Ensuring an Equitable Supply Chain

This Article At A Glance

Protecting human rights and supporting coffee farmers towards a living income are fundamental to a resilient and ethical supply chain. This week, we’re looking at the importance of human rights and living income and how Sucafina’s IMPACT Beyond program is helping to ensure a more equitable and sustainable supply chain.

• It’s estimated that 50-59% of the 270 million farming households globally earn less than a living income. Living income is defined as the net annual income required for a household to afford a decent standard of living.
• Businesses are required to respect global human rights standards wherever they operate. It’s not enough for companies to simply follow local laws: they must observe all rules about human rights in their supply chains even when the local government doesn’t mandate compliance.
• The Kahawatu Foundation, initiated in 2013 by Sucafina, plays a vital role in supporting coffee communities, upholding human rights and supporting farmers towards a living income.

Recently, we shared an article about 3 of our 5 key pillars of IMPACT, Sucafina’s sustainable supply chain program. Addressing some of the key drivers of climate change like deforestation and carbon emissions is an essential step in building a more sustainable supply chain.  This week, we’re looking at the other 2 focus areas of IMPACT – human rights and living income – and what Sucafina is doing to ensure a more equitable and long-lasting supply chain.

What Are Human Rights?

Human rights are rights inherent to all individuals by virtue of being human. They are not granted by any state. They range from the most fundamental – the right to life and food – to those that make life worth living, such as the right to education, work, health and liberty.

What Is a Living Income?

One human right is the right to a living that covers a person’s basic needs. Living income is defined as the net annual income required for a household to afford a decent standard of living for all of its members. Some of the key elements of a decent standard of living include: nutritious food, clean water, decent housing, education, healthcare, transport, clothing, and other essential needs, including the ability to pay for necessary unexpected costs.

It’s estimated that 50-59% of the 270 million farming households earn less than a living income. When farming families consistently make an income below the living income, the long-term consequences include:

• Underinvestment in their farms
• Low education and opportunity levels for their family members
• Difficulty adapting to climate change

Where Does Sucafina Come In?

 All businesses impact human rights either positively or negatively. Protecting and promoting human rights in the regions where we work is one of the main goals of Sucafina’s sustainability strategy and our IMPACT Program. We are committed to promoting transparency and accountability when it comes to human rights issues and to working with our supply chain partners to take action when appropriate.

Coffee growing communities are diverse in nature: the risk level of different human rights topics can vary significantly among origins (or even regions within an origin). Factors that influence the severity of the risks include laws/regulations, infrastructure and social norms. IMPACT starts with analysis to understand the local context and to assess human rights challenges that coffee farming communities face. Then, we work to mitigate identified and potential risks in our supply chain. Such an analysis allows Sucafina to tailor appropriate mitigating actions with stakeholders in the community.

For example, in East Africa gender equality is a material issue. Through IMPACT, our vision is to advance gender equality and empower women to foster equitable, thriving coffee communities. As we work to embed our work on gender into all our sustainability efforts, we partnered with Equal Origins, an organization that supports the coffee and cocoa industry's engagement and investment in gender equality across the value chain.

Our teams in East Africa took part in a series of workshops with Equal Origins, whose Gender Equity Index (GEI) is helping us to assess how we are performing on gender, identify strengths and gaps. Based on this and our findings, our sustainability and origin teams developed an action plan for each origin to identify capacity and resource needs, prioritize actions, and measure progress. 

Human rights and living income are a key part of the work we do with Kahawatu Foundation.​ Kahawatu Foundation is a leading NGO dedicated to improving the livelihoods of coffee communities in East Africa. Initiated by Sucafina in 2013, Kahawatu (‘people’s coffee’ in Swahili) focuses on helping smallholder coffee farmers to increase productivity and optimize their income while working towards economic, social, and environmental sustainability. ​​

Towards a Living Income

Companies like Sucafina can play a pivotal role in helping farmers to move towards a living income by:

• Building long-term trade relations through partnerships within farming communities.
• Assessing and monitoring farmers’ income and cost of production for coffee.
• Co-developing programs with clients and other partners to increase farmer income through interventions, such as: improving coffee yields and quality, reducing the cost of production, enabling access to the right inputs, and developing ways to diversify farmer incomes.

As part of the IMPACT Program, Sucafina is supporting farmers towards a living income. The first step is assessing the incomes of farmers in our IMPACT supplies chains and comparing these with the relevant Living Income Benchmarks. Monitoring farmer income gives us insights into how we can best support farmers, either by increasing coffee revenue (e.g. increasing yields or quality) or reducing the cost of coffee production (e.g. more effective fertilizer use, providing organic fertilizers).

In East Africa, for instance, we found that only 1-15% of IMPACT farmers currently obtain an income that is equivalent to or above the Living Income Benchmark, depending on the origin, and that coffee tends to be the main source of household income. Farmers in this region also usually attain low yields (1-3 kg cherries/tree/year), due to lack of investment in their coffee plantations. These low yields and low investments become a vicious cycle, leading to low income.. IMPACT interventions in East Africa, therefore, have tended to focus on breaking this so-called poverty cycle, by providing access to quality inputs, providing loans or providing (small) payments to incentivize pruning and rejuvenation. This helps to increase coffee yields and, thereby, farmers’ income. Other programs have focused on diversifying farmer income; for instance, by planting beans as a mixed crop within the coffee plantations.

In short, the living income data collected as part of the IMPACT Program enables Sucafina to pinpoint key target areas to increase farmer incomes and to use this information when co-designing programs with our clients that aim to increase farmer incomes.

Safeguarding human rights and ensuring a living income for farmers in our supply chains is a vital step for ensuring an ethical and sustainable supply chain. IMPACT has been specially designed to work on these vital topics and provide important data and information to clients purchasing IMPACT-verified coffees. IMPACT coffees are available now. Get in touch with your trader to sample and book and learn more about the IMPACT pillars.