Living Income and Living Wages: Implementation in Practice

What is INA doing to help achieve living incomes and living wages?

The activities of the Initiative for Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains (INA) are designed to assist corporations and other actors in pursuing the living income or living wage approach in order to make global trade fairer and lift smallholders out of poverty. INA supports these efforts in a variety of ways: alongside networking internationally with relevant stakeholders around living incomes and living wages, INA works on raw-materials-specific strategies to implement the two concepts, develops practical tools and guidelines for corporations and other interested parties, and provides technical consultancy for the implementation of GIZ projects focused on living incomes/living wages. The Initiative moreover contributes to political processes at the EU and international levels – for example in relation to the EU’s planned due diligence legislation.

German Retailers Working Group on Living Income and Living Wages

Of particular note is the German Retailers Working Group on Living Income and Living Wages, which is coordinated by INA. Its members are numerous German retailers who have set themselves the goal of promoting living incomes and wages in the global agricultural supply chains for their own-brand products by, among other things, developing and implementing responsible procurement practices intended to help enable smallholders and workers gain a decent standard of living. In an initial pilot project, ALDI Nord, ALDI SÜD, dm-drogerie markt, Kaufland and REWE Group are working to promote living wages in the banana sector.

Roadmap for this Project

International Coffee Organisation (ICO)

INA also supports the International Coffee Organisation (ICO), an intergovernmental organisation designed to strengthen cooperation within the global coffee sector. Its members represent 97% of worldwide coffee production and 67% of worldwide consumption. The ICO’s multi-actor partnership, the Coffee Public-Private Task Force, aims to transform the coffee sector and create a sustainable and prosperous future for coffee producers and for the sector as a whole. One strand of its work focuses on establishing benchmarks for living incomes and then closing the gap.

More on the International Coffee Organisation (ICO)

Alliance on Living Income in Cocoa (ALICO)

INA also supports multi-actor platforms such as the Alliance on Living Income in Cocoa (ALICO) in order to address systemic poverty-related challenges in the cocoa sector through political dialogue and sector cooperation. With these activities the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) hopes to internationalise efforts to create a sustainable cocoa sector that provides living incomes and wages.