Guillaume DUTEURTRE
CIRAD UMR-Selmet, France
Title: "Are investments of milk corporations in developing countries likely to promote socially sustainable business? Lessons learnt from inclusive business models in West- Africa and South-East Asia"
Biography
Biography: Guillaume DUTEURTRE
Abstract
In West-Africa and in South-East Asia, many international corporations are increasingly investing in dairy processing units. Those businesses support the development of milk powder imports, resulting in direct competition with local milk producers. But they also contribute to the local development of the dairy industry as a whole. In that context, multi-national dairy corporations are increasingly questioned on the impact of their businesses on sustainable development of local dairy industry. Our objective is to discuss whether those new investments support inclusive business likely to promote the participation of smallholder farms in the value chain. In particular, we want to assess factors that might improve the social sustainability of those new inclusive investments. Our proposition is based on 2 complementary field studies. The first one is in Senegal, one of the largest milk importers in West Africa, where we studied the investments of 2 major European milk corporations. The second case-study is located in Indonesia, where another major dairy corporation launched two dairy development projects to support local farm communities. Our results show that there are 2 main inclusive business models in those countries. The first one relies on large-scale industries that develop their sourcing from local milk for specific processing lines (cheese, white cheese, butter..) The second one relies on industries supported by corporate social responsibility projects to support their local sourcing. We conclude on the opportunities offered by the new investments of private corporations to promote smallholder inclusion.