Fairtrade International has increased the floor wage that flower farms must pay to workers at more than 70 certified organisations across Africa, and at the same time is encouraging actors in the supply chain to pay more competitive prices for flowers.  

The floor wage is the minimum wage that a Fairtrade certified farm is required to pay its workers. It is designed as a safety net to protect workers from wages that fall below internationally recognised extreme poverty levels, especially in countries/sectors where legal minimum wages are absent or very low. The wage is calculated annually and is based on several factors, including the World Bank’s poverty line. 

The World Bank periodically updates the poverty line to reflect changes in economic conditions, such as inflation and shifts in the cost of living. In June 2025, the World Bank raised the global poverty line from $2.15 to $3.00 per person per day representing a 39.5 percent increase. 

And while this increase is just and fair, and is aligned with Fairtrade Standard for Flowers and Plants that requires companies to ensure that the basic wages paid to workers do not fall below the global extreme poverty line as defined by the World Bank, Fairtrade recognises that farms may face challenges in mitigating the financial impact of higher labour costs.

To support farms in this transition, Fairtrade has established a phased implementation approach:

• By 01 August 2026: Farms are expected to implement half of the required increase in floor wages (to $2.58)
• By 01 March 2027: Farms are expected to implement a full increase in floor wages. (to $3.00)

In addition, Fairtrade explicitly encourages and supports progress towards living wages, which are higher than our poverty line-based floor wage and are calculated for specific regions. For this, Fairtrade uses the living wage benchmarks developed by the Anker Research Institute under the Global Living Wage Coalition, which has published living wage reference values for many rural and urban locations. These benchmarks serve as a longer term target and reference point in social dialogue, collective bargaining, and company wage setting, including in higher cost urban or peri urban areas. 

Fairtrade does not differentiate the floor wage between individual regions or towns within the same country. The main reason is because the floor wage is intended as a basic anti poverty safeguard, not a full reflection of all local cost of living variations. 

However, more competitive flower prices are needed because producers are expected to meet higher social and environmental standards and this requires a financial investment. “The fact is that flower prices have hardly increased for producers in recent years and costs in all areas of floriculture continue to rise,” said Monique Peters, Fairtrade International’s Flower Manager, North. 

Peters added that “if we truly want Fairtrade flowers to succeed than we must do justice to workers and also ensure that farms are paid a fair price for their stems.”  If not, it becomes challenging for producers to invest in their farms and respond to the volatile climate conditions that cause disease and pests and impact crop yields. Plus, it also becomes difficult to improve working conditions, she said. 

Fairtrade has witnessed first-hand the pressures that flower producers face each day, such as volatile climate conditions that cause disease and pests and also impact crop yields. And while growers are getting support from Fairtrade, all the actors in the supply chain need to do more to make the flower industry more sustainable.