Innovative markets for sustainable agriculture: Exploring how innovations in market institutions encourage sustainable agriculture in developing countries

From 2013 to 2014, the FAO and the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique(INRA) undertook a survey of innovative approaches that enable markets to act asincentives for the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. Through a competitiveselection process, 15 cases from around the world provide insights into how small-scaleinitiatives that use sustainable practices have been driven by market demand to createinnovations in the institutions that govern sustainable practices and market exchanges.These cases have responded to both local and distant consumers’ concerns about thequalities of the food that they eat. Through this study we learned that the initiatives relyupon social values to better adapt sustainable practices to local contexts while creatingnew market outlets for their products. Specifically, private sector and civil society actorsare leading partnerships with the public sector to build market infrastructure, integratesustainable agriculture into private and public education and extension programmes, andensure the exchange of transparent information about market opportunities. The resultsare: (i) system innovations that allow new rules for marketing and assuring the sustainablequalities of products; (ii) new forms of organization that permit actors to play multipleroles in the system (e.g. farmer and auditor, farmer and researcher, consumer and auditor,consumer and intermediary); (iii) new forms of market exchanges such as box schemes,university kiosks, public procurement or systems of seed exchanges; (iv) new technologiesfor sustainable agriculture (e.g. effective micro-organisms, bio-pesticides, soil analysistechniques, personal protective equipment). We have found that the public sector plays akey role in providing legitimate political and physical spaces for multiple actors to jointlycreate and share sustainable agricultural knowledge, practices and products