43 SDG 13 Climate Action – Open Farm

Group Reflection

The reflection delves into the innovative practices of Open Farm, a sustainable pet food company and their innovation for social good, regenerative farming. This case study, undertaken by students from the University of Guelph and Dominican University through the Aim2Flourish program, emphasizes the alignment of business actions with United Nations SDGs. Open Farm’s commitment to regenerative farming serves as a prime example of stakeholder alignment, considering the interests of the company, farmers, consumers, and even global sustainability initiatives like the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The company’s focus on regenerative farming aligns with consumer preferences for sustainability, fair producer compensation, low environmental impact, and improved product quality. Drawing a contrast with profit maximization, exemplified by campaigns like Malboro’s controversial marketing tactics, this reflection stresses the importance of profit optimization. Open Farm’s actions prioritize societal benefits alongside financial gains, showcasing a balanced approach that resonates positively with stakeholders and society at large. The group reflection highlights the importance of stakeholder alignment and the necessity for companies aiming to create social good to pursue profit optimization. It underscores the significance of shared values and interests among stakeholders to drive meaningful innovation and positive societal impact. Additionally, individual reflections shed light on the challenges and successes of cross-cultural collaboration. The experience provided insights into communication barriers and technology malfunctions, emphasizing the necessity of optimized task delegation and leveraging diverse skills within a team. In conclusion, this reflection advocates for businesses to prioritize profit optimization while aligning with stakeholder interests to drive social good. It expresses hope for continued innovation by companies like Open Farm and encourages similar initiatives globally. Moreover, this reflection highlights the value of cross-cultural collaborations, showcasing the benefits of diverse skill sets in achieving project goals while navigating challenges in communication and technology.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity that’s been adopted by all United Nation Members (United Nations, n.d.). The agenda consists of 17 sustainable development goals that act as a call to action for all countries and serve to better the planet. Aim2Flourish is a program that seeks to promote and spread news of businesses who act in the best interest of these development goals. With the Aim2Flourish program, we students of the University of Guelph and Dominican University, interviewed Open Farm. A sustainable pet food company based out of Toronto, who’s innovation is focused on promoting regenerative farming with the end goal of converting 1 million acres of farmland to become regenerative.

With this project, our group was able to take away a variety of learnings that we were able to connect with our coursework. One of those learnings is CSR actions and firm actions in general are developed by the shared interest of the stakeholders of each level, organizational, economical and societal (Hoong, 2023). Open Farm’s innovation is a perfect example of this concept. The important stakeholders of Open Farm’s innovation are the company, the farmers and the consumers who purchase products from the farm. From the company’s point of view, their interest was to further develop Open Farm’s brand and act upon its mission of “doing some good for pets and the planet”. Regenerative farming is a perfect fit for their brand both value wise and mission wise. From the farmers’ points of view, regenerative farming practices are more economically viable than current practices. With current farming practices, soil erosion is becoming a growing concern, and current agricultural practices are unsustainably increasing erosion rates (Montgomery, 2007). It’s in the best interest of farmers to employ more sustainable alternatives like regenerative farming in order to maintain their livelihoods. For consumers, it’s also in their best interest to support this innovation. In an article done by researchers on what specific concepts of sustainability that consumers value, they found that fair payment of producers, low energy use and low carbon dioxide emissions during production and shipping and humane animal treatment were some of the most important (Hanss & Böhm, 2011). The benefits of regenerative farming include all of the above and more like improved product quality. While not an influential stakeholder, this innovation also aligns with the interest of governments in the United Nations. SDGs number 12 (Responsible Consumption), 13 (Climate Action) and 15 (Life on Land) all directly align with Open Farm’s innovation. It’s only through the shared interest of all stakeholders can innovation and actions of social good occur.

