Jumping from one video to another on youtube last night, I came across this advertisement and I was curious to know your opinion on it. It’s a celebration of Sibusiso, a new product of the DuPont corporation which is probably the biggest American chemical company. Just to have an idea about them we can just say that they invented material such Lycra, Teflon and so on. But now seems that they are getting much more interest in food than in chemistry. Or is it the same thing for them? I think that this video describe clearly the problems related with food, globalization, corporatization, market colonization: it’s an example of Good capitalism. The intention is to fight malnutrition, but the means is to do it through a highly processed product made out soya (one of the less sustainable crop after corn) which has the ambition of being exported everywhere to solve the old problem of world hunger: “We can benefit not only Africa, but South America, Asia.. and the whole world”.. When Jesus has multiplied bread and fishes perhaps he had not yet thought about using Sisubiso®!
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Thanks for posting this video Agnese. It throws up a whole lot of questions . Since you asked for opinions, here are mine.
Food companies have long tailored products for different market needs and consumer groups, but catering for the specific needs of people in developing countries who suffer from or are at risk of malnutrition is increasingly interesting for a number of reasons.
The point is, we need all the info to make a judgment call on DuPont and its soy product. That video, lovely as it is, is as about as transparent as my hand – so I am taking it with a great big handful of salt.
Firstly, responsibility is a buzz word of our times and such products make for great CSR stories.
Secondly, and less cynically, it CAN have a positive impact on people in developing countries that it reaches. Imagine you’re that farmer. Soy and stay healthy or no soy and get sick. What would you choose? And given that we do live in a world where the food industry is globalised and industrial, why they heck should I be able to pop down to my London corner shop and by snack food made with soy just to titillate my taste buds when that poor guy’s health and livelihood depend on it? I would want it too if I were him.
Thirdly, supplying food at the bottom of the pyramid gets DuPont’s brand out there in Malawi. If that farmer should, one day, be in a position to go shopping in a supermarket for prepared, packaged foods and sees some Sisubiso or another DuPont branded product on a shelf, it’s going to end up in his shopping basket. DuPont has a chance to be the good guy today and get the commercial gains tomorrow. Big bucks deferred.
BUT – there had to be a but. Two buts, actually…
But no. 1: From this video I am not sure whether Sisubiso is being supplied as food aid, or as a commercial product. The indication – since there’s a man from the Gift of Givers Foundation handing out supplements from the back of a truck and chucking children under the chin – is that its aid. But the distinction needs to be clearer. One is charity, the other is a business model. DuPont should not fluff the two. If it’s business wrapped up as charity, that would be one big tub of greenwash they are peddling.
But no. 2: In supplying this product DuPont is supplying a fix. It is looking to alleviate consequences of the grotesquely unfair world we live in for the lucky few who can get it. It is NOT providing any structural solutions to the problem of malnutrition in Malawi or anywhere that would open up access to better nutrition for the population as a whole. Structural solutions come through multilevel policy, and DuPont’s lobbying position to US representatives in the major multinational policy arenas like the WTO is unknown. With $32 billion in annual revenue in 2010, it certainly has the cash stacks to turn a few heads should it want to.
If DuPont were handing out Sisubiso with one hand, and taking way the possibility for fair trade and structural solutions to poverty and malnutrition with the other, the CSR story looks a lot less rosy. The ‘if’ at the start of that sentence is a big one. I don’t know whether it is or not, as the video doesn’t say so – but I’d be happy if anyone from DuPont wanted to let us know
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As for DuPont getting more into food – here’s some food business trivia. Its soy activities have been going since 1997, when it acquired a soy company called PTI. It set up its specialist soy division called Solae in 2003 as a joint venture called Solae with Bermudan soy company Bunge. Last year, though, DuPont bought Danish company Danisco for a cool US$6.49 billion. Danisco’s cutting edge biosciences division was the main morsel it wanted to snaffle, but it certainly hasn’t turned its nose up at Danisco’s food ingredients portfolio, including sweeteners, hydrocolloids, and enzymes.
And another interesting footnote on Danisco (a company whose top executives, incidentally, I generally found open to talking quite frankly about sustainability issues with journalists) launched an ‘affordable food’ programme in 2009, supplying manufacturers with ingredients to make safe, packaged foods for poor city-dwellers since lack of infrastructure means food from the countryside may not be fit to eat by the time it reaches consumers. I wrote an article about the launch (http://www.foodnavigator.com/Financial-Industry/Danisco-programme-to-make-food-for-lowest-earners) but it intrigued me so much that I got thinking more and more about food for cities. Is processed food the only way, or can food policy help? 18 months, later along came Purefood
Thanks for adding this Jess. I do agree, it’s tricky to have a clear opinion without knowing all the parts of the story. Initially I found this advertisement a bit suspicious just because of the fact that a big corporation may be interested in offer “aid”. However I still think that even if this soya paste can partly help this people now, it will lead them to be not self-sufficient but dependent from an outside player: but the facts will tell us..
Another important perspective concerning soya is in these years is GM – this soya i probably geneticially modified.
Consequently, the video is part of of PR strategy in order to combat criticism of applying GM for human consumption.
Yes Dort, you’re right. In fact in the video they say that “this soya comes from a top class company like DuPont”. It is definitely GM..
For me the most important question to ask is ‘what does Dupont gain from this?’. As a corporation, it is only accountable to it’s stakeholders and that means their primary goal is to maximize profit. I have to ask ‘how does this profit increase overall profit for the company?’. The only conclusions I can come to are the ones already mentioned: greenwashing, CSR for a good image, finding an easily marketable outlet for the heavily subsidized (GM) soy production in the US, increasing brand awareness…
As Jess pointed out, the video doesn’t put the product in context. If it is given as a food aid supplement then it is likely to be perpetuating many of the ills of inappropriate aid. However when I did a search for it I came up with this text:
“Currently, it’s being used by 230 health facilities in South Africa , Malawi , Lesotho and Botswana . It has been used as a highly effective nutrient supplement for debilitating conditions such as malnutrition, tuberculosis and HIV, Aids”
It sounds to me like a different version of something called PlumpyNut, which is a high nutrient nut paste given to children with severe malnutrition. It is given as aid but is a medical treatment without which the child may die. The NGO I worked with uses PlumpyNut and other ready-to-eat foods in extreme conditions as treatment in medical centres and such products save lives. The NGO doesn’t make any money off using these products (obviously) but the company who makes them does. But this is the same as the NGO buying vehicles from Toyota or printers from Cannon. These items are needed to work and the company supplying them aren’t (necessarily) profiting from human misery.
I still come back to the original question: ‘what does Dupont get out of it?’
Lani, your suggestions are adequate, I think.
There is a discursive foodbattle going on in these years – who has the power to possess the notions of ‘sustainable’, ‘green’ – and related notions like ‘foodsecurity’ and ‘health’ ?
The participants in the battle seem on the one side to be private, conventional companies, on the other side organic organisations / NGO’s – both trying to influence policymaking and the spending of public money . For instance the funding of research.
As access to media – like videos – is crucial in this fight, those having the best connections to media will probably win the battle on discourse. A challenge also for media people ?