The benchmark exists. The actual income does not.
Anker benchmarks tell you what a decent living costs in a district. Almost nobody can say what a given household actually earned. Tracebud computes it from what each producer sold and was paid, receipt by receipt, so the income gap is a measurement instead of a survey.
We adapt the live EUDR platform to sustainable income, with 2–3 partners.
You shape what ships — and keep preferential terms for your entire contract duration.
Not ready?
- Anker living income benchmarks
- Living Income Community of Practice
- Fairtrade Living Income Reference Prices
- Living Income Differential
How a payment reaches a household
Money travels down the chain it was earned on.
A funder commits at the top, and the differential lands on households that were actually measured. Both directions use the same route.
Every payment sits on the household record it was meant for. A household can decline to be surveyed, a widening gap is shown as widening, and producers never pay.
How it works
Follow one household through two seasons.
The same household, the same number, from the first survey to the season that shows whether the gap moved. Two products: the Field App the agent and the producer use, and the Dashboard the programme runs on.
Feb 2024 · Field App
The baseline is a conversation, not a study.
Land, yield, the price actually received, costs and other income, asked once a season on the household’s own record. Twenty minutes, not a consultant’s field year.
Mar 2024 · Dashboard
The gap is a number, in their currency.
Household income against the living income benchmark for that region, per adult equivalent. Not a national average, and not an estimate off a price index.
Apr 2024 · Field App
The payment reaches the household, receipted.
A premium or a differential paid against recorded kilos, visible to the producer in their own app. Money that cannot be traced to a household cannot close a gap.
Mar 2025 · Dashboard
A year later, the gap is measured again.
Not a story about intervention. The same household, the same questions, and a change split into the part that came from price, the part from yield and the part from cost.
These are the same households and deliveries already held for EUDR and Fairtrade. The expensive half of an income programme is the register, and it already exists.
Actual income, from records
Build one row per household, from receipts.
Walked area, delivered volume, the price on each receipt, and the premiums that arrived. Multiply and you have crop income for that household without asking anyone to remember last May. Add what they declare from other sources and the gap is arithmetic.
Yield per hectare, price received and gap distribution come out of the same rows, so you can see whether the households furthest from the benchmark are short on land, on yield, or on price. Those are three different interventions, and averages cannot tell them apart.
Reference prices
A reference price is only worth what arrives.
Fairtrade’s Living Income Reference Prices are built from the benchmark, a viable farm size, a target yield and the cost of producing sustainably. Paying one is a commercial decision. Proving the money reached the household is a data problem, and it is the one that keeps failing.
What the price is made of
- Living income benchmarkCost of a decent living for a typical household in that district.Anker study
- Viable crop areaThe land a household can farm with the labour it has.We hold it
- Target yieldWhat that land should produce under good practice.We hold it
- Cost of sustainable productionInputs, labour including a living wage for anyone hired.Modelled
Two of the four inputs are things Tracebud already holds per farm, which is why a generic country price can be sharpened into one that fits your actual supply base.
Pass-through, traced
Follow one premium from the buyer to the household that grew it.
- 01Buyer pays against a shipmentReference price plus differential, on 42 tonnes.$18,900
- 02Union allocates to cooperativesSplit by the volume each one actually delivered.$18,900
- 03Cooperative allocates to membersPer kilo delivered, against the delivery records.$17,640
- 04Household receipt, held on the phoneAbebe T., 1,320 kg, paid 14 March. Signed for.$660
The last line is a receipt the producer holds on their own phone. Without it, a living income programme is a transfer nobody can trace past the cooperative office.
Closing it
Four levers, and the data to tell which one to pull.
A household $1,780 short because it farms half a hectare needs something different from one that is short because its yield collapsed. The ledger separates them, and the next season shows whether the intervention worked.
- PricePay more per kiloThe fastest lever and the only one a buyer controls directly.Measured byThe price on every receipt, against the reference price.
- YieldGet more from the same landRejuvenation, shade management, soil work. Slow, and worth more than a premium over time.Measured byKilos per hectare on walked boundaries, season over season.
- CostSpend less to produce itInput costs, shared processing, better credit terms.Measured byInput purchases and advances recorded against the household.
- Other incomeAdd income beyond the cropIntercropping, livestock, off-farm work. Often the difference for the smallest farms.Measured byDeclared by the household, kept separate from crop income.
What you can say afterwards
Report a number that is hard to argue with.
Every line below is a count of households with records behind them, which is the difference between a sustainability report and a claim that survives a journalist reading it.
- 41%of households above the benchmarkCounted from receipts and declared income, not modelled from a sample.
- $1,780median gap for those below itWith the distribution behind it, so you can see the tail rather than the average.
- 93%of premium traced to a household receiptEvery allocation followed from the buyer’s payment to a signed receipt on a phone.
- 2seasons of comparable measurementSame households, same boundaries, so a change in income is a change and not a new method.
Tracebud publishes no benchmark and certifies no income. Benchmarks come from the Anker Research Institute and the studies commissioned around the Living Income Community of Practice; reference prices from Fairtrade International or your own calculation. We hold the household records that make the comparison possible, and the receipts that show what was paid.
If you already collected data
Bring what you already have.
Member lists and the records you already keep import in bulk — income programmes start from your existing book, and records are matched rather than duplicated.
XLSX · 390 KB · one upload
926members imported
- Price records attached — deliveries and payments tie to each member
- Income baseline ready — the gap is measured from your existing book
- 0 duplicates — existing records matched, not doubled
CSV, XLSX or paste a list — templates for every format. Errors show before anything is saved.
Questions we get.
Which benchmark do you use?+
Whichever applies to your origin. Most of our users work from Anker Research Institute benchmarks or the studies commissioned around the Living Income Community of Practice, and Fairtrade’s Living Income Reference Prices where they exist for the crop. We hold the actual-income side and compare against the benchmark you choose.
Is receipt-based income really more accurate than a survey?+
For crop income, yes: it is a record made at the moment of sale rather than a recollection months later, and it covers every household rather than a sample. Off-farm and non-crop income still has to be asked, and we keep it separate so nobody confuses the two.
What if the cooperative does not want to share prices?+
Then this does not work, and no living income programme built on that supply base will either. In practice cooperatives issue receipts anyway; making them digital gives their members proof of payment, which is usually reason enough.
Can we use this to set our own reference price?+
You can sharpen one. Two of the four inputs to a reference price, viable area and achieved yield, come straight out of the plot and delivery records for your actual supply base rather than a national average.
Not built yet — we build it with 2–3 partners. Preferential terms for your entire contract duration.
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