Platform for African – European Partnership in Agricultural Research for Development

Saturday, June 18, 2022

The Living Income Community of Practice: improvements for smallholder incomes

15 June 2022
. The Living Income Community of Practice, Roles of Professional Producer Organizations In Living Income

The Virtual Living Income Workshop, co-organised by ISEAL Alliance, GIZ and the Sustainable Food Lab, featured 21 speakers from a range of institutions including (but not limited to) Rikolto, Voice Network, Solidaridad Colombia, SHIFT, SCOPEinsight, Nestle Cocoa Plan, Fairfood, The Sustainable Trade Initiative IDH, Cote d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative, and Sustainalytics.

Individuals from 66 countries registered to the workshop. Most of the registered individuals (229) came from European countries. The next largest region was Africa (178) followed by Latin America region with (134) registrants.

There is no silver bullet for driving improvements for smallholder incomes and neither is any individual actor solely responsible for taking actions for change. There are several levers and methods for improving incomes, appropriate for different actors, that can be applied holistically and can be implemented in various combinations depending on the context.

Through this workshop, the Living Income Community of Practice (LICOP) aimed to empower all actors to advance proactively towards improving producer livelihoods. It provided a space to share and learn.
  • Review evidence on effectiveness of income drivers
  • Discuss components that make up a credible Living income programme
  • Hear from practitioners, implementers and beneficiaries on what has worked well or not.

Day 1 (15th June): What drives improvement in farmer income and who can lead and influence these drivers?

The first day explored the building blocks for an effective living income program. It looked at the evidence on the critical drivers of farmer income at the farm, national and sector levels. The sessions provided clarity on what is needed to enable farmers to earn a living income and considered this from the perspective and roles of different actors.

Understanding the drivers of living income and roles of different actors @ 21:50

  • Enabling Smallholder based agricultural transformation - lessons for living income strategy design - Richard Rogers (Farmer Income Lab & Managing Director, Rogers MacJohn LLC)
  • Income Drivers: What do we know of the income drivers and how they work? Ashlee Tuttleman (IDH) - The Sustainable Trade Initiative),
  • Effective Company programs: A review of the principles of a credible industry program and what has been learned in the cocoa sector Martha Rainer Opoku Mensah (Oxfam)

Critical pillars for an effective living income program @1:21:30.

  • Ensuring programs are addressing critical pillars necessary for success in a living income program - Abdulahi Aliyu-Rikolto
  • Elements of an effective living income programme: how to ensure and evaluate whether all the necessary pillars are in place in any program for success Antonie Fountain, Managing Director, Voice Network
  • Regenerative Ag & Living Income: models that help farmers cover the investment costs associated with adopting regenerative practices ​Joel Brounen, Solidaridad Colombia, Martine Jansen, Rabobank
  • Roles of Professional Producer Organizations in Living income: the critical role of these organizations in both improving and sustaining higher farmer incomes - Marise Blom, SCOPEinsight, Mariela Wismann, Rikolto
Download session slides

Day 2 (16th June): Can we start to build a shared understanding of good practices when communicating about action on living income?

​Living income cannot be addressed by supply chain action alone. As new partnerships catalyse, a shared understanding of good practices is needed to communicate about actions and ensure that it is grounded in a robust framework. Day 2, brought together practitioners that shared experiences to discuss what effective action, monitoring and reporting could look like for living income.

Living Income Claims and Communication.

  • Building a shared understanding of good practices when communicating on action - Sheila Senathirajah (LICOP) To enable companies to make credible claims and communicate meaningfully about their contribution, we need to build a shared understanding of good practice. Credible reporting is necessary to build understanding and buy-in among stakeholders around living income strategies and actions.
  • Trends on impact reporting: What’s the expectation for companies to further improve credibility in living income related disclosure? - Stina Nilsson (Sustainalytics) From policy and process to impact reporting. What do we currently see and where are we heading, and why?
  • What is a credible system for verifying action and assessing relevance to delivering improvements?- Caroline Rees (SHIFT): Learnings and good practices emerging from LW work Living wage reporting standard – purpose, features, current status, feedback from piloting companies?
  • How are multistakeholder platforms addressing collective commitments and progress indicators for these?Christian Robin (Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa)
  • What are key indicators of success for living income? - Tawiah Agyarko-Kwarteng (Cote d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative - CDGHCI) What are the key indicators of success on living income that the CDGHCI is using? What would you like to see the industry report on?

Building a shared understanding of good practices when communicating on action 

(Breakout sessions - not available on video recording)

Case example 1: Role of Cash Incentives in a Living Income program: 

This session took the recently announced Nestlé Income Accelerator Program as a concrete example to discuss the logic behind including cash transfers, design elements of an effective program and ways to measure effectiveness and impact.
  • Moderated by: Christina Archer (Sustainable Food Lab)
  • Darrell High (Nestlé Cocoa Plan)
  • Oumou Diallo (Royal Tropical Institute KIT)

Case example 2: Transparency systems to Enable living income programs: Case of TRACE: 

This session addressed innovations in supply chain data and transparency through practical cases.
  • Moderated by: Rita Mendez (LICOP)
  • Cerianne Bury (Trabocca Coffee)
  • Isa Miralles (Fairfood / ALIGN platform) 
  • Lauren Murphy (ICRW)

Case example 3: Data Governance & Ownership

This session explored the building blocks to an equitable data system, the importance to a living income approach and scaling efforts to reach more farmers, with a focus on the coffee and cocoa sectors.
  • Moderated by: Kaitlin Murphy (Sustainable Food Lab)
  • Sylvia Calfat (Committee on Sustainable Assessment (COSA)
  • Pavi Ram (Tony’s Chocolonely)

Event Resources

The Farmer Income Lab is a collaborative ‘think-do tank’ to improve farmer incomes and build resilient supply chains that work for farmers and business. As an industryled collective, the Lab harnesses the expertise of academic, public, private and civil society partners to generate insights and connect solutions in order to influence industry action.

This paper looks at lessons from countries or sub-national regions where major gains in smallholder farmer livelihoods have been achieved. These regions—primarily in Asia and Latin America—have brought large numbers of rural households out of ‘moderate poverty’ defined as $3.20 per person/day. 

Living Income Benchmark, June 2022 Update Rural Ghana Cocoa growing areas of Ashanti, Central, Eastern, and Western Regions # 4 p.

LIVING INCOME:FROM RIGHTTO REALITYEssential issues and recommendations for business # 38 p. 

Assessing the professionalism of farmer organisations with SCOPE tools by RIKOLTO

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