AgResults: Innovation in Research and Delivery

AgResults is a US$152 million collaborative initiative between the governments of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Gates Foundation, and the World Bank Group that uses prize competitions to incentivize the private sector to overcome market barriers and develop solutions to food security and agricultural challenges. Under AgResults’ PfR model, these competitions encourage grantees to achieve predetermined result thresholds. AgResults originated at the June 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto when a group of leaders committed to exploring innovative, results-focused methods of harnessing private sector innovations in food security and improving productivity in developing countries. AgResults launched two years later at the G20 Summit in Los Cabos when the governments of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, together with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed $110 million to establish a Financial Intemediary Fund for AgResults. The Fund is operated by the World Bank, which serves as Trustee of the initiative. By using pay-for-results prize competitions , AgResults goes beyond traditional aid measures to promote the uptake of innovative technologies with high-yield development impacts. The objectives of AgResults are to 1) overcome market failures impeding agricultural innovations by offering results-based economic incentives (known as“pull” mechanisms ) to competing private actors for the uptake of new agricultural technologies; and to 2) test the effectiveness and efficiency of pull financing in comparison with traditional approaches to the promotion and uptake of innovative agricultural technologies.