The impacts of private standards on smallholder well-being

Private standards and certification schemes have profound impacts on smallholder farmers’ livelihoods and wellbeing. However, the extent to which they do differs according to the interpretation of the notion of wellbeing as well as a variety of causal factors, such as the design of the standards, the broader political economy of food, and the presence of supporting (or not) local institutions. Smallholder wellbeing is best served when standards incorporate in their structures and procedures attention to smallholder needs, wants, and capabilities. These include not only attention to the material elements of wellbeing, such as income and wealth, but also political participation and voice, gender, culture and identity, as well as environmental sustainability. The development of broader global governance frameworks that have the ability to, at least, constrain undesirable effects of private standards and at best to extenuate their positive effects is also necessary. Efforts to understand wellbeing from the perspective of the affected interests themselves is a crucial next step both for the functioning of private standards and for future academic research.