Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Creation and Development of Market Institutions
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In 2009, Mars committed to buying 100% sustainable cocoa by 2020, and Hershey and Ferrero
have since made the same commitment.
Indonesia’s Partnership for Indonesian Sustainable Agriculture (PISAgro)
The Partnership for Indonesian Sustainable Agriculture (PISAgro), founded in 2012, is a
network of public and private institutions, which aims to link food security, environmental
sustainability, and economic opportunity. Its membership includes four Indonesian
Government Ministries, 20 international and Indonesian companies (including multinationals
such as Nestle, Unilever, Bayer, and Cargill), the World Economic Forum, IFC, the Australian
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative, Swisscontact (a
business-oriented independent foundation for international development cooperation active
in 34 countries), Mercy Corps, the John Deere Foundation, and UTZ, an international
sustainability certification organization.
PISAgro has 12 working groups, covering Agricultural Finance, Beef Cattle, Cocoa, Coffee, Corn,
Dairy, Horticulture, Palm Oil, Potato, Rice, Rubber, and Soybean and expert international
advisors to support each group. These groups work closely with farmers’ organizations to
increase productivity and incomes. As of 2016 PISAgro had worked with nearly 450,000
smallholder farmers cultivating some 350,000 ha., increasing productivity and incomes by
more than 12%.
2.5.4 National Coordinating Agencies
In many countries, market institutions are concentrated on a single sector or market system.
The examples cited above, from Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire, and The Gambia, illustrate this
principle. There is much to be said for this, since the technical challenges and needs of different
commodity groups may differ widely, and a focused approach may be more appropriate. But in
some cases, especially in countries in which infrastructure, administrative capacity, and
business climate constraints are prevalent, a more widely focused agency may be more
appropriate, especially when it functions as part of an integrated and coordinated network of
Government and private institutions.
Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA)
Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) is one example. The ATA is the apex
institution for implementation of the national Agricultural Transformation Agenda. Ethiopia
has modeled its agricultural transformation approach and agenda on the success of countries
such as Taiwan, Korea and Malaysia. “The two main features in those countries’ models were:
1) a clear set of prioritized interventions to address the critical bottlenecks in a particular part
of the economy; and 2) a dedicated institution that supports senior policy makers and key
institutions with strategic input on planning, coordinating, implementing, tracking, evaluating,
and refining prioritized interventions to address identified bottlenecks.”105
One innovative intervention by the ATA was the creation in 2014, in collaboration with the
Ministry of Agriculture, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, and Ethio Telecom, a
105 Agricultural Transformation Agency (2017), Overview, available a
[Accessed June 2017].