Together with international and local partners, IDH is implementing a project to calculate living wages for the banana producing areas in Costa Rica and Belize, and to identify gaps between current and living wages at seven pilot banana farms. The ultimate intent is to understand opportunities, challenges and possible pathways towards the payment of living wages in the banana sector.
Working conditions in the banana supply chain have steadily improved over the past decades, especially with regard to labor practices and environmental protection. Despite the improvements however, it is still common for workers to receive only minimum wages that proves a challenge to increasing their standard of living. In this project, IDH and its partners are conducting living wage benchmark studies to calculate the costs of living in the main banana regions in the two countries, and to engage local and global stakeholders to raise awareness on the wage situation in the banana supply chain.
A new self-assessment tool developed in collaboration with Rainforest Alliance
Rainforest Alliance and IDH developed a self-assessment tool for identifying the living wage gap at farm level. The tool, which takes the form of a matrix, was created considering the specific needs of banana plantations, and developed with the vision of facilitating and stimulating dialogue within and beyond the banana sector on the payment of a living wage. This is a practical tool that allows plantations to effectively assess what they are paying their workers against the applicable living wage figures.