Understanding Smallholder Farmer Access to VSS-compliant Markets.

This week an online conference hosted by the (UNCTD) and The United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards (UNFSS) discussed a report that was published, last year, by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) entitled IISD’s SSI Review: Standards and Poverty Reduction. The report examines the potential of voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) operating in the agriculture sector to reduce poverty, and includes a chapter that UNCTAD and IISD wrote jointly on Understanding Smallholder Farmer Access to VSS-compliant Markets.

In addition to the resources linked in the above text there is the Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) Assessment Toolkit which, in the introduction to the kit, is “To guide the identification of the challenges and perceptions behind the adoption of a VSS scheme, and to explore policy options to address them.”