Morning Briefing

PepsiCo on Wednesday announced a public-private partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP) and USAID to increase chickpea production in Ethiopia in order to secure access to the legume, which "play[s] an increasing role in its food products," the New York Times reports. If the project is successful in working with small farmers to increase chickpea production, the "increased yield would exceed PepsiCo's needs," therefore "some of the additional crops will be used to make a new, ready-to-eat food product that the World Food Programme has used to address famine in Pakistan," according to the newspaper (Strom, 9/20).