Unilever’s chief executive has set out a four-point plan to ensure food security and called on industry bosses to put more of a focus on sustainability.
Speaking to a packed hall of guests at the annual City Food Lecture at London’s Guildhall on Tuesday, Paul Polman said he did “not want to be part of a generation who steals resources from the people of the future”.
Polman used the keynote speech to call on businesses to implement major change and said if shareholders were looking for short-term gain, rather than a long-term vision, then Unilever was not the right place for investment.
His four-point plan proposed the widespread adoption of sustainable farming practices; a “step change in investment in agriculture”; the elimination of “market-distorting” subsidies and the freeing of trade via the completion of the Doha Round.
Polman said his business had worked to ensure sustainable tomato growing in California, increasing yields and reducing fertiliser as part of its 10-year plan to source 100 per cent of product sustainably, agreed with the Consumer Goods Forum. Unilever purchases six per cent of the world’s tomatoes.
Polman said: “We have to do things differently if we want a prosperous system.
“Although the challenges are great I do not think there’s need for despair, there are many practical things that government and industry can do.”
Polman was followed at the lecturn by Princess Anne, Master of the Worshipful Company of Butchers.
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