The Global Food Industry and “Creative Capitalism”: The Partners in Food Solutions Sustainable Business Model

• Author: Thomas A. Hemphill
• Published date: 01 December 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12019
• Date: 01 December 2013

The Global Food Industry and

“Creative Capitalism”: The

Partners in Food Solutions

Sustainable Business Model

THOMAS A. HEMPHILL

ABSTRACT

Rising global food prices have driven 44 million addi-

tional people into extreme poverty—and malnutrition—in

developing countries since June 2010. Partners in Food

Solutions (PFS), a nonprofit social enterprise affiliated

with General Mills, is proposed as the conduit for food

industry managers, engineers, and scientists to initially

advise small- and medium-sized African mills and food

processors—and later other developing countries—on

improving supply chain management by addressing

manufacturing problems, developing products, improving

packaging, extending product shelf, and finding new

product markets. In this article, the “creative capitalism”

model of sustainability and social and environmental

responsibility is applied to the food manufacturing

industry’s efforts supporting PFS. Furthermore, the evo-

lution of the sustainable business model developed by

PFS is thoroughly described, explained, and analyzed as

a generic model of social enterprise to be “scaled up” by

Thomas A. Hemphill is an Associate Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Public Policy, School

of Management, University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI. E-mail: thomashe@umflint.edu.

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Business and Society Review 118:4 489–511

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the global food manufacturing industry. A summary of

salient points conclude the article.

INTRODUCTION

The global agricultural crisis of 2011, beginning with United

Nations (U.N.) Food and Agricultural Organization

announcement of record-level global food prices for

January 2011 (based on historical data back to 1990), repre-

sented a “test” for developed countries and developing countries

(Pooley and Revzin 2011). Moreover, in February 2011, the World

Bank Food Price Index reached its peak and remained at about

the same level through June 2011, increasing by 40 percent since

June 2010 (World Bank 2011). Brown (2011) argued that the

reasons for these upward price trends are found on both the

supply and demand sides of the food price equation:

On the demand side, the culprits are population growth,

rising affluence, and the use of grain to fuel cars. On the

supply side; soil erosion, aquifer depletion, the loss of crop-

land to nonfarm uses, the diversion of irrigation waters to

cities, and—due to climate change—crop-withering heat

waves and melting mountain glaciers and ice sheets.

Since June 2010, rising global food prices have driven 44 million

additional people into extreme poverty and malnutrition in devel-

oping countries, yet the inflationary impact of this global food

crisis is most likely to be relatively subdued in developing coun-

tries (Pooley and Revzin 2011). For example, the U.N. estimates

that the poorest countries paid as much as 20 percent more

for food in 2010 than in 2009, but in the U.S., the world’s largest

food exporter, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates retail

food prices rose just 1.5 percent last year and will gain as little as

2 percent in 2011 (Pooley and Revzin 2011). This scenario will

likely continue, as the U. N. World Food Programme warned in

August 2012 that, due to drought conditions in the United States,

Russia, and Eastern Europe, crop predictions forecast higher food

prices and the attendant malnutrition (Höges et al. 2012). The

challenge before the developed economies is how do they assist

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