Mr. Ruud Bronkhorst
Methodology of Fair Prices
I am a retired development economist who worked as staff member and as a consultant with several national and international organizations, such as FAO, WFP, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, and several NGOs.
In 2008 I joined InfoBridge Foundation and worked on food security, rural development, living income and Fair Prices.
I wrote several articles and papers on Food aid and on Fair Prices, that can be found at https://www.infobridge.org/index.php/resources/1-fair-prices/9-living-income-fair-price-method?download=43:fair-prices-based-on-human-rights-2023&start=20. In 2020 my book on
Fair Prices was published ‘The Economics of Human Rights: Using the Living Income / Fair Price Approach to Combat Poverty’, followed in 2022 by a book chapter ‘Fair-trade coffee: how fair is fair?' in "Climate-smart production of coffee - Improving social and environmental sustainability".
Mr. Ruud Bronkhorst
Please find attached:
The Form on the experiences;
An article in Sociology and Anthropology "Fair Prices to Achieve a Living Income for Small Farmers and Its Relation to Local Food Purchase Programs";
"Fair Producer Prices", Paper to the 93rd Annual Conference of the Agricultural Economics Society (AES), University of Warwick, April 2019, and
The paper that is about a different way of calculation in the production chain and is taken from my book ‘The Economics of Human Rights: Using the Living Income/Fair Price Approach to Combat Poverty’.
Kind regards,
Ruud Bronkhorst
Title of your submission
Fair Prices
Geographical coverage
Global
Country(ies)/ Region(s) covered by your submission
Contact person
Name: Ruud Bronkhorst
Organization: InfoBridge Foundation www.infobridge.org
Email address: [email protected]
☐ Government
☐ UN organization
☒ Civil Society / NGO
☐ Private Sector
☒ Academia
☐ Donor
☐ Other (specify)
Awareness of the
Right to Food Guidelines and
CFS policy agreements
How did you become aware of the Right to Food Guidelines (e.g., CFS meeting or event, other UN Organizations, internet, colleagues, government, civil society organization)?
FAO, government
Have you taken any actions to make the Right to Food Guidelines known to your colleagues, partners or other stakeholders?
☐ No
☒ Yes
Not exactly the Right to Food Guidelines, but the Human Right to Adequate Food. This basic human right is the basis of my work and publications about ‘fair’ prices.
What would you recommend to Member States, UN Agencies and /or other stakeholders to make the Right to Food Guidelines more widely known?
All Member States, UN Agencies and/or other stakeholders should be reminded of the fact that the Right to Food is a legally binding right, following articles 23 and 25 of the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, adopted by the United Nations, and is guaranteed in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Use of the
Right to Food Guidelines
The Right to Food has been stressed during lectures and trainings.
Have your say where it matters!
(i) Experiences and good practices
(ii) Gaps, constraints and challenges
(iii) Lessons learned and suggested recommendations
- Lessons learned
- In my report of 2006 ‘Effects of structural food aid in the form of local purchase and sales of rice on rural development’ (https://infobridge.org), I mention that farmers in Burkina Faso who sold to WFP, told that they were paid much later, and the food was bought at the current market price, which was insufficient for them. Fortunately WFP has adjusted its policies since then.
Recommendations
(iv) Concrete plans
- In Europe the European Commission has drafted a Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSDD) Directive that establishes a corporate due diligence duty. The core elements of this duty are identifying, bringing to an end, preventing, mitigating and accounting for negative human rights and environmental impacts in the company’s own operations, their subsidiaries and their value chains.
- Application of Living Income Reference Prices:
* Fairtrade Int. https://www.fairtrade.net/issue/living-income-reference-prices
* GIZ (Krain Eberhard, John Osei Gyimah, Ignatius Pumpuni, Nana Yaw Kwapong-Akuffo and Martin Kuntze-Fechner : ‘Analysis and Report of a Baseline Study for a Living Income (and Other Benchmarks) in Cashew- and Cocoa-Growing Regions of Ghana’), GIZ, 2021
* Cocoa Barometer 2022 https://cocoabarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Cocoa-Barometer-2022.pdf
Link(s) to specific references
https://commission.europa.eu/business-economy-euro/doing-business-eu/corporate-sustainability-due-diligence_en
Link(s) to additional information