Insights

The Sustainable Food Lab’s Stephanie Daniels, our expert guest author, explains why companies should think about what Living Income or a Living Wage means for their business accountability and the stability of their supply chains.

A key to scaling the understanding and measure of Living Income in any context is to balance rigor and practicality so that it can be more widely adopted. We are getting closer to that in global, agricultural contexts.

COSA is working closely with Mars and the Farmer Income Lab to develop optimal metrics to help ensure a science-based yet down-to-earth perspective around reasonable income for farmer-suppliers.

Businesses and NGOs have an opportunity to better understand the challenges of farm communities, and reorient global value chains to deliver greater benefits to their producers.

It’s not difficult to add resilience to your sustainability strategy. A recent COSA study shows how a few key resilience metrics can reveal important and actionable insights.

Software and Technology Manager Pavel Muñoz set up a user-friendly, shared data system that matched 3D printer owners with those supplying materials and helped get thousands of needed face masks to local hospitals, at the height of the pandemic in Spain.

Through the collective knowledge of 70 global experts, this textbook from prestigious academic publisher Springer Nature – with COSA President Daniele Giovannucci as one of its editors – presents the emergent and critical value of market-based mechanisms for sustainable practices in value chains.

We may be close to a time where ‘sustainability’ and ‘mainstream are heard in the same breath. Even so, accountability from CEOs and investors can only come through good metrics to get the right kind of insights.

It is heartening to read, in this brief insight, of a few courageous actions that some organziations are taking to improve farmer incomes.

Leading companies are grappling with what their responsibility toward a “Living Income” for farmers they source from might mean, as extreme poverty is increasingly seen as a human rights issue.