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'Appalling': Cargill-MacMillan Family Refuses to Meet With Indigenous Advocate
"We knew that the company didn't care, but we expected more from the family," one campaigner said.
Oct 13, 2023
The Cargill-MacMillan family refused to meet with a young Indigenous advocate who had traveled 4,000 miles to hand-deliver a letter calling on them to stop deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado grassland.
Security guards denied entry to 21-year-old Beka Saw Munduruku when she arrived at the driveway of the family's offices in Wayzata, Minnesota, on Thursday. The family had not responded to requests to arrange a meeting ahead of time.
"It is appalling that an emissary who traveled 4,000 miles to deliver an urgent message from her people would be treated with such dismissal and disrespect," Amazon Watch program director Christian Poirier said in a statement.
"The Cargill-MacMillan family has demonstrated that they are unconcerned with the impacts of the company's actions on those victimized by them."
Cargill is the world's largest agribusiness company, according to advocacy group Stand.earth. It is also family-owned, with around 88% of it controlled by approximately 20 people. The Cargill-MacMillans have the highest concentration of billionaires of any family worldwide and are the fourth-richest family in the U.S. While the company has made commitments to end deforestation and human rights abuses in its supply chain, Munduruku said that this hasn't been the experience of her community in the state of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon.
"In every region where Cargill operates, you are destroying the environment and driving out or threatening the communities who live there," Munduruku wrote in the letter she attempted to deliver Thursday.
In her letter, Munduruku called out a specific project of Cargill's: the 1,000-kilometer Ferrogrão railway that would cut a swath through the Amazon to transport soy grown in the Cerrado.
"Last year the forests and savannas of the Cerrado were destroyed at a rate of 8,000 acres a day," Munduruku wrote in her letter. "This is an area of destruction the size of your hometown of Minneapolis every five days."
Munduruku, who is a member of the Munduruku community and lives on Sawré Muybu Indigenous territory, is the first Indigenous Brazilian leader to visit Cargill on its home turf to protest its activities.
By refusing to see her, Stand.earth campaign director Mathew Jacobson said, "the Cargill-MacMillan family has demonstrated that they are unconcerned with the impacts of the company's actions on those victimized by them. And they are dismissive of all attempts to bring it to their attention."
"We knew that the company didn't care, but we expected more from the family," Jacobson continued. "It's high time the family intervenes. We hope that the family will choose to be remembered as one that made the world a better place, not a worse one."
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Cargill, Cease Your Destruction!
In every region where Cargill operates, you are destroying the environment and driving out or threatening the communities who live there.
Oct 12, 2023
The following is a letter to the Cargill-MacMillan family.
My name is Beka. I am 21 years old. I live on Sawré Muybu Indigenous territory in the Amazon forest in the state of Pará, Brazil.
I have come to the United States to ask the Cargill-MacMillan family to stop the destruction of our land.
My people are called the Munduruku, which means “the red ants.” We are 13,000 strong, divided into 160 communities. Life is simple here. We plant, we harvest, we create. We learn by watching our elders. This is how we learn the riches of our culture: our stories, our forests, our animals.
We defend our lands not just for our people but for all of humanity. Your company is harming our collective future.
We have lived here in the heart of the Amazon for over 4,000 years. But now our world hangs by a thread.
Modern science tells us that our forests stabilize the climate and shape the weather. My people have always known this. Science tells us the Amazon is nearing a tipping point, a point of no return. My people already see and suffer from these changes.
But this is not our biggest problem.
There is illegal mining, there is illegal logging. There is the theft of our land and our trees and the damming of rivers. There is the murder of those who defend the land and the brutal intimidation of our leaders. And all of these problems grow because companies like Cargill covet our land and subject it to so-called development.
We have been fighting against Cargill for a long time. It has been devastating.
Your executives tell us that Cargill is a good company, that they have pledged to end the destruction of nature. But this is not our experience.
In every region where Cargill operates, you are destroying the environment and driving out or threatening the communities who live there.
Despite your many commitments to end deforestation, the destruction has increased. Last year alone an area of tropical forest the size of Switzerland was destroyed.
And while your company publicly promises to end these practices, you only expand further into our lands.
The worst example of Cargill’s unceasing expansion is the Ferrogrão. The Ferrogrão is a 1,000-kilometer railway that Cargill wishes to cut through our lands to transport soy. Soy produced from the destruction of the Cerrado—a critical ecosystem south of the Amazon.
Last year the forests and savannas of the Cerrado were destroyed at a rate of 8,000 acres a day. This is an area of destruction the size of your hometown of Minneapolis every five days.
Our relatives in the Cerrado are the target of constant threats from ranchers and land-grabbers. In addition to this, they are suffering from pesticides from the crops and the contamination of their rivers and streams.
The Ferrogrão will impact16 Indigenous territories including those of the Munduruku, Panará, Kayapó, and our relatives of the Xingu Indigenous Land. This railway will destroy 2,000 square kilometers of the Amazon forests we live in, including Munduruku lands that are currently federally protected Indigenous Territory. It will open our lands to more land grabbers and illegal miners and loggers that already invade and burn our lands and murder our people.
