Unicafes includes over 1,500 cooperatives with over 1 million farmers and foresters across Brasil. Forty percent of them are already doing agroecology and agroforestry, and many more want to transition. Global Academy, co-founded by NOW Partners Foundation, is co-creating with them co-innovation, capacity building and implementation hubs to support the transition and further improvement in cultivation results.

The coops need funding for the transition, bio-input production, working capital, mechanization, value addition, renewable energies, and overall working capital. GA and NOW Partners Foundation are exploring with UNICAFES how these needs can be bundled so that the overall scale becomes big enough to be investable by international impact investors who have expensive due diligence and ongoing control needs.