Why and how market institutions create incentives for adopting sustainable agricultural practices

This edited volume has gathered together a collection of selected case studies from around the world, documented by the innovators themselves. The preceding chapters detail how each case has innovated within its organizational and institutional environments to create markets for its sustainable products. All the case studies in this volume are considered “market-driven” innovations. We classify them as such because the innovators are relying upon innovative market instruments and institutions to sell products that are cultivated using sustainable agricultural practices. One of the selection criteria for the case studies was proof that the agricultural practices used by the innovators were in line with the categories documented in FAO’s Save and grow publication (2011). We argue that the 15 cases presented in this book exemplify new ways of organizing farmers who practise sustainable agriculture. These new ways have changed the rules about how farmers and consumers can be linked through market exchanges. In this chapter, we explain how we arrived at this conclusion. The chapter is organized as follows. First, we present our analytical framework of “institutional innovations”, which is followed by three sections that explain why and how institutional innovations work. We conclude by explaining how it is through these institutional innovations that markets act as incentives for the local use of sustainable practices.