The AGPM is an initiative to enhance smallholder welfare and improve food security for the poor and vulnerable through the use of "pull mechanisms" in agriculture. Pull mechanisms are results-based financial incentives rewarding successful innovations and their adoption. They are designed to overcome market failures, and encourage private and public sector innovators to develop products and services that they would not otherwise bring to the market. Well-crafted pull mechanisms can be used to close the gap between the demand for socially desirable goods and services and their supply by the private sector in developing countries.

The idea of applying “pull mechanisms” in agriculture was launched at the June 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, where leaders committed to finding incentives to harness the private sector for agricultural innovation. In order to investigate these mechanisms further, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are collaborating with like-minded donors, supported by World Bank staff through the scoping phase.

Through October 2011, the World Bank has solicited 38 pull mechanism ideas from 24 experts in four Thematic Groups focused on in the areas of (1) Inputs/Increasing Yields, (2) Outputs/Post-harvest Management, (3) Livestock, and (4) Nutrition (see below). An Expert Advisory Group has recommended a number of those ideas for donor funding.

The AGPM Secretariat is currently preparing business plans for a subset of these proposals.

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