Learning Event summary
About the event
There are many ways to move towards a living income through policy levers. One of these is by integrating living income into rural development policy. A prominent example of this is the development of Vietnam’s coffee sector.
Vietnam is the world’s 2nd largest coffee exporter, with smallholders earning relatively high incomes. This is the result of a steady development of the coffee sector over several decades. This case describes how it came about, and yields valuable lessons for living income practitioners in other contexts.
Decades of strong government-led development in combination with a willingness of farmers to employ coffee production as a path to prosperity developed a strong and globally dominant Vietnamese coffee sector. The focus on high-volume Robusta (not Arabica) instead of quality allowed the country to leverages its beneficial natural conditions for Robusta in the Central highlands. Finally, reasonable levels of political stability and government effectiveness contributed to relatively high incomes for coffee farming households.
This case yielded several lessons for policy-oriented living income practitioners, including the need to:
- Accept (living) income goals can be achieved without the concept of a living income and find other ‘hooks’
- Tailor the living income agenda to the long-term domestic objectives of the country at stake
- Leverage long-term, sustained government support for transformative change – in combination with public-private partnerships – at landscape or jurisdictional level
- Avoid ‘living income tunnel vision’: take a multidimensional lens towards income improvements, environmental, and socioeconomic interests
- Do not only advocate for the creation of policies – proper execution is at least as critical.
In this workshop, we will unpack these lessons and see how they can be translated to similar initiatives, as well as share other examples of capacity building in producer countries.
This is the third in a three-part series exploring living income policy case studies. Register for other two sessions on the Living Income Differential (LID) in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana and integrating the living income into the CSDDD.
Publication links:
- Read the Vietnamese coffee sector case study here: Components for creating living income policy initiatives: Coffee sector policy environment
- Read the full report here: Components for creating living income policy initiatives: Insights from 3 policy case studies
Project researchers:
- Joost Backer, Lead Project Researcher
Joost brings over seven years of experience in sustainable agricultural supply chains across 15+ sectors, working with national governments, multinational corporations, NGOs, and foundations. His expertise spans policy design, multi-stakeholder coordination, and systems and trends analysis. Joost is based in Amsterdam and currently works on a guidebook for transition professionals in international trade, sustainability, and development. He has previously worked for NewForesight – the sustainability consultancy for systems change. Feel free to contact him at [email protected]
- Anna Laven
Anna is a social scientist and senior cocoa value chain expert with 20+ years in the sector as a researcher and adviser. She has deep knowledge on major sustainability topics, including living income, gender equality, farming household segmentation, and price mechanisms.
- Christopher Wunderlich
Christopher has over 30 years of experience in international development and sustainable commodity trade, with a particular focus on sustainable agriculture and the coffee sector.
With contributions on the LID case study from:
- Friedel Hütz-Adams
Friedel Hütz-Adams has been a researcher at Suedwind-Institute since 1993. His research interests are in cocoa, coffee, palm oil, automotive and technology value chains. He is a well-respected expert in the sustainable cocoa field, having co-authored several Cocoa Barometers and an active participant in the VOICE network. In this report, he co-authored the LID case study with Anna Laven.
We would also like to thank Abdulahi Aliyu, Global Program Director, cocoa and coffee at Rikolto International for his contribution detailing Rikolto’s experience with policy, facilitation, and system change.
With support from:
