SCM World's Chief Content Officer, Kevin O'Marah has released his latest article for his weekly column, Beyond Supply Chain.
'Food Supply Chains and the Earth's Balance Sheet', is now available to read.
Everybody has to eat, and pretty much every day. One could argue, therefore, that the food supply chain is more important than any other. And yet some of the people closest to it worry about how it works. Nestlé is the biggest food company in the world with 461 factories worldwide (according to its 2011 annual report) and 171,000 employees. I met with José Lopez, EVP and head of supply chain for Nestlé at its headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, this week to understand the company's "Creating Shared Value" (CSV) initiative. He is worried. And he's doing something about it.
Lopez recorded a YouTube video entitled "Planet Earth's Balance Sheet" in which he describes the real, but crazy sounding, example of growing water-hungry tomatoes in arid southern Spain, harvesting them with migrant labour from equatorial Africa, and ultimately shipping them back to places like Dakar and Abidjan. This kind of thing drives activists crazy. In fact, it drives Lopez even crazier because he understands the full picture so much more deeply. The balance sheet concept, which Lopez articulates in the video, explains why these things happen and thus potentially what can be done about it....read more.
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Stacy Landis
Chief Marketing Officer
SCM World
stacy.landis@scmworld.com
+44 (0) 20 7357 8321