Public-Private Partnership Week: Performance with Purpose

This week, as USAID celebrates Public-Private Partnership Week, I am reminded how market-based partnerships to promote food security can play an important role in expanding opportunities for smallholder farmers. Such partnerships can enhance our own business performance and foster long-term growth.

In the private sector, we are constantly seeking ways to create new markets, invest in emerging economies, advance healthy nutrition, ensure environmental sustainability, all while driving the long-term growth and profitability of our companies. Here at PepsiCo, we are proud to have announced a unique, trilateral partnership with USAID and the United Nations World Food Program during the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2011 annual meeting in New York last month. “Enterprise EthioPEA” is a key achievement of the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future initiative, and will help build long-term economic stability for smallholder chickpea farmers in Ethiopia by involving them directly in PepsiCo’s product supply chain.