Making income resilience a cornerstone of responsible sourcing

Supply chains can only thrive if the next generation chooses to stay in farming. That choice relies on whether farming provides a decent and predictable income: one that justifies the work, the risk, and the commitment it takes to grow our food. Fairfood partners with companies, producers organisations, and governments to turn that principle into practice.

What is income resilience?

Income resilience means farmers can withstand shocks — market fluctuations, climate stress, rising costs — while still earning a decent living and investing in their households, farms, and futures.

It is strengthened when supply chains actors work together to ensure:

Fair prices grounded in real production costs
Evidence-based decisions at all levels of the value chain
Targeted interventions to reduce inefficiencies, guided by farm-level data
Diversified, regenerative farming systems that build climate and income stability

Building tools for everyone

Prices grounded in real production costs

We offer a data-driven methodology to collect and verify the right farm-level data — costs, yields, income, and farmer profiles — and turn it into tailored living-income prices according to different farmer profiles in a given supply chain. This gives cooperatives, producer-country governments, and EU buyers a shared, evidence-based starting point for responsible purchasing.

Understand the methodology Discover the work in coffee

Living Income Action - a Farmer Income Data Toolkit from Fairfood and Akvo

Tools to measure and improve income resilience

Developed with Akvo, our open-source Farmer Income Data Toolki toolkit guides users through every step of applying our living-income pricing methodology: from survey design to analysis and visualisation. It includes templates, dashboards, and real project examples to help anyone measure income gaps, identify where support is needed, design better interventions, and track progress over time. A starting point to change your business model, or write a new project.

Jump to the resources

Making it part of you sustainability strategies

Income resilience does not end with price. Our interventions translate insights into real improvements in farmers’ livelihoods while supporting companies’ climate and due-diligence goals. In Indonesia, for example, we work with pepper farmers to regenerate soils, diversify crops, and transition from monoculture to agroforestry systems — improving yields, stabilising incomes, and enabling traceable, verifiable impact across the supply chain.

Learn about the aGROWforests programme

Agency at the first mile

Fairfood’s approach relies on turning data into a shared, actionable foundation. Producers must be more than data sources: they need the visibility, trust, and decision-making power required to act on the insights their data reveals.

Through sensemaking sessions, farmers review and interpret their own data, gaining the same visibility that buyers, cooperatives, and governments use to make decisions. .

Discover the example of Molinos de Honduras

Andrea Moncada Sustainability & Special Projects, Molinos de Honduras-Volcafe

This is now feeding into the Volcafe Way, our farmer support programme dedicated to improving yield, quality, and resilience. Like many initiatives, it has traditionally been monitored through a productivity lens. Now, we can integrate an income layer into how impact is measured and reach groups that have been historically left out, equipped with clear indicators to track results.

What’s in it for me?
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Back your proposals with data

Secure financial resources through compelling proposals and strategic fundraising. Break from ambitions and ground your story in evidence.

Impact driven project management

Access end-to-end project management and grant management, from design to implementation.

Report confidently

Gain more knowledge about the supply chain, and the needs of your supply chain partners, aligning your business with regulations and international sustainability goals ensuring responsible sourcing through data and impact monitoring.

Prepare for legislation your clients have to meet

As your clients will have to meet more stringent legislation, own these tools to form a baseline for your sustainability efforts, prepare by digitising your business.

Get access to new information

Use the methodology as your project’s baseline to uncover costs and identify gaps in living income prices and efficiency among different farmer groups.

Build capacity

All steps – from data collection and analysis to project management and reporting – are handled with local teams to ensure they own the process and impact is sustained.