Our Goal: Living Incomes

We do more than train farmers. We help them grow their incomes

Woman in Mexico holding a basket of eggs in her chicken house.

Nutritious food. Shelter. Clean water. A decent education. Access to health care. And a safe and secure environment.

All fundamental for a life free from hunger and poverty. Yet millions of people can’t afford them.

Investing in farmers and business owners with the power to change entire communities.

At Heifer International, we invest in farmers and business owners around the world, because we know that having a secure source of income can be truly transformational for families and their communities.

We work with communities in 21 countries around the world as they strengthen local economies and build secure livelihoods that guarantee a living income to local farmers.

Heifer-Living-Income-Map — Heifer International has made living income benchmarks public for 19 of the countries we work in. Click the map to download them.

A living income means thriving, not just surviving.

We define living income as the amount of money each person in a household needs per day to live a dignified life. When we start working with a community, together, we set a living income benchmark using existing data and data we gather from households in our project areas.

Heifer International determines local living income benchmarks during a project’s design stage, taking into account household needs such as a low-cost and nutritious diet, decent housing, other basic needs, and unexpected costs. With support from our in-country teams, project participants build sustainable businesses to close the gap between living incomes and their actual incomes. We convert living incomes benchmarks from local currency to United States Dollars for ease of international understanding.