Since the Food Lab’s beginning 15 years ago, learning journeys have been a core part of our DNA, always accompanying annual summits and sometimes other events too. This year, in lieu of a summit, the Food Lab opted to hold smaller events with more focused conversations. One such event took place in June, a learning journey to…
The Sustainable Food Lab, GIZ and the ISEAL Alliance founded and co-host the Living Income Community of Practice, which is dedicated to the vision of thriving, economically stable, rural communities linked to global food and agricultural supply chains. The goal of the community is to support activities focused on improving smallholder incomes towards living incomes,…
As a member of the Living Income Community of Practice, SFL is excited to announce that our last Living Income Webinar of the year is taking place this week. Don’t miss the webinar: Pricing Mechanisms in the Cocoa Sector: Options to Reduce Price Volatility and Promote Farmer Value Capture Taking place on Thursday, December 6th from…
The Living Income Community of Practice, of which the Food Lab is a founding partner, released a report on the Ghana Living Income Benchmark & Analysis of Income Gaps for Cocoa Growing Regions. The study outlines a roadmap to achieve living incomes for cocoa farmers through a credible, third party analysis. Follow these links to the…
In July, Stephanie Daniels, Senior Program Director of Agriculture and Development, facilitated a workshop with the leaders of Ghana’s cocoa sector and global chocolate industry on research to determine a Living Income Benchmark in cocoa growing regions of Ghana. The workshop was done in collaboration with the World Cocoa Foundation, GIZ and the Living Income Community…
Value chain programs for farm performance and productivity can be integrated with landscape efforts to preserve forests, improve and manage water sheds and sequester carbon. Juan Pablo Soliz from Hivos and the SAFE Platform sat down with Tatiana Ramos from Conservation International, Hugh Aprile from Catholic Relief Services, and Elizabeth Hernández-Vásquez from Unidad Ecológica para…
Millions of smallholders live in poverty, unable to meet basic needs. Smallholder farmers need to improve their incomes and competitiveness if they are to achieve and sustain a decent standard of living, reinvest in their farms, and continue to supply a sustainable crop to multinational companies. The business benefits of investing in smallholder supply chains…
The Community of Practice convenes each year to better understanding the smallholder farmers we work with and to improve sustainable supply and livelihoods. Data alone is insufficient for learning. Exchange and robust dialogue is in efforts to use data to inform strategy and affect positive change. At the close of the meeting, we reflected on what…
Many sectors have developed platform or “backbone” organizations with a mandate to collect and manage precompetitive data. While there is a large amount of detailed data out there currently (farm size, income, adoption of practices, productivity), there has been a lot of hesitation in sharing this data for fear that it may be misunderstood or…
Sustainable livelihoods are the goal of countless initiatives, leaving many wondering if and how companies and organizations can effectively measure income gains and improvements beyond adoption of good agricultural practices. Mars, Inc. opened the discussion by illustrating why measuring income is important to their business, both for securing a sustainable supply of raw materials and ensuring…