, exchange learning, and spur innovative solutions.”
At Root Capital, we know that lending to these agricultural enterprises involves risks, but there is also a tremendous potential for impact. Collective action platforms have a critical role to play if we are to catalyze impact at scale and create lasting, systemic change.
Root Capital is all in when it comes to collective action platforms. In addition to helping launch CSAF, Root Capital is a founding member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and the Regenerative Climate Action for SmallHolders (CASH) Coalition, founded in 2009 and 2023 respectively.