Upcoming Online Event: Tackling Poverty in Global Value Chains
As part of Business Fights Poverty NYC Online 2020, Business Fights Poverty and Mars are convening a webinar and online peer discussion to explore the role of industry-led collaborative initiatives in addressing poverty in supply chains. The webinar will take place on Thursday, 24 September at 8.30 – 9.30am EDT / 1.30 – 2.30pm BST, followed by 30 minutes […]
Strange Bedfellows or Logical Partners? Collaboration Between the Agriculture and Mining Sectors to ‘Build Forward Better’
The COVID-19 pandemic has held a mirror up to us all, exposing inequalities and vulnerabilities throughout society. With this in mind, last week’s panel discussion focused on the critical importance of cross-sector collaboration in order to build forward better towards a greener, more equal, and more resilient future post-COVID-19. Not least, this pandemic is shining […]
Evaluation gaps, challenges and implications: Responsible business initiatives for sustainable supply chains?
Internally, many companies are already innovating on sustainability to a greater or lesser degree. Some make strategic changes with respect to sustainability performance, but the competitive pressures of globalized value chains remain very strong. Hence, becoming more responsible is not a straightforward task for brands and retailers, especially those in mainstream and/or highly competitive markets, […]
The data revolution must accelerate food sustainability
The current pandemic has exposed how vulnerable global supply chains are to disruption. These technologies not only have the potential to push entire food supply chains—all the way from farmer to consumer—toward greater sustainability, they can also help improve resilience to future shocks. Here’s how: At the source: data-based farming If we want to continue […]
The Cost of Cash to Ghana’s Cocoa Sector
Although he was initially skeptical about the new system, Samuel has been won over. He likes the convenience: “Mobile money is more manageable. My children are spread around at different schools. When they call and need money, because I have it on my phone, I can immediately forward it to them.” He also likes the […]
Fairtrade and the COVID-19 response – lessons for business and the food system
The rapid spread of COVID-19 and the resulting global restrictions, challenged everyone involved in the production of food all over the world. Fairtrade is no exception, working as we do with over 1.6 million farmers and workers supplying the UK’s supermarkets. Produce from Africa, Asia, and South America makes up 10 to 15 per cent […]
How to Safeguard the Livelihoods of Women Farmers and Entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 Pandemic
In just a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed our world, creating an array of new challenges on every continent while reminding us of persistent inequalities. In many places, the pandemic threatens to reverse recent gains made to advance women’s economic empowerment. To understand why, meet Olivia Massarula. Olivia owns a small grocery shop […]
Three ways sustainable supply chains can help build better business in a COVID-19 world
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world in profound and unexpected ways. More than six million people have fallen ill from the virus and nearly four hundred thousand have died from it. The livelihoods of millions of farmers and workers have suffered, normal business has been disrupted, and the impacts continue to rise as the virus shifts to new regions. The jury is still out on how severe and lasting the economic damage will be, or whether the pandemic will spur urgently needed action on climate change, rising inequality and sustainable development. One thing we […]
What smallholder cotton farmers need to build financial and agricultural resilience
During my journey of working with smallholder farmers I have observed that farmers in South Asia face many challenges related to climate change, increased cost of production, lack of awareness of sustainable agriculture practices, and marketing of crops. The COVID-19 pandemic has added new challenges to farmers’ lives. As an organisation, we have kept in […]
Which supermarkets are doing the most to protect the rights of food workers?
As the Coronavirus pandemic drives home the importance of the frontline workers producing and supplying our food, Oxfam’s Behind the Barcodes campaign to improve the conditions of people in supermarket supply chains is more relevant than ever. And yet, the 2020 Supermarket Scorecard highlights that no supermarket is doing enough to combat human suffering in […]
Fairtrade Calls for Full Sector Response to Shore up Cocoa Farmer’s Livelihoods Through the Crisis
I am really pleased to announce that, this week, we’ve launched our Cocoa Sustainable Livelihoods Landscape Study. Co-authored by Naomi Somerville-Large and Antonio Capillo at the Fairtrade Foundation, this study is published as part of our partnership with Cocoa Life – Mondelēz International’s global cocoa sustainability programme. This is a groundbreaking piece of research which […]
Rebuild Better: How to Support Farmers and Workers Through the COVID-19 Crisis and Beyond
It’s hard to predict what this crisis may have done to speed up the consolidation of China’s influence in the international development sector (and beyond), what kind of USA administration we’ll be left with at the end of it all, and what the future of multi-lateral intervention on the wicked problems of global poverty and […]
Closing the Living Income Gap for Farmers – From Theory to Practice
Our vision for living income is both radical and simple: all cocoa farmers should be able to earn an income that provides them with a decent standard of living, sufficient to cover the cost of sustainable production as well as everyday expenses like a nutritious diet, children’s education and healthcare. With some complex mathematics it’s […]
What’s the Impact of Sustainable Farming on Smallholder Suppliers in Ethiopia?
In Ethiopia, the agriculture sector employs more than 70 per cent of the country’s population of 105 million people. The vast majority are smallholder farmers who practice subsistence farming and are relatively disconnected from global markets, and whose livelihoods are vulnerable to a number of risks such as uncontrollable weather conditions, crop disease and pests. […]
Don’t Allow the Coronavirus to Open Up Another Front
WHO has called for a “whole of government, whole of society” approach to combatting the pandemic. Beating COVID-19 requires more than just a health system response; it involves every person, everywhere, and every sector. We are all in this together. Food is our most basic need, and we must defend our food systems and the […]
Fairtrade Together: COVID-19 Briefing
Fairtrade is gathering updates from around the world about how COVID-19 is affecting producer organizations, family farmers, and workers. The flower market in Africa, especially Kenya, is facing unprecedented challenges due to the inability to ship their goods to Europe via commercial airlines, which have stopped their routes. As a result, workers — whose livelihoods […]
Living Income: A Story From Measurement to Impact
Living income and the poverty line There’s an important distinction between living income and poverty lines. While poverty lines are generally concerned with subsistence; decency and resilience underpin the concept of living income. It is about earning enough to live a decent life with a buffer for the unexpected. In the past, for many, the […]
10 Trends That Should Be on Your Board’s Radar
Ten things that caught my attention on the topic of business and social impact: 1.Climate change goes social: Global CEOs rank it as the biggest threat to business. But it has taken Greta Thunberg leading six million people to strike for the climate on one day to generate a feeling of real action. The global […]
Nestlé’s System to Tackle Child Labor Works – Now We’re Scaling It Up
Our system was successful in tackling child labor in just over half of cases in the 2019 reporting period. Strong progress, but now we’re going further. What underlies the successes we’ve had, and how can we improve? Well, the system’s strength stems from the fact that we’ve built it from the ground upwards. Our 1,640 […]
Better Coffee, Better Prices: Improving Farmer Livelihoods through Quality Improvements
The hillsides surrounding Besheshe village in western Ethiopia are covered in coffee gardens and wild coffee trees growing under the forest canopy. Generations of farmers there have depended on this coffee to eke out a living. The varietals near Besheshe are unique, with the potential to produce the kind of flavors that discerning coffee drinkers […]