2 Jul 2019

Fairtrade's response to University of Göttingen study 'Effects of Fairtrade on the livelihoods of poor rural workers'

Fairtrade welcomes research which highlights the challenges faced by farmers and workers in cocoa production and supports us in evaluating our approach. The findings of this study echo previous studies on workers on small-scale farms, and farmer incomes in Cote d’Ivoire specifically (see a Fairtrade study published last year on Ivorian cocoa farmer incomes).

We work in many challenging environments because this is where Fairtrade's work is still most needed – and the cocoa sector is far from being sustainable. Temporary, migrant and seasonal workers are especially difficult to reach, and it's hard to support them with Fairtrade Premium benefits, for example.

Fairtrade promotes fairer trading conditions for small-scale farmers in order to positively impact living conditions in their communities, as well as enabling more socially and environmentally sustainable production practices. The principle of social sustainability includes offering better working conditions to employees of small producer organizations. The Fairtrade Standard for Small-scale Producer Organizations (SPOs) includes strict minimum labour requirements in terms of child labour, forced labour, freedom of association, discrimination and pesticide handling.

More support for workers

We have strengthened the requirements further in our update of the Standard earlier this year, with an additional requirement on clean drinking water and lowering the threshold of the number of workers that a farm has in order for the detailed labour requirements to apply. The changes are a positive step to protect workers on small-scale farms, although we do not pretend to fully resolve the precariousness of informal labour with these changes.

We're encouraged by the study's findings on the difference Fairtrade makes for workers employed at cooperative level. However, Fairtrade acknowledges that more needs to be done to ensure the benefits of Fairtrade reach everyone in smallholder cooperatives, including those working at farm level. For this reason, we have commissioned a contextual analysis to understand existing arrangements between farmers and workers as well as the implications that any intervention may have. The results will inform Fairtrade's approach to tackling the issue, possibly including an additional update of the SPO Standard, and other actions.

Working towards better incomes

Given the diversity and high level of informality of workers' arrangements we want to make sure that any interventions are mindful of the reality in farming communities. Many cocoa farmers still only sell a fraction of their produce on Fairtrade terms and struggle to make a living from cocoa at current price levels. This makes it very challenging to improve wages for hired workers on their farms and highlights again the importance of our work to increase farmers’ Fairtrade sales, and work towards a living income.

As a step closer towards living incomes for cocoa farmers specifically, we are increasing the Fairtrade Minimum Price and Premium for cocoa by 20 percent starting 1 October 2019. Achieving living incomes for everyone in cocoa farming communities is not an issue that Fairtrade alone can solve, and we welcome all the many steps others in the sector are taking in working towards more sustainable livelihoods for cocoa farmers as well as workers.