Return on household labour: a means to accelerate the path to a living income for smallholder coffee farming households

In various sectors, including the coffee sector, stakeholders have identified ambitions and targets for smallholder farming households to achieve a living income, which is a milestone on the way to a prosperous income. This has led to the innovation of approaches to reduce or close living income gaps compared to more traditional farmer training and input supply approaches, examples being paying cash transfers to households at scale, paying a Living Income Reference Price or a True Price, and implementing landscape approaches in which also income diversification is addressed. Such new approaches are needed as a large proportion of smallholder coffee farming households, and the workers they employ, continue to be poor, with many earning less than the World Bank extreme poverty line.

This study focuses on household labour allocation and returns to household labour, to offer new perspectives on pathways to reduce and close living income gaps.

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