CauseMarked

For anyone who has watched Food Inc, you’ll understand the complexity of today’s modern food industry in America. Pepsi is attempting to re-engineer unnecessary complexity out of this system by going directly to local farmers around their factories for corn and sunflower crops. Stephanie Strom recently profiled this new program in the New York Times. 

Like any great example of social innovation in action, the program has a number of mutual benefits to both Pepsi as a business and the local farmer. Pepsi is able to save on costs associated with transportation and middlemen since they deal directly with the farmer. Farmers in turn benefit by getting higher prices for their crops and the help of experts Pepsi has provided to the local farming community.  The program is also said to have ancillary benefits such as reduction of farmers turning to growing marijuana illegally since they can now make a living off of food crops.

Pepsi’s work is an example of a relatively new approach by corporations that aim to maintain a business edge by finding innovative solutions to business problems that are mutually beneficial to society. The Pepsi initiative has been so successful that what started as a pilot project has now expanding to around 850 farmers.

It’s great to see Pepsi expanding this program, and is yet another sign that corporations are “starting to realize that the marginal cost of doing a little extra good produces such a great impact — and not only in terms of good will, but also because it’s good for business,” according to Gaurav Gupta of Dalberg Global Development Advisors, in the article.

Like what Pepsi is doing? Get involved with PepsiRefresh, which kicks off another year of grant challenges this April.

Photo credit: Janet Jarman for The New York Times