With American Farmers Struggling, Feds Pay PepsiCo $5 Million to ‘Engage Women Farmers’ Overseas

While agriculture is an important industry in the U.S., providing jobs to millions and food for many, many more millions, should multinational for-profit corporations get federal tax dollars for social welfare experiments?

Article by Adam Andrzejewski from Real Clear Policy.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) thinks so.

It is giving away $5 million between 2020 and 2025 so that PepsiCo can change its business approach to working with female farmers.

That is the New York-based food, snack, and beverage corporation with brand names including Tropicana, Quaker, Lipton, Pepsi, Gatorade, and Doritos, with annual revenues of more than $70 billion.

Ranked by profits, PepsiCo is the 43^rd most profitable large company in the U.S., according to Fortune.

The USAID Global Development Alliance — or GDA — partners with the private sector, in this case, PepsiCo, to find market-based approaches to solve development challenges.

Here, the GDA plans to “develop and demonstrate the business case for private sector investments in women’s economic empowerment, particularly focused on changing PepsiCo’s core business approach to engaging with farming communities,” the grant summary states.

“Starting with agriculture, the partnership intends to realize women’s gains from participation and showcase the benefits for both women and communities, when a company engages more intentionally on gender within their existing agricultural supply chains.”

That is the long way of saying taxpayer dollars are going to a for-profit corporation – and one of the richest in the world.

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