Another learning that our group gained from this exercise that we could connect with our course work was that companies actions should always act out of profit optimization and not profit maximization. Profit maximization is simply when a company’s actions are solely for the purpose of making as much profit as possible no matter the means, while profit optimization is the act of balancing the profit gain and the social benefit that company actions can have (Hoong, 2023). To compare the two, our group looked at Malboro’s “Don’t be a Maybe” campaign as an example of profit maximization and Open Farm’s innovation as an example of profit optimization. Malboro’s campaign received a lot of public outrage due to its youth-oriented marketing content. Despite facing criticism from multiple sources, Malboro kept denying these claims and refused to apologize even when faced with evidence that tobacco use among teens is rising post campaign. This is an example of profit maximization as Malboro ignores the ethical implications of promoting harmful substances, like tobacco, to younger audiences in favor of making as much money as possible (Jarvis, 2019). We believe that profit maximization should never be the option that companies act in as it usually leads to negative consequences for society. Open Farm’s innovation focusing on profit optimization is much more preferable in our opinion. Open Farm is acting out of profit optimization because they are placing societal benefits on equal levels with profits gained with their actions. If Open Farm wanted to maximize profits, they could source cheaper ingredients from farms that don’t use regenerative practices but instead they recognize the positives that their actions can have even if it leads to less profits.

Through these learnings our group came to the conclusion that businesses who want to do some social good usually have to act out of profit optimization and the interests of shareholders must align in some form. We came to this conclusion after talking with Open Farm’s representative Gwen and reflection on our course materials. For Open Farm, we hope that they continue to innovate and do some good for pets and the planet. In the future, we’d like to see similar work done by companies in other countries and regions.

Individual Reflections

Michael: Besides knowledge based learnings, working in a cross cultural setting also helped me experience the intricacies of working with people around the world. While my group were all from North America and we experienced few cultural differences, we still faced some challenges and shared successes in this experience. When the project began, the first challenge was the communication troubles. My group originally had two students from Kenyatta University but due to communication troubles, unfortunately we weren’t able to work with them. This showed me the troubles of cross cultural communication through the internet. As we were unable to contact them through their email, there was nothing else we could do to reach them and if we were in a real world job, this would be a big issue. Another challenge my group encountered was the issue of technology malfunctions. My group used programs like Google docs and Canva to produce the other components of this project. When we first created a shared Google Docs account, 2 of our members were unable to access it due to their respective accounts malfunctioning. How we had to overcome this issue was by delegating tasks differently based around the issues that occurred. When we created a shared Canva account, there was the issue of incompatible emails being used as we were all from different institutions with their own email base. This showed us that cross cultural work depends on optimized task delegation. This leads to one of our successes that we experienced in this project. We all had proficiencies in different skills. 2 of us handled the story creation and writing while the other 2 created the poster. We delegated tasks this way due to the previously mentioned technical difficulties but also the difference in skills. The more creative people worked on the poster and the people who were more writing proficient composed the story. One of the benefits of cross-cultural work is that everyone has unique skills due to their own education. The members from Dominican University had a previous project where they created the poster needed for this assignment so they were more suited for working on the poster. The members from the University of Guelph had more knowledge and concept based learnings from their courses and that helped us connect our work with course concepts.

Cale: As an individual who has previous experience working in several group settings, going into this experience I had immense confidence that we would reach cohesive success, with very few barriers. With that being said, I failed to consider certain variables such as differing time zones, conflicting schedules and the simple fact of collaborating with differing educational institutions may come with challenges and difficulties I had yet to ever experience before. Our initial burden we were tasked with overcoming was the difficulty we had in connecting with our former group members of Kenyatta University in Kenya. Although a third of our group was entirely unresponsive, the remaining four of us joined as a group excellently and pulled together the loose slack with even more emphasis on communication to account for this difficulty we shared. We realized quickly that each one of us would need to work even harder and this was precisely what we did. Another burden we had to overcome was the compatibility of emails, and determining the best, easiest and most effective way of communicating with each other. Ultimately we determined cell phones would be the best choice due to their feasibility, and quick form communication in the scenario of an urgent conflict. I am pleased to share how enjoyable of an experience this was, and I am immensely proud of the efforts each and every one of my group members have dedicated to this opportunity.

Vianney: As someone who could shy away from group projects, this experience was one that made me believe group projects could bring me a lot to learn from and develop my communication skills. During the beginning, I was worried that there would be barriers throughout the project. Once we began to introduce ourselves, there was no response from the Kenya students. The students from UOFG Canada, and my classroom peer, were the only students responding. We decided to follow through with the project and communicate efficiently so we could all feel accomplished at the end. We also had a couple of issues along the road with the form of communication we would use, and ultimately decided on messaging through our phone numbers. During our meetings, there were also a couple of times we struggled with recording the meeting but always found a solution which reflected our teamwork and strategic skills. I learned a lot about Open Farm as well and about the purpose behind their business. I enjoyed this group project and appreciate my team for all the efforts we made together which lead to our team’s success.