The Fairtrade Access Fund (FAF) is hitting its stride. There’s more capital. More momentum. More eyes on outcomes.
So we’re turning up the lights on its impact, its investments, and the people steering its course. Today’s conversation brings together two of those people.
Luuk Zonneveld became the chair of the FAF Board in June 2025. He formerly led BIO (the Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries) and served as Managing Director of Fairtrade International. Recipient of the King Baudouin International Development Prize, he brings a systems view and a conviction that fair trade plus impact capital can move the dial when the beneficiaries are truly at the center.
Carlos Castello chaired the FAF Board from 2017 to March 2025 and has sat on its investment committee since 2016. At ACCION International, he helped build commercially sustainable MFIs that financed low – income entrepreneurs across emerging markets. At Root Capital, he led credit and technical assistance for smallholder-focused trade finance. He’s resilient, values-driven, and relentlessly oriented toward farmer impact.
This is a handover and a horizon scan, all at once.
Interview
Q: One moment that captured this fund’s spirit?
Carlos: We kept lending even through COVID. Many clients faced hard choices, some existential. Risk went up. Profit went down. We kept supporting our clients. That decision – maintaining our commitment to the values and mission of the fund- defined us.
Q: Which value has guided your career, and how will it shape this fund?
Luuk: In my first job at a Fair-Trade import and marketing company, I had an inspirational manager. His key criterion for taking decisions was: Who would get better? If small-scale farmers and their families and communities, small-scall business and people in the rural areas gain power and livelihood, the decision stands. If not, we rethink it. That’s the lens I bring to this fund- every trade, every investment, every policy stance.
Q: Advice for the new chair? What should never be lost?
Carlos: Widen the aperture. We’re an open-ended fund; let’s expand to reach different levels of the agricultural landscape including domestic supply chains through blended structures.
Scale the fund’s climate-adaptation lending program. Its performance-based payments give farmers room to adapt with longer-term credit. Technical assistance should continue to support credit clients, with new emphasis on fintech and agritech – so producers can tap digital finance, information, and training.
Keep supporting rural MFIs to expand reach to more farmers and balance risk. And above all, scale operations for both impact and efficiency; with scale, profitability strengthens and commercial investors follow- bringing more capital to low-income smallholder farmers.
Q: What sets this fund apart, and which strengths should we amplify?
Luuk: We don’t just lend to farmers. We pair finance with technical assistance, climate action, and digital enablement. And we use a “progress approach.” We finance certified organizations – and those with the same ambition who are still on the road to certification. With financing, specialist guidance, and in-country brokering, we help clients to progressively realize their ambition and build sustainable systems.
Q: Lessons from global shocks?
Carlos: Innovate the toolkit to address climate pressures. The recent payment for ecosystem services program introduced in January 2025 exemplifies our fund’s ability to operationalize financial innovation.
Maintaining the fund’s sustainability is key to scale impact and mobilize more private investments, namely through blended instruments including guarantees.
Be inclusive. Over the years, the fund has extended eligibility to high-impact clients beyond formal certifications – when evidence of their social impact warrants it.
Q: What excites you most about leading this fund now?
Luuk: Small Producer Organisations (SPOs) and SMEs are vital to sustainable food systems – and yet hard to finance well. They’re still building muscle; the support costs are high. Over time, with setbacks and progress, the Fairtrade Access Fund has learned how to serve them. That creates opportunity: millions more producers reached, new regions and crops supported, deeper resilience in turbulent times. I’m eager to bring more investors into the fund so we can extend both reach and impact.
Q: Your vision in a few words.
Carlos: A profitable, triple-bottom-line fund that scales across Latin America, Africa, and Asia – drawing commercial capital to documentable social and environmental impact, much as microfinance did, now applied to smallholder finance and technical assistance.
Luuk: The global reference for investing in smallholder producer organisations (SPOs) and SMEs – unmissable for serious investors, and the standard for financing these organizations.
Carlos and Luuk, thank you. For the candor. For the compass. And for a shared commitment to the Fairtrade Access Fund, which places smallholder farmers at the center.