Practical implementation

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

The activities of the Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chain Initiative (SASI) 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. SASI supports these efforts in a variety of ways: alongside networking internationally with relevant stakeholders around living incomes and living wages, SASI 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 SASI. 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 of the project

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International Coffee Organisation (ICO)

SASI 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.

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Alliance on Living Income in Cocoa (ALICO)

We support multi-actor platforms like the Alliance on Living Income in Cocoa (ALICO) to tackle systemic poverty challenges in the cocoa sector through political dialogue and sector cooperation, aiming to secure a living income for farmers. Through these efforts, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) seeks to internationalize the push for a sustainable cocoa sector. Together with partners like the ISCOs, WCF, VOICE, LICoP, BMZ collaborates to drive this systemic change in the cocoa industry and to align on Living Income efforts.

Under the roof of the ALICO the Cocoa Household Income Study (CHIS) method has been developed. CHIS is an open-source, best-practice method for scalable income and intervention data surveys in the cocoa sector. Using the CHIS method GIZ, in close cooperation with PRO PLANTEURS (GISCO) and SWISSCO, will collect current income data in the Bossématié region of Côte d'Ivoire in the third quarter of 2024.

To the CHIS-method

Cooperation on LI/LW with like-minded EU governments

At European level, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium have signed a joint declaration on the promotion of living wages and living incomes. One result of this is the ILO project funded by BMZ and the Dutch Foreign Ministry mentioned below. SASI is working to ensure that other countries join the group of like-minded governments.

International Labour Organization (ILO)

Since 2024 ILO promotes in a BMZ-funded project the setting of adequate wages in agriculture through statutory minimum wages and/or collective bargaining as a means to enable decent living standards for workers and their families. While at the same time ensuring the sustainability of enterprises which create the jobs for these workers. It also undertakes research on the question of living income and explores what the concept of a living income could mean for self-employed workers, like smallholder farmers, who do not earn a wage, but seek to cover their needs by selling their goods and services on the market. The project is supported and accompanied by SASI.