Food for thought - Frito Lay’s Chip Tracker for locally grown potatos

Frito Lay’s (owned by PepsiCo) has launched a new campaign to show that 80 local farmers from 27 states grow the potatoes used to make its chips.  Better yet, they are trackable - US only (For Lay’s Chips in Canada, apparently all chips are made with Canadian potatoes - we’re talking 16,000 acres spread over 7 provinces including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and PEI ).  On the tracker website, you can check where the bag of the Lay’s Classic Chips is made by putting in your zip code and the first 3 digits of the product code on the bag.  For a company that purchased 2.8 billion pounds of potatoes from US farmers in 2008, it’s pretty amazing that they take the time to launching such a campaign! The campaign is not without its criticisms - most of the specialty chips are made from only a few plants and are not trackable. I wonder what is the breakdown of the flavour of Lay’s Chips sold in US?  If you can find the stats, please let me know!

Personally I like this type of marketing, it gets people thinking about where do our food come from and what is the environmental impact of taking food far far away from home. But does it make you buy more chips if you know it’s made locally? Anyway, expect to see displays of this campaign in 40,000 stores in the US and several TV ads real soon!