Our Global President, Mars Food, Multisales and Global Customers, Fiona Dawson, wrote a compelling piece for The Telegraph in the U.K., emphasizing obligations businesses have to rise to the challenge of feeding a growing planet with limited resources. Today, rice is a daily staple for 3.5 billion people worldwide. Tomorrow, we need to increase rice production 25% in the next 25 years to feed our growing global population. 

She explained our Sustainable in a Generation Plan, which acknowledges how quick incremental fixes won’t keep pace with population growth. Instead, our goal requires far-reaching systemic change. And our work with rice farmers is producing some encouraging results, including a 32% rise in income for participating farmers, a 17% rise in yield, paired with a 30% reduction in water use in India and Pakistan. 

And there are even more ambitious benchmarks set for the near future: by 2020, Mars plans to source all rice from farmers working towards the Sustainable Rice Platform standard. Today, 87% of Mars’ rice comes from these farmers, up from 10% in 2016. 

Read more about our work and transformation here.