Living Income Community of Practice session for Rethinking Markets Initiative

The concept of living income goes a step beyond traditional notions of poverty alleviation that are concerned with basic subsistence and survival. It puts a strong emphasis on the idea of decency and earning enough income to live comfortably. The Living Income Community of Practice defines it as "The net annual income required for a household in a particular place to afford a decent standard of living for all members of that household. Elements of a decent standard of living include: food, water, housing, education, healthcare, transport, clothing, and other essential needs including provision for unexpected events". Acknowledging the limits of taking a commodity-focus approach to driving sustainability, the concept of living income as a goal to guide livelihood support strategies is gaining strong momentum among private sector actors in the food sector as well as a growing number of governments. ISEAL is a co-founder of the Living Income Community of Practice (LICOP) - an alliance of partners dedicated to the vision of thriving, economically stable, rural communities linked to global supply chains. The goal of this community is to support activities focused on improving smallholder incomes towards living incomes, aiming to enable smallholder farmers to achieve a decent standard of living. 

This joint learning session with the CGIAR Rethinking Markets team was to exchange knowledge about the concept and conversation on living income and its potential application to and inclusion in the research that the Initiative is undertaking. Some of the questions that were explored included:

• How are actors, such as governments and private companies integrating and adopting the concept of living income and how does it link to addressing the root causes of poverty and contributing to smallholder sustainable livelihoods?

• How is living income conceptualised and measured and how can it be brought into the research that the Initiative is undertaking? How can research outputs and learnings from the Initiative be brought back to LICOP to inform living income strategies?

• The LICOP will also share relevant examples on how different actors are putting in practice the living income concept and how living income can be realised through inclusive business models and other innovations in agrifood value chains.