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General Mills CEO Ken Powell on the importance of the business community to pull together to help end hunger globally.
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Well now back to be World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland we're Liz Claman is talking to some of the most influential leaders and global business led.
Sheryl you know this statistic in 2011.
That the world population hit seven billion people.
Yesterday Bill Gates told us that nearly one billion of them will go hungry.
And -- Ken Powell who's the chairman and CEO of General Mills who hopefully has some solutions to this saying it was last year.
That I didn't hear a lot of topic of discussion about food shortages but.
Behind the Euro zone crisis that seems to be one of the number one -- people are talking about here.
It's a very important issue here food insecurity there's actually the number of -- really malnourished people after declining -- towards the end of the last decade -- shot up again now it's nearly a billion people it's a terrible problem.
The World Economic Forum has done a terrific job of shining light.
On that issue people like just share -- ahead of the World Food Program might have been really done a good job -- Pulling industry into this problem and and and looking for for us to bring some some help used just set us what is businesses role.
In this dire situation.
Well -- I think that we have a huge role to play it really great opportunity General Mills it's been a challenge for us really we want to help we know about this we know about processing grains and feeding people.
We don't have a footprint in Africa so how can we actually do something so what we've done over the last couple of years.
Is set up a partnership.
Partners in food solutions what we're doing is we're bringing technology -- -- know how that we have in our R&D centers and we're bringing that to small and medium sized food processors in Africa helping them increase their productivity.
-- -- and improve the quality of their foods and it's really been we piloted it's really been.
Quite successful -- venture.
But -- business and you want to make money and frankly we have high food costs coming now and of course commodities really squeezing.
You guys have felt that certainly numbers recently.
Can you really focus attention on both and continue to grow and be very strong business and and really answer to your shareholders yes.
Absolutely we can mean this is something that they're very few companies in the world really that have this kind of know Alan I.
Absolutely feel we should do this I think it's a question of bringing our know -- doing the right thing question of leadership so we can do this.
I'll also tell you that many of our employees now -- involved in this partners in -- solutions.
They love doing it allowing them to live their values in this way -- small company.
Help improve -- really important food product that maybe is helping malnourished kids and allowing a some of them have told us that it's the most important thing that they do.
So you can do both you couldn't be a viable with his.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Now that is unbelievable to me that an American company is the number one seller.
-- frozen Chinese dumplings in China.
That's incredible it's true.
We were lucky enough ten or fifteen years to go to buy a great little business once -- ferry.
Which is very very authentic high quality Chinese did some started by madame Chong who started out selling these products from my -- on the one -- here are very here in Hong Kong so.
She sold that to us we've been able to expand that stay true to her.
Very high quality and culinary tradition and today where we compete in China in the cities where we are where the number one -- player how do you.
Straddles the issue of very expensive and rise -- commodity costs and still come in with profits.
Well it's it's difficult in this environment that we're we're seeing the highest inflation this year that -- in the we've seen -- -- over thirty years.
And so well.
In this environment -- what we do everything that we possibly can to observe that costs and productivity and eliminating waste it throughout the supply chain this is a year where we've had to take out price increases along with.
Virtually every.
Player in the in the food industry and even with that we'll see a little bit of a margin decline this year.
A margin decline but will you be forced to lay off people.
-- and and we've been hiring consistently really even through you know the hardest part of the recent US -- -- that we're hiring in the US were hiring around the world.
-- even though.
We're seeing this inflation the demand for our products are very very resilient so we've seen -- sales growth really consistent sales and earnings growth throughout this.
You know challenging period of the last five years global will try and have a -- delay to Cheerios taste test of Fox Business thank you thank you that is thank you for.
Thanks so much Ken Powell is the chairman and CEO of General Mills here in Davos Switzerland back to you.
