Transforming agricultural markets for good through durable change

It intentionally creates the partnerships, momentum, and governance needed to have a lasting positive impact on value chains and market systems. Since 2008, IDH has worked with some of the world’s leading companies to embed solutions addressing agriculture’s most pressing problems.  

IDH’s approach to durable change

IDH brings together key value chain players with a shared commercial interest and creates the conditions for collective action, investment, and effective solutions. IDH produces durable change where systems, institutions, and sector platforms continue independently of IDH funding or direct management.  

Crucially, every initiative IDH creates is co-funded with the private sector and structured in such a way that partners are not simply contributing funding; they are co-creating solutions they will benefit from and increasing supply chain resilience. 

Sustainable and inclusive business practices are promoted across value chains, ensuring that sustainability is fully integrated into companies' business strategies. Sector governance is improved by facilitating collaboration among governments, companies, and civil society, and creating supportive policies and frameworks that drive market transformation and equitable value distribution. 

Embedding market transformation through systems change 

IDH works with partners to identify and address current challenges in agricultural market systems, developing solutions which are incorporated into how the market operates.  

For example, in Nigeria, the value chains for cassava, grains, and palm oil have been strengthened through traceable supply systems and structured market integration. Since 2018, IDH has introduced a successful block farming model, clustering production and aligning it more directly with offtake demand, increasing the yield supplied to premium Nigerian offtakers by 300%.  

Building a system with responsible procurement at its core is an effective way to introduce and scale long-term market transformation. IDH partnered with Tony’s Chocolonely in the development and ongoing improvement of Tony’s Open Chain to scale living income reference pricing in living income models. The cocoa farmers in the Open Chain program earn a significantly higher income than average with a growing number of households earning a living income or more. Increasing volumes sourced by more companies through Tony’s Open Chain amplifies impact on farmer incomes in a cost-efficient way. 

To empower companies to accelerate and maintain market change in their own value chains, IDH developed a series of Roadmaps. The Roadmap on Living Wages, first launched in 2020, is both a five-step process providing practical guidance and support for companies to implement living wage commitments, and also a live network of multistakeholder partners designing and enhancing living wage approaches across global value chains. Similarly, IDH leads the Roadmap on Living Income, and is developing a Roadmap on Climate Resilience, translating its years of expertise into actionable systems change that transform markets for good. 

Institutionalising for long-term success 

IDH works with partners to institutionalise the governance, standards, and finance needed for co-created initiatives to continue long after the original program, and its funding, are gone. 

For example, IDH formalised the partnership and activities of the South West Mau forest landscape initiative in Kenya - which supported forest restoration, livelihood improvement, and tea production -through the creation of a trust. The Stawisha Mau Charitable Trust is a public-private partnership of more than sixteen stakeholders from private sector, county governments, national government agencies, community groups and NGOs. This makes the coalition more durable, and enables it to manage funding that will support the convening and field activities moving forward. 

Landscape approaches developed over ten years are embedded across IDH’s commodity work and publicly available to join through SourceUp. IDH’s recent Walmart Foundation-backed program for SourceUp and the Jurisdictional Action Network demonstrates that institutionalisation is needed alongside scaling. Onboarding support and a corporate case-for-action hub encourages scaling, while the institutionalisation of a financial sustainability model ensures the platform itself survives.  

Implementing and scaling sustainability standards 

Several major sector collaborations initiated by IDH have matured into self-sufficient sustainability standards. By providing an incubating role, or partnering with a sustainability standard to increase market adoption of certification, IDH has helped bring to market and establish leading sustainability standards which can continue to drive sustainable production.

Harnessing sector collaboration for longevity   

Creating and developing sector partnerships that continue operating independently of IDH funding or direct management reflects a core principle underlying IDH’s approach: long-term market transformation depends on building systems that sectors themselves eventually own, finance, and govern. 

In Aceh Tamiang, Indonesia, we brought stakeholders together to address deforestation linked to palm oil expansion and support sustainable economic growth. Partners introduced monitoring, a response mechanism, restoration and patrols. About 47,600 hectares of forest are now protected and the deforestation rate has fallen by 37%. Participating households earned 35% to 52% more than comparable households, according to an independent impact evaluation. Catalysing a ripple effect, results at district level provided evidence to support expansion to the provincial level. 

Providing catalytic finance 

IDH has been a strategic partner of the Global Coffee Platform since its creation in 2016, backing country platforms in Brazil, Honduras, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Uganda. As a co-founder of the platform, IDH acted as the largest foundational donor for the first four years. The Global Coffee Platform is now the world’s largest and premier coffee platform covering over 20% of global green coffee exports, and has expanded to 10 country platforms. 

Supporting to independence  

Since 2010, Sector Initiatives - international, membership-based platforms - were launched, hosted, and supported by IDH with the aim of helping companies align around standards, shared sustainability ambitions and address environmental, social, and sourcing risks that no single actor could solve alone. In 2025, several sector initiatives reached independence from IDH, becoming increasingly member-governed and funded. 

Another program, the Life and Building Safety Program (LABS), was designed for independence from the start. Created in 2019, LABS now operates without IDH co-funding, reaching over 1.3 million factory workers across Vietnam, India, Cambodia, and Indonesia, and contributing to national fire safety standards that apply far beyond the factories IDH directly supported. 

Over the last 18 years, working across a wide range of sectors and countries, IDH has demonstrated a track record of transforming agricultural markets for good, creating durable change through systems, institutions, and sector platforms.