CLM Onderzoek en Advies

About CLM Onderzoek en Advies

CLM Onderzoek en Advies is a mission-driven research and advisory bureau focused on making sustainability in agriculture and food more practical and actionable. Since its origins in 1981, it has worked at the intersection of agriculture, food, nature, environment, and climate, helping clients turn scientific insight into concrete steps that can be applied in the field and in policy.

The company serves a broad range of stakeholders across the agrifood chain, including governments, companies, NGOs, knowledge institutions, and agricultural organizations. Its positioning is deliberately hands-on: CLM aims to provide both direction and momentum, combining research, advice, and implementation support to accelerate sustainable change.

CLM describes itself as a bridge builder that connects chain partners and strengthens collaboration. It emphasizes practical applicability, fact-based advice, and a positive, constructive approach to complex sustainability challenges.

Core Values

• Practical impact: CLM stresses that advice is only complete when it works in practice. It focuses on solutions that can be implemented by farmers, businesses, and public bodies.
• Fact-based work: The organization repeatedly emphasizes listening, testing, and staying close to the facts. Its advice is grounded in research and in real-world conditions.
• Collaboration: CLM values connecting stakeholders across the chain and believes that shared knowledge and combined effort create greater impact.
• Positive change: The bureau aims to stimulate others to become more sustainable by offering constructive, energizing support rather than abstract critique.
• Mission-driven entrepreneurship: CLM links its commercial work to a broader sustainability mission, with profits directed to an innovation and investment fund.

Unique Aspects

• Independent ownership structure: 100% of CLM Onderzoek en Advies BV is held by the independent Stichting CLM Belangen, which oversees the company’s mission and approves key governance matters.
• Innovation and investment fund: Since 2022, CLM has statutorily committed profits to an innovation and investment fund that finances projects aligned with its mission of building a sustainable food system and strengthening the link between agriculture and environment.
• Long-standing sector experience: The company traces its roots to 1981 and presents itself as having four decades of experience in agriculture-environment transition work.
• Farm Gas Live participation: CLM holds a 25% stake in Farm Gas Live BV, which provides live measurements of ammonia and methane emissions in livestock barns.
• Benchmarking expertise: CLM says it is one of the few internationally recognized organizations that benchmark and review sustainable food standards, and it works with frameworks used by SAI Platform and PepsiCo.
• Broad stakeholder network: The company highlights its ability to work across the agrifood chain, from farmers and citizens to governments, NGOs, companies, and research institutions.