CSB Executive in Residence Marianna Koval, with support from KK&P, published Advancing Food Finance to Increase Access to Healthy, Affordable Food: A Roadmap for Implementation.

Mission-driven food businesses play a critical role in ensuring that low-income and rural communities have access to healthy, affordable food. Yet these enterprises face persistent barriers to capital: conventional lenders view small-scale, volatile, thin-margin agricultural and food businesses as high risk; equity investors demand return timelines and ownership stakes that misalign with social missions; and existing grant funding is often fragmented and insufficient to support large-scale infrastructure and technical assistance needs. 

The Roadmap for Implementation offered in this document builds on findings from the November 2024 FoodMap NY Food Finance report with additional research and 15 follow-up interviews conducted in early 2025.

The key themes from this engagement fall under three overarching topics, and are summarized below

1. Streamlining Processes: Due Diligence, Needs-Matching, and De-Risking
2. Pilot Product Design: Lending Vehicle Frameworks & Timeframe
3. Initiative Structure & Management: Hosting Institutions, Organizational Structure, Governance, & Participants

To translate these insights into action, we outline a five‑step implementation plan: 

1. Identify a committed funder
2. Convene the Food Finance Working Group
3. Design the organizational structure and recruit leadership
4. Design the pilot product and services, locate capital pool(s), and set evaluation criteria
5. Implement, evaluate, and report

Each step is discussed at length: read the report here.