Comments on: Attack? Equivocate? Engage? How Big Food responds to a tough new campaign

By: Laura Gordon

Laura Gordon — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:31:51 +0000

With this in mind, please can someone explain to me again why we’re STILL expected to boycott Nestle? Surely we should be cutting them some slack if they’re improving and shifting to someone else?

By: Nicholas Colloff

Nicholas Colloff — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:39:26 +0000

Like Maya, I am afraid I found it difficult to see the linkage between good practice in these companies and the linkage with smallholder farmers. You could be a company that performs well on issues of transparency, employment rights, women without engaging (or wanting to engage) with smallholder agriculture, most of whom are not in or likely to be in global/regional supply chains (and may not score well with regard to transparency, women or indeed employment rights). It is one thing to argue that smallholder agriculture is an important part of any programme to reduce poverty (and many decent economists of left and right would argue with you), it is quite another to argue that it is a corporate responsibility to incorporate smallholder farmers into supply chains and if they do not they should be campaigned against? Why?

By: Maya Forstater

Maya Forstater — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:07:27 +0000

The overall rating of the 10 companies and the 7 issues feels about right in that Nestle, Unilever, Coca-cola and Pepsico are clearly the companies with the most ambitious approaches to social and environmental issues (as well as being by far the biggest), while the others are in responsive/ compliance mode. Water, transparency, climate and labour standards are fairly mature CSR issues , where land, women in agricultural supply chains and the poverty of the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers are less well charted territory in working out what ‘responsible business practice should mean.

I do wonder whether a ‘rank ‘em and spank ‘em’ approach is going to drive serious change across this wide basket of complex issues, whether brands respond in the ‘right’ way or not.

Consumer concern can sometimes jump-start action, but it is not the only business case for CSR, and not always the most important. And getting companies to be more responsible in the name of brand reputation is not the same thing as driving sustainable economic development. I wonder if there is a danger that these lessons from 20 years of CSR experience get lost because of the communications potency of the ‘big bad corporates vs small farmers’ narrative.

For longstanding CSR issues like labour standards and GHG reporting, once issues get standardized into industry norms, ratings can drive companies to take action to tick the box. But this is not necessarily the same as solving the issue (which often it turns out, for all the advances in measuring, reporting and labelling is not in the immediate power of the company or the consumer).

I read the report to try to understand the theory of change between pushing good practice by these highly visible companies, and enabling smallholder farmers (most of whom are not in global supply chains) to escape from poverty, or addressing the problem of land grabs and I couldn’t quite find it. Without this I fear that putting all the focus on a top-down brand transparency, CSR-by-numbers approach could reproduce more reporting and statementing, but ultimately not get near the problems.

If companies set up systems tracking and reporting the number of workers in the supply chain, numbers of women workers, number of smallholder suppliers etc… as well as putting more effort into stating the bleeding obvious (‘Do they recognize the need for responsible management of pesticide use/effective soil management?’) they could move up the chart with without necessarily making any difference in practice.

Where companies like Nestle and Unilever are doing serious work on integrating small farmers into the supply chain, it is driven more be a need to secure future and growing supply, than because of brand reputation.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:35:58 +0000

Along these lines, has anyone read the CSIS report “Our Shared Opportunity A Vision for Global Prosperity” I quote:
““The days of the pure pursuit of proﬁt are over. Total, meaningful engagement with society is now essential for long-term sustainability of companies,” E. Neville Isdell, former chairman and CEO.
*cough*