FARM+ Takes a US$1 Billion Pesticide and Farm-Plastics Transition to 15 Countries
A United Nations-backed programme to reduce hazardous pesticides and agricultural plastics is expanding from seven to fifteen countries, pairing public grants with private and institutional co-financing that the organisers value at more than US$1 billion.
The second phase, called FARM+, was launched in Bangkok on 15 October 2026. It adds Benin, Costa Rica, Egypt, The Gambia, Ghana, Mexico, Nepal and Nigeria to the existing work in Ecuador, India, Kenya, Lao PDR, the Philippines, Uruguay and Viet Nam. The United Nations Development Programme will lead the new phase, while the United Nations Environment Programme continues to lead the original programme.
The scale is notable, but the headline requires careful reading. The US$1 billion figure combines Global Environment Facility funding with co-financing; it is not a claim that US$1 billion has already been paid to farmers. FARM+ field implementation is expected to begin in 2027, and many of the promised outcomes remain targets rather than measured results.
What changed on 15 October
FARM — short for Financing Agrochemical Reduction and Management — began in 2023 and is scheduled to run through 2028. Its first phase uses US$37 million in GEF grants and more than US$340 million in co-financing across seven countries. The launch of FARM+ adds eight countries, meaning the new phase accounts for 53% of the programme’s fifteen-country footprint.
UNEP says the two phases together now represent more than US$1 billion in combined GEF funding and co-financing. Comparing that total with the first phase’s disclosed envelope of more than US$377 million implies that at least roughly US$623 million of the combined resources sit beyond the original programme. That is an Agrilinkage calculation from rounded programme figures, not a disclosed FARM+ budget.
The original phase also reports more than 150 financial institutions engaged in lending intended to favour lower-chemical production. Its disclosed co-financing is more than nine times the GEF grant contribution. That leverage ratio describes the financing structure, not verified environmental impact: co-financing may include loans, counterpart spending and other committed resources with different conditions and disbursement schedules.
Why the programme is built around finance
Reducing pesticide use is not simply a matter of substituting one bottle for another. Integrated pest management can require better monitoring, more extension support, different labour patterns and access to reliable biological controls. Agricultural-plastic reduction may require collection systems, reverse logistics, durable alternatives and changes in irrigation or packaging practices.
Those changes create transition costs and operational risk. A grower testing a new pest-management regime may worry about crop damage, marketable yield and quality before local advisers and suppliers have accumulated enough experience. A bank may hesitate if it cannot distinguish a well-designed transition plan from an underfunded experiment. FARM+ therefore proposes to combine policy, technical support, finance and market demand rather than rely on regulation alone.
UNDP says the new phase will explore insurance intended to protect farmers against possible yield losses during the transition. The word explore matters: the launch did not announce a standard insurance product, premium, coverage formula or claims history. Its usefulness will depend on who carries basis risk, how agronomic compliance is verified and whether insurance complements sound pest management rather than encouraging poorly controlled changes.
The programme’s targets are not yet outcomes
Across the first seven countries, FARM aims to prevent more than 51,000 tonnes of hazardous pesticides and 20,000 tonnes of plastic waste from entering the environment, protect more than 3 million hectares from degradation and improve the lives of 3.8 million people. These are programme targets. They should not be reported as pollution already avoided or land already restored.
UNEP does report early activity. Lao PDR, Uruguay and Kenya have approved policies supporting safer practices and biocontrol alternatives. India’s training and peer-learning activities have reached more than 2 million farmers, while Ecuador’s AgroConCiencia fund has provided more than US$750,000 for farmer-led innovation. The release does not provide an independent impact evaluation linking those actions to changes in residues, yields, income or pollution.
That distinction is commercially important. Training counts show reach, but they do not reveal adoption, correct use or persistence. A new policy may enable biocontrol without ensuring that products are registered, locally available, effective against target pests and affordable at farm level. Funding an innovation also does not prove that it can scale across climates, crops and farm sizes.
The eight new countries will need different solutions
FARM+ spans West Africa, North Africa, Latin America and South Asia. The participating countries differ sharply in crop mix, farm structure, pesticide regulation, credit access, extension capacity, water stress and waste infrastructure. A single input-substitution template would therefore be unlikely to work.
For export crops, lower residues and documented production practices may improve access to demanding buyers, but compliance costs can exclude smaller producers if traceability and technical assistance are weak. For domestic staples, the priority may be affordable pest control and protection against yield instability. In irrigated horticulture, agricultural plastics and containers may be a central problem; in other systems, obsolete pesticides, unsafe handling or limited diagnostic capacity may dominate.
The programme’s plan to develop guidance for field trials of biological inputs is consequently significant. Field performance needs to be tested by crop, pest pressure, climate and application system. Results from small demonstrations should not be extrapolated automatically to commercial production, and biological products should be assessed with the same attention to efficacy, quality control and farmer economics applied to conventional inputs.
What farmers, lenders and buyers should watch
Country-level implementation documents should disclose the grant and co-financing split, delivery partners, target value chains and baseline measurements. Without baselines, large aggregate targets will be difficult to audit. Disbursement data will also matter because an announced financing envelope does not show how quickly resources reach farmers, laboratories, collection systems or local lenders.
Agronomic reporting should track pest pressure, marketable yield, crop quality and input costs — not only reductions in kilograms of pesticide. Plastic programmes should distinguish material placed on the market, collected, recycled, reused and safely disposed. Farmer outcomes should include net income, debt exposure, labour demand and access to buyers.
For financial institutions, the test is whether new credit and insurance products lower genuine transition barriers without transferring excessive monitoring costs or risk to farmers. For retailers and food companies, supplier standards must be paired with technical help and credible purchasing commitments if lower-pollution production is to become a durable commercial route rather than a short pilot.
What happens next
FARM+ is scheduled to begin field implementation in 2027. The immediate work is programme design: establishing national baselines, selecting value chains, arranging co-financing, developing technical packages and determining how farmers will access credit, insurance, training and markets.
The programme is large enough to influence the biological-input market, agricultural-plastic recovery systems and lender practices in participating countries. Its eventual value, however, will depend less on the size of the launch announcement than on transparent country budgets, independently credible measurement and evidence that farmers can maintain production and income while pollution falls.
Sources and methodology
Primary announcement: UNEP’s 15 October 2026 FARM and FARM+ release.
Programme partner version: UNDP’s FARM+ launch release.
First-phase background: GEF’s 2024 FARM programme overview.
Agrilinkage calculated the 53% new-country share, the minimum implied US$623 million expansion beyond the first-phase disclosed envelope and the greater-than-nine-to-one first-phase co-financing ratio from rounded programme figures. These calculations do not measure disbursement or impact.
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