Corporate Social Responsibility in the Agri-Food Sector: Harnessing Innovation for Sustainable Development

By Claudia Genier, Mike Stamp and Marc Pfitzer

Prepared for the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, March, 2008

The world can embrace new roles for business in society but achieving progress still requires hard work and sustained investment from all sectors.  This simple fact certainly holds true when considering the agri-food industry's initiatives to improve conditions around food value chains, even if it is at times ignored.  At one extreme, companies promote ‘responsible' practices that only well resourced value chain partners - from producers to retailers - can implement; at the opposite end, businesses work hand-in-hand with other sectors to achieve change that benefits the poor. Similarly, the public sector seems at times unable or unwilling to invest in food value chains as engines of national growth; while in other situations, it has built on the power of business innovations to reap economic and social benefits beyond the interests of individual companies. This review of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the agri-food sector paints a landscape of opportunity won and lost and encourages the most promising strategies and collaborative approaches.

http://unionstreethosting.com/~glifood/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/fao-csr-agrifoodr.doc