What is the Living Income Roadmap?
IDH’s Living Income Roadmap helps companies to take ambitious and aligned actions to improve incomes and close living income gaps of farming households. It is a framework that outlines a range of steps, guiding questions and data-driven tools designed to be dynamic and used simultaneously. It highlights the need to use comparable data, engage in multi-stakeholder partnerships and take immediate action.
To act on living income, companies should follow these five steps outlined in our Living Income Roadmap:
- Identify the Living Income benchmark: A solid foundation, ensuring internal alignment and understanding of living income in priority areas.
- Assess the Living Income gap: Data to identify the living income gap and income drivers.
- Verify the calculations: Uniformity and stakeholder alignment in how living income gaps are calculated.
- Close the gap and track progress: Practical multi-stakeholder solutions to remove barriers and close living income gaps.
- Share learnings: Access to data and best practices to facilitate learning on how gaps can be reduced over time.
IDH works towards better incomes for smallholder farmers across different sectors and landscapes
IDH believes that stakeholders need to change their own behaviour (e.g., business practices) at various levels, i.e., national, landscape and sector. IDH developed the Living Income Roadmap, incorporating practical tools and a procurement lens. We also bring partners together under this Roadmap to drive collaborative action.
Partnerships
The Living Income Roadmap is managed by IDH with support from a Steering Committee:
At IDH, we believe that to effectively close Living Income gaps we need to tackle multiple drivers of household income. For this we work with our partners to help find the right ‘smart-mix’ of strategies to help them identify the most effective ways to work on their Living Income ambitions. Our work has delivered over 10 multi-stakeholder coalitions across tea, cocoa, coffee, spices and retail.
The Living Income Community of Practice (LICOP) has provided essential leadership and resources. IDH leverages LICOP’s work and that of its member organisations into this Living Income Roadmap, integrating LICOP’s guidance documents and tools with its own. IDH is a member of the LICOP Strategic Advisory Committee and LICOP Technical Committee.
Through the Living Income Roadmap community and in program coalitions, IDH collaborates with many companies and organisations, such as the Mars/Farmer Income Lab (FIL), focusing on inspiring transformation in businesses’ procurement practices to contribute to closing living income gaps. FIL, a “think-do” tank, supports companies in addressing poverty in agricultural supply chains. IDH and FIL believe innovative procurement practices are an important element of the smart-mix interventions for smallholders to reach a living income.
The Cocoa Income Inventory (CII) was launched by IDH, Wageningen University & Research, Voice Network, KIT, Sustainable Food Lab, Agri-Logic, and Südwind Institut during the World Cocoa Conference 2024. It is a first step in making available publicly the vast amounts of income data that has been collected in the cocoa sector, as well as learn from the impact of different interventions to improve farmer incomes.
Read more about driving cocoa sustainability through living income
Sustainable Procurement lens
Procurement, positioned at the heart of supply chains, catalyses transformation. Its evolving role extends to becoming a cornerstone of companies’ sustainability strategies. By redefining procurement practices, we can ensure equitable distribution of value and risks – cultivating a robust and sustainable agricultural sector.
IDH introduced five core principles towards sustainable procurement:
DISCO Procurement Practices Position Paper
IDH contributed to the finalisation of the DISCO Procurement Practices Position Paper that acknowledges that procurement practices are fundamental in enabling farmers to earn a living income and that service provision, such as GAP training, is not a sufficient living income strategy.
Toolkit
Income Measurement Guidance (IMG) tool
The Income Measurement Guidance (IMG) is an Excel-based platform for collecting primary data. It facilitates customised survey generation, offering users the flexibility to choose between primary and secondary data sources, adopt detailed or lean approaches to data collection, and cover six key commodities (Cocoa, Coffee, Tea, Spices, Cotton and Banana). Additionally, it guides income calculation, provides intake forms for contextualisation, and offers a generic survey option for additional commodities.
Income Driver Calculator (IDC)
The Income Driver Calculator (IDC) is a data-driven decision support tool that allows organisations and practitioners with living income ambitions to:
- Assess the living income gap,
- Measure the impact of each income driver,
- Build scenarios on specific interventions and
- Analyse the impact of the interventions on the living income gap.
Inclusive Business Analysis Module
Through the Inclusive Business Analysis, IDH maps current procurement practices in the company’s supply chain. We identify more sustainable practices, and estimate how those could potentially increase incomes for farmer cooperative members.
Are you interested in learning more about our sustainable procurement principles, the IMG tool or IDC? Please contact livingincome@idhtrade.org for more information.
Find out more in this short video
Living Wage & Living Income Summit
The Living Wage & Living Income Summit is on June 26, 2024, will you be there?
To make real strides we need the vast majority of stakeholders to take up their shared responsibility. We need to debate how best to benefit from recent milestones achieved by organisations like the ILO and the EU. We need to foster dialogue and share practical insights on what works when it comes to closing of living wage and income gaps. We need to share different perspectives from the supply chain on these topics.
Take part and join us at the Living Wage & Living Income Summit. You’ll be welcomed alongside 400 guests from a range of private sector and public sector stakeholders, including producers, buyers, unions and more. We can create deeper and more cohesive change together.
The Living Wage Summit is organised together with GIZ and with support from the UN Global Compact
For more information contact us:
Publications
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