Project

Exploring the individual economic benefits of the Fairtrade Premium

Client

Fairtrade Foundation

Duration

July 2023 - January 2024

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Fairtrade has a deep-rooted commitment to living wages. Fairtrade’s Theory of Change foresees that workers have the power to improve their own livelihoods and negotiate their wages and terms of work.  The Fairtrade Premium is a critical component of Fairtrade’s Living Wage and Living Income strategies.  Strategic use of the Fairtrade Premium by Smallholder Producer Organisations and Hired Labour Organisations can enable farmers and workers in addressing contextual challenges related to their standards of living.

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The Fairtrade Foundation commissioned Impactloop to further explore the individual economic benefits of the Fairtrade Premium (Phase II). This study aims to derive a generalisable statistical model that can be applied to existing Fairtrade data to calculate the individual premium-related costs and benefits at scale and to validate the model through primary data of banana and flower-producing Fairtrade-certified organisations in Kenya, Columbia and the Dominican Republic. The study builds on the initial findings on the benefits of the Fairtrade Premium in the context of living wages (Phase I).

ImpactLoop team members involved are Dr Christine Bosch, Nassibou Bassongui, Esther Wanjiku, Monica Olarte, Maynard Ceballos, Andre Castro, Haruto Honda, and Manuela K. Günther.