Sustainability
Sweaty Palms for Nestle
We have all heard about Nestlé, maker of Kit Kat, using palm oil from companies that are destroying Indonesian rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orangutans towards extinction. When Greenpeace released this information the result was a flood of protesters drowning the Nestle Facebook Fan page with negative comments and sending tweets about the company and its practices.
What has helped this story gain traction is the extremely poor response from Nestle itself. When Facebook fans started using altered Nestle logos as their profile pictures, Nestle posted a reply which added fuel to the fire; “we welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic–they will be deleted”.
Still Evolving: Sustainability Marketing in the Energy Sector
The ability to market sustainability brings to mind the color grey more than it does the color green. Grey as in grey space. Fuzzy territory. This thought emerged Wednesday at the Chicago BMA Breakfast Roundtable in which CBD’s Lori Colman lead a panel discussion entitled From Green to “Greenwashing” : How B2B Companies are Succeeding (and Failing) at Marketing Sustainability.”
Lev Goldberg, Marketing Director for Constellation NewEnergy, shed light on the areas of uncertainty. As a retail energy provider selling to businesses in all eligible markets, Lev noted that Constellation NewEnergy encounters a broad range of energy conservation and sustainability visions developed by corporations. “Most companies have set goals for sustainability, but they don’t know how to go about accomplishing them,” said Lev. “They don’t know what they are looking for. And they don’t have a plan.” Lev went on to mention that this lack of clear understanding about solutions keeps corporations from proactively asking about sustainable energy products. Instead, energy sustainability messages are driving most of the market interest. Constellation NewEnergy is helping to overcome this barrier by producing a series of environmentally-focused collateral pieces that provides companies with a list of ways they can help companies meet sustainability needs.
Localvores, family farms and the Top Chef Master
By now, all of us Top Chef addicts (the Bravo TV series) know that Rick Bayless of Topolobamp![158633995_6308f084a5_t[1]](http://www.blog.cbdmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/158633995_6308f084a5_t1.jpg)
o and Frontera Grill fame is the new Top Chef Master. By beating out the worthy competition, Bayless won $100,000 for the Frontera Farmer Foundation, which supports small, sustainable farms in the Midwest. Started by Bayless and his partner and wife Deann, the Foundation provides modest capital grants which can leapfrog a small farm to profitability. Doing so adds to the vitality and viabilty of the local food scene, but there’s a greater good. As he so aptly put on the Foundation’s website: “Great food, like all art, enhances and reflects a community’s vitality, growth and solidarity. Yet history bears witness that great cuisines spring only from healthy local agriculture.” Everyone who champions sustainability owes Rick Bayless a “Bravo” – not just for winning what looked like a pretty intense competition–but for bringing network attention to this worthy cause.
Waves of grain
A month has gone by since the Commodity Classic in Texas. The economy still struggles but agriculture is holding its own.
The refrain I heard over and over again in my talks with growers and exhibitors at the show was “People need to eat.”
These sentiments were echoed in the business section of the March 21st issue of The Economist. The article, titled Green Shoots has a bold call-out, “No matter how bad things get, people still need to eat.” No, I am not comparing my crack reporting with the writers at The Economist but I am calling out the mantra of the Ag world, “People need to eat.” The article is mostly about China and how their consumption rate is growing leaps and bounds.
So, what ARE we eating, anyway? Transparency. It isn’t just about finance.
So Tuesday morning the Chicago Tribune had an article on mercury in high fructose corn syrup. Jeremy Piven grounded for over-abundant consumption of sushi, I get (sort of). But candy and soda with traces of toxic mercury? That’s just plain wrong.
I had the pleasure of speaking last week at the Focus on the Future conference – a gathering of food manufacturing and ingredient professionals. The people that really are in the driver’s seat of what we’re ingesting. Most of the intelligence presented focused on industry trends in supplements and functional foods. But a couple of speakers really made an impact on me…
Vertical Farming – coming to a highrise near you!
Large-scale farming in the middle of Manhattan? A self-sustaining farm on the Vegas strip?
building concept from atelier soa architects
Vertical farming isn’t an entirely new idea, as greenhouse-based agriculture is a global success allowing crop production year-round. What is new, is the plan that the “greenhouse” would expand to the size of an 18-30 story skyscraper that takes up an entire city block. In fact, prototypes have already been designed specifically for New York City and Toronto.
This may take place sooner than you think. Projections show that the world’s population is on track to include an extra 3 billion people by 2050. In order to feed that many mouths, traditional farming methods would need to expand to include a field the size of South America.
One 18-story high-rise farm could feed as many as 50,000 people.
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