Living Wage & Income Lab

Explore talks/About the Lab

About us

Whats's the Lab?

The Living Wage & Income Lab brings together Netherlands-based producers, retailers and other stakeholders in the agri-food sector to develop and experiment with innovative ways to realise a living wage & income for the workers in their supply chains. Fairfood and Hivos launched the Lab because low wages are a persistent problem in the agri-food sector and cannot be solved by individual companies alone. The lab is a platform for co-creation and experimentation; and just like in a laboratory, new ideas, tools and prototypes are developed to address this issue. Because a fairer distribution of value in production chains is vital for poverty alleviation.

Get inspired

Learn from the ones doing

The lab is a space for co-creation. Just like in an itinerant laboratory, participants are challenged to work together and test solutions. Each session brings panelists with different backgrounds and from different levels of the supply chain to present projects or discuss challenges. Remember: in a lab session, everyone is a potential partner. 

Geisje-FairFood-LivingWage_IncomeLab29
Bring examples

Share your story

Have something great to tell – or know someone who does? We are always on the lookout for projects that are succeeding in transforming our food system’s first mile. Every lab enthusiast is welcome to write us to suggest speakers or topics: mariana@fairfood.org.

Who took the stage so far

B Lab

With the living wage space evolving, B Lab launched a new application guidance for the over 6000 Certified B Corps around the world. B Corps are businesses meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and sustainability. With the goal of creating “benefit for all” stakeholders, not just shareholders, they recently incorporated living wages into their assessment – and launched the news in the lab!

DISCO

The Dutch public-private partnership works to make the cocoa and chocolate sector sustainable while improving the livelihoods of current and future cocoa farming families. Signatories of the Dutch Initiative on Sustainable Cocoa (DISCO) acknowledge the complexity of the root causes behind the critical social, economic, and environmental sustainability issues in the cocoa sector, and work in partnership to coordinate and initiate efforts and interventions with stakeholders in the cocoa sector outside the Netherlands.

Fairtrade Original

Fairtrade Original is a food brand on a mission: make fair food and drinks available for everyone by developing local supply chains. With over 100 products for sale in supermarkets, they work at the origin of flavour to establish fair and sustainable supply chains. In the lab, they’ve guided participants multiple times: sharing how impact is measured in practice, and, even brought cooperative perspective to the room to show how a Living Income Reference Price is making a change in their vale chains. 

Testimonial