The Brazilian Supreme Court has ruled that the Ferrogrão is illegal, but economic interests like Cargill want to change the laws to allow for construction.
Cargill has said that anyone who opposes the Ferrogrão is “irresponsible.” We are fighting for our lives. For our land. For our cultures. For our children and grandchildren. This is not irresponsible.
What is irresponsible is for your company to make promises to end deforestation while continuing to expand into our territories and giving license to others to do the same.
You have the power to stop this.
You must cease the destruction of our forests. You must stop expanding into our territory. You must stop selling commodities from lands stolen from Indigenous peoples. You must stop the murder of the defenders of these lands.
Listen to the guardians of the Amazon and cease your destruction. We defend our lands not just for our people but for all of humanity. Your company is harming our collective future.
We wish to leave our children and grandchildren the life our ancestors gave to us. I am Munduruku, and I will never give up this fight.
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The Cargill-MacMillan Family Is Winning the Lottery but Losing the Planet
It’s time for the family to step up and show leadership: Honor Cargill’s commitment to end human rights abuses and the destruction of nature throughout its entire supply chain.
Aug 16, 2023
Twice in the last few weeks, people in the U.S. could buy a lottery ticket for a jackpot in excess of $1 billion. But the Cargill-MacMillan family doesn’t need to play, their company just earned them a cool $1 billion—on top of the estimated $65 billion they already have—and who knows how big the jackpot will be next year.
In early August, Cargill, the largest privately owned company in America, and the largest agribusiness company in the world, announced record revenues of $177 billion. The Cargill-MacMillan Family, whose ranks include more billionaires than any other family in the world, get to split a chunk of the profits. While most of the world wrestles with pandemic recovery, supply chain disruptions, food price increases, and the increasing impacts of climate change, Cargill has posted 10-digit profits three years in a row.
The Cargill family’s windfall comes at a price—for everyone else. The company’s reputation for the destruction of nature, human rights abuses, and corporate malfeasance is notorious—even as the dearth of environmental and social governance boosts the company’s robust bottom line.
Put simply, it is outrageous that in 2023 one of the richest families in America is still profiting from African children laboring on plantations.
Cargill has committed numerous times to address human rights abuses and the destruction of nature in its supply chain, but it has not followed through on these commitments:
- In 2001, Cargill publicly acknowledged the problem of forced child labor in the cocoa industry and committed to eliminating it and the other “worst forms” of child labor in the production of chocolate;
- In 2014, Cargill acknowledged the agriculture sector’s significant role in the destruction of the world’s forests and promised to end it; and
- In 2022, Cargill expanded that commitment to include the protection of critical natural ecosystems other than forests as well.
Not one of these commitments have been fulfilled. In fact, the problems have gotten worse.
Industrial agriculture is the single largest driver of deforestation and the destruction of nature, and Cargill is the single largest driver of industrial agriculture. In the years since committing to end deforestation by 2020, global tropical deforestation actually increased 40%. An area of 81 million acres of primary tropical forest has been lost, about 1.5 times the size of Cargill’s home state of Minnesota.
In 2018, the Brazilian government levied a $6.5 million fine on Cargill and four other companies for their role in illegal deforestation. The following year, Cargill publicly abandoned its goal and, subsequently, offered a new commitment: to end deforestation by 2030. Another decade of forest destruction is probably longer than the planet can stand, given current rates—even if the company kept its commitment.
According to the peer-reviewed International Journal of Management Studies and Social Science Research, “Cargill continues to adjust its goals for the future based on its inability to obtain its sustainability objectives in a timely manner.”
The stage continues to be set for progress in public commitments addressing some of the most critical issues in our time—or any time.
It has been demonstrated time and again that Latin America contains enough degraded and deforested lands—more than 1.6 billion acres, or about two-thirds of the size of the entire United States including Alaska—to dramatically expand agricultural production without destroying forests or other intact ecosystems.
Cargill’s human rights record is no better. In Côte d’Ivoire, where Cargill is the largest cocoa exporter, the prevalence of child labor in cocoa production has increased 14% since the company made its commitments. Even the prevalence of hazardous child labor has increased 13% in this timeframe.
The U.S. government points out that 1.56 million children work on cacao farms in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. According to International Rights Advocates, overwhelming evidence shows that forced child labor is still being widely used in the cocoa industry, including by Cargill’s suppliers.
Put simply, it is outrageous that in 2023 one of the richest families in America is still profiting from African children laboring on plantations.
For years the Cargill-MacMillan family has delegated the management of the company. They have trusted Cargill’s executives to conduct business ethically, to follow up on its commitments, and to report accurately on this critically important work. That trust was not rewarded. But the reward for not holding the executives accountable is the equivalent of a billion-dollar lottery ticket. Annually.
We are not asking for anything other than what the company has already promised. Cargill is well-situated to be a leader on these issues rather than a laggard. The stage continues to be set for progress in public commitments addressing some of the most critical issues in our time—or any time.
It’s time for the family to step up and show leadership: Honor Cargill’s commitment to end human rights abuses and the destruction of nature throughout its entire supply chain.
It is time for the Cargill-MacMillans to take these matters into their hands and steer the company into the future.
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