Fair Producer Prices (2019)

Paper to the 93rd Annual Conference of the Agricultural Economics Society (AES), University of Warwick, April 2019
In order to ensure that peasants as well receive just remuneration for their work as described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a paradigm change in thinking about producer prices is needed: from market prices to ‘fair’ prices.

After an overview of how economists have dealt with the concept fair, this paper continues with a methodology, the ‘Living Income / Fair Price’ approach, that describes how to calculate producer prices that are not only based on production costs, but on the concepts ‘living wages’ and ‘living income’ as well. These prices are called ‘fair prices’. These fair prices can be calculated for each agricultural product separately, based on the assumption of full employment on the specific crop.
Keywords: Producer prices, Human Rights, Economics, Paradigm change, Fair Price, Living Income, Living Wage, Full employment.

The paper can be found here.