Derek spoke about Performance with Purpose, the company’s belief that what’s right for people and our planet leads a more successful future for PepsiCo. He noted that we have clear goals that address public health, ”such as aims to reduce salt, sugar, and saturated fats in products, and, at the same time, increase the proportion of healthier products in our portfolio.”

He stressed that being guided by Performance with Purpose is important because societal needs are “deeply embedded, funded, and executed within the daily operations of [a] company [and are] linked to the way executives are compensated and the way companies report on their progress.” However, trade-offs still exist that challenge our teams to innovate healthy solutions for people and the planet.  For example, manufacturing products in smaller portions requires more packaging, potentially increasing trash that ends up in landfills. And ironically, the company also faces critics from the investment community, who question the “push into healthier foods.”  We are challenged to innovate packaging that is better for the environment and show investors the financial strength of a diverse portfolio.

Derek closed with three ways that he sees foundations and the public sector joining with PepsiCo to reach common goals:

1. Have “more incentives and fewer mandates.” For example, foundations could support policy, analytic, and advocacy work that highlights “the power of incentives to align public and corporate actions toward common goals.”
2. Form “smarter partnerships with measurable public health goals.” Attempting to solve global problems alone is not effective and partnerships make achieving goals easier. As an example, he mentioned the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (a group including food companies, restaurants, and others), urging foundations that fund obesity prevention to consider participating in the effort to reduce child obesity.
3. Use “common advocacy for shared positions.” For example, the point that “prevention works and is economically sensible” can sometimes be drowned out by focus on drugs for treating disease. Advocacy campaigns run by academics and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and funded by foundations and others, have a better chance of having a “sustained public health impact” than those led by corporations or governments.

PepsiCo has a strong history of innovative partnerships to improve nutrition, health and the environment.  Solving current and future challenges requires focusing on how we can work together and form partnerships across sectors, contributing unique expertise to innovative solutions.

Read more detail about the event and let us know what you think.

Chickpeas can grow in water-stressed areas and they fix nitrogen, reducing need for added fertilizers and enhancing the quality of the soil in which they grow. However, we are experimenting with several new irrigation techniques that will help expand the seasons that chickpeas can be grown in Ethiopia as a way to increase yields by planting more times during the year.

Kumnager Ahmed is a field supervisor at Omega Farms. She recently completed her BA at the Adama Science and Technology University in Ethiopia. She oversees the approximately 60 farmers who work at Omega Farms each day. Throughout Ethiopia, approximately three million small-scale farmers without access to many modern production methods account for more than 80 percent of total production of oilseeds and pulses crops.

Chickpeas in a food market in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Chickpeas are a major pulse crop in Ethiopia, and are important for both the domestic and export market.  With an average of 22 percent protein, chickpeas can serve as a more sustainable alternative to meat. They are also rich in fiber, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals such as iron, and low in endocrine-disrupting phytoestrogens.

Here you can see the difference here between a chickpea that come for the local seed, and a larger chickpea that comes from a new seed introduced by the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research. As part of this project, PepsiCo and its partners are working to provide better seeds to local farmers to help them grow larger, denser chickpeas to support an increase in production.

This is a chickpea field in Shoa, about an hour outside Addis Ababa. We are in pilot phase now and are testing a variety of methods – irrigation, fertilizer, seed spacing, seed variety – to see what combination provides best yield for farmers. Later in 2012, another crop will be planted, based on these new learnings.

These chickpeas, in pod and on stem, are being grown on a farm in Shoa, Ethiopia about an hour from the capital city, Addis Ababa.  The chickpea was originally found in what is now Turkey about 7,500 years ago. There are 2 main types of chickpea: Desi, which has small, darker seeds and a rough coat, cultivated mostly in the Indian subcontinent, Ethiopia, Mexico, and Iran; and kabuli, which has lighter colored, larger seeds and a smoother coat, mainly grown in Southern Europe, Northern Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Chile.

PepsiCo is one of 17 companies that are industry partners at the forum and have contributed, along with other stakeholders and governments, to the paper over the last year and a half. The paper addresses the major challenges of global food and agricultural sustainability based on a vision of agriculture as a positive contributor to food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity. The paper also aims to be a roadmap towards a vision of action to implement business-led and market-based solutions that are explicitly linked to national development priorities. Specifically the paper highlights three key realizations that should drive global action:

1. Agriculture provides much more than food
2. The world must produce more with less
3. Agriculture can better fulfill the world’s most basic social needs

As a global food and beverage company we know we have a significant role to play in agriculture and food security and are quite proud of our actions to date. Sustainable agriculture is critical to our business and several things we are currently working on include:

1. Increasing chickpea production in Ethiopia
2. Working with corn and sunflower farmers in Mexico
3. Partnering with the Ministry of Agriculture to promote sustainable farming in China

But we also know that as the world’s population increases toward a projected 9 billion in 2050, people will be demanding more resource intensive produce like meat and dairy from increasingly limited natural resources, there will be higher risk of price volatility and severe malnutrition will impede human and economic development. We believe that harnessing the power of farmers, industry, governments and civil society through public private partnerships is the swiftest and most thorough way to develop market-based approaches that, in conjunction with policy and infrastructure, make an impact on our agricultural future.

We are pleased to be part of such important and dynamic thinking with the final goal of transforming agriculture to serve all the world’s people. What do you think of the Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A roadmap for stakeholders paper, and what solutions might you suggest to the authors?

In the interview, Derek explains Enterprise EthioPEA, “PepsiCo hopes to use chickpeas to address famine and malnourishment in the Horn of Africa, stimulate economic development in Ethiopia, and support PepsiCo’s business strategy for Africa more generally. Today, PepsiCo is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of chickpea-based hummus, a product that is experiencing rapid growth in demand. Chickpeas will play an important role in growing PepsiCo’s nutrition business to $30 billion in revenue by 2020. This is truly a great example of what we at PepsiCo call “Performance with Purpose.” The project will create new markets for products and increase yields for farmers while allowing PepsiCo to create healthier, locally sourced foods and beverages that benefit the whole community while driving long-term growth for the company.”

Please check out the whole interview and let us know what you think.

We were joined by a panel of distinguished speakers, each of whom shared important perspectives on the intersection of agriculture, food and health.

Patrick Kelley, director of the Board on Global Health for the Institute of Medicine, moderated the event. Marshall Bouton, president of the Chicago Council, gave opening remarks.

Rachel Nugent, the report’s author, walked the audience through the recommendations and findings. Of note were her comments on the use of a “value chain” to identify social, health and environmental benefits in the production process.

Gary Toenniessen, managing director for Agriculture at the Rockefeller Foundation, spoke to the audience about the “epidemiological transition” for a developing world farmer and his or her family.

Shenggen Fan, director-general of the International Food Research Policy Institute, observed that while the agriculture community was building health targets into their work, he didn’t yet see a reciprocal interest from the health community in the ties to agriculture.

And PepsiCo’s Derek Yach, senior vice president for GHAP at PepsiCo, discussed the importance of strategic partnerships with other private and public sector partners in order to support the development of agriculture value chains – partnerships like those recently announced in China and Ethiopia that combine social impact with business goals.

With UN and civil society leaders convening to discuss the rise in non-communicable diseases (NCDs), the report and remarks focused on a key area for PepsiCo and our efforts to deliver optimal nutrition with environmentally sustainable agriculture. We look forward to future discussions like those at the UN – and Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting – on the intricate dynamics between the policies driving what we grow and what we eat, and their link to health trends.