Financial Inclusion for Smallholders: Integrating a Resource Nexus Approach Into Agricultural Finance Systems

Abstract

Smallholder farmers remain structurally excluded from the current agricultural finance system. Existing research in this area examines financial inclusion through fragmented environmental, social, and economic lenses, limiting system-level understanding. This study addresses this gap through an integrative review of 37 peer-reviewed articles and 1327 coded segments, using deductive and inductive coding informed by the Systems theory of financial inclusion and the Resource Nexus approach. The review identifies 38 system actors and 22 facilitative elements that influence the access and impacts of financial instruments across environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions. The findings reveal nonuniform and bidirectional relationships, where instruments that raise short-term income may reinforce social inequality or environmental stress over time. The study contributes to the literature by extending the Systems theory of financial inclusion through the inclusion of environmental and cultural systems and identification of feedback loops, and by proposing an integrated framework of the agricultural finance system to guide context-sensitive and inclusive financial instruments design.