The ISEAL report ‘Understanding Certified Small Producers’ Needs: Interviews with certified producers to understand their needs and how sustainability standards can innovate to meet them’ is based on interviews with 63 producers in five countries across six sectors.
The report outlines the key challenges facing producers and suggests opportunities for sustainability standards to innovate to meet these needs. Seven cross-cutting challenges emerged from the research.
Producer challenge 1: Fluctuating and low prices for certified products
Producer challenge 2: Market access
Producer challenge 3: Accessibility and cost of assurance
Producer challenge 4: Rising cost of agricultural inputs
Producer challenge 5: Environmental and social issues like climate change, the natural environment and human safety.
Producer challenge 6: Access to finance
Producer challenge 7: Demand for practical education, data access and information sharing
The report explores these challenges and goes on to lay out opportunities for how sustainability standards can evolve and innovate to tackle these challenges.
To find out more and read the full report, go to www.iseal.org/producers.