Sustainable Food Laboratory

Increasingly, people are turning to food company value chains to help with the challenges of wealth distribution and better management of basic resources (soil, air, water, biodiversity). The FAO and the Ford Foundation have recently taken assertive steps in this direction.

The FAO just completed a paper comparing, contrasting and exploring the two dominant practices in the realm of corporate social responsibility in the agrifood sector, 1) the roll-out of standards and codes and 2) value chain innovations (CSR in the Agrofood Sector). This paper starts by asserting the key roll that the agrifood sector can and must play.

Few industries have the potential to contribute to development progress on the same scale as the agri-food industry: its value chains involve millions of people from farm input providers to consumers, with many from developing countries. A relatively small number of companies have the ability to impact the lives of millions of people and their use of natural resources.

After thoroughly analyzing 14 of the most common standards (such as Global Gap, Rainforest Alliance, Marine Stewardship Council, Fairtrade), it states that a growing number of leading companies take a broader view of CSR:

Although a one-size-fits-all approach to sustainable development based on the wide application of a particular standard or code may indeed work for companies that have well-resourced suppliers, the more visionary agri-food companies are also starting to realize its limitations. They are adopting more innovative approaches to CSR – often in addition to standards and codes – that take a more holistic view of the agri-food value chain and are more tailored to comprehensively address specific key issues and situations. Most of these initiatives are designed in multi-stakeholder partnerships (including private and public sector players) to meet common objectives, and are rarely imposed by companies as the leading player. Such initiatives usually start as pilot projects, with the aim of scaling up those that are successful.

While acknowledging the benefits of the standards approach, the paper favors the value chain approach. But even the value chain approach is not without challenges, principally scale.

Although these value chain innovations clearly show impact, as long as they remain in pilot phase, they are only “pockets of social progress” that remain minor in comparison to the core business of agri-food industries, or with large-scale initiatives from NGOs and multilateral agencies. To expand their benefit for society, they require scaling up and integration into national agri-food competitiveness policy.

These findings validate our own. The Food Lab’s value chain work, for example the project with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters or the project with Costco are showing clear signs of positive impact in the source communities and our challenge lies with scale.

Here in the U.S. the Ford Foundation recently gave the Food Lab almost $100,000 to help investigate the impact that value chain projects can have in rural communities. This research will help Ford develop their new approach to rural development.

These steps seem part of a larger movement to seek out new roles for business in society - something more along the lines of companies tying their license to operate to responsible stewardship of the global commons.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 11:07 am and is filed under Africa, CSR, Food Lab, Public Policy, Research, Value chains. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.