As consumers, we often wonder where our food products come from. Many products in fact, are produced by the agro-commodity food giant, Cargill, which is recognized around the world for its products and services. Cargill, the largest privately owned transnational corporation in The United States is known for dominating different divisions of the agribusiness field while seamlessly globalizing into new sectors of business such as trade for their own growth and development on a fast-tracked basis. While there are social and economic costs for countries and citizens due to Cargill’s efforts, the corporation overall has a positive impact on the lives of inhabitants around the globe as it continues to nourish the world.
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According to the company’s 2017 annual report, Cargill is “drawing the food system closer together through insights and partnerships that accelerate impact”. For example, the company controls markets for various products derived from grain exports, oilseed crushing capacity, corn milling, and cattle raising/meat producing. In the 1990s, Cargill decided to become an animal feed manufacturer. They have increased oilseed and grain production for animal feed and have vertically integrated to own all of the processes of the poultry and beef commodity chains from “seed to feed to slaughter” (Kneen 2002: 41), making these sectors of their business more functional and financially efficient. Cargill’s skillful analysis and manipulation of the aforementioned marketplaces has helped drive enormous profitability for the company. Cargill currently employees 143,000 people globally in 67 different countries. Their goal for the future as published on the “News” section of their website is to “expand markets, leverage expertise, mobilize data, scale up sustainability and deliver corporate responsibility …show more content…
For instance, Cargill’s labor standards for its workers in the developing nations of West Africa have been questioned. In recent months, Cargill has taken steps to ensure that it’s harvesting and production of cocoa does not fuel the need for child labor and/or promote deforestation. According to a recent article published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, “As a supply chain leader, Cargill is often scrutinized for its role in either helping or hurting environmental and social concerns associated with the harvesting of cocoa beans” (Painter 2017). These beans are mainly gathered by small, family-operated farms and are eventually purchased by Cargill from cooperatives made up of the supply of many
In order to right the ship that is America’s food industry, we need to recognize the monopolies in the U.S food industry. These massive food conglomerates must be broken up in order to create competition in the market. This will allow the completion to dictate the market. More companies means more competition, and when companies compete, the consumer wins.
Moreover, this system of mass farming leads to single crop farms, which are ecologically unsafe, and the unnatural treatment of animals (Kingsolver 14). These facts are presented to force the reader to consider their own actions when purchasing their own food because of the huge economic impact that their purchases can have. Kingsolver demonstrates this impact by stating that “every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we
The Michoacan state in Mexico has become the world’s largest producer of avocadoes. Although this vegetable is grown on farms throughout this state, it is also tied to an integral network of trade and export to countries across the globe. In this essay, I will argue that like any commodity chain study, the production of the organic Hass avocado has an intricate production process, which for my commodity chain study begins in Uruapan, Mexico a town in the state of Michoacan. This analysis has indicated the crucial underlying links to trade, labour, and demand that the export of this vegetable has created throughout North America and the rest of the world. I hope to establish these links in an attempt to ‘defetishize’ this commodity and bring about the broader and conflicting issues that have resulted between Mexico and nearby countries such as the United States and Canada. I will begin this research by briefly reviewing the actual process and networks that the organic Hass avocado forms from the farms in Uruapan and the path it takes to the grocery stores in Vancouver, Canada. Then look to the implications of NAFTA and other related issues that have affected the trading process of avocadoes and has created severe divisions between the USA and Mexico. I will establish the importance of the organic produce industry and its exports to further developed countries with increasing demand for these organic products. And conclude that the future of the organic produce industry may be struck with ongoing divisions, as it becomes more globalized, between larger organic agricultural firms and smaller organic farmers who rely heavil...
"Sweatshops." Green America's Ending Program: What You Can Do. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013.
In China, Kelsey Timmerman spent time with a couple who worked at the Teva factory, traveled to the countryside to meet the couple’s son, insert name, who hasn’t seen his parents in three years due to his parents working long hours and it being expensive to take a train ride. In the US, the author visited one of a few clothing factories in the US to talk to the workers about his shorts, and the decrease of American garment factories. Timmerman wants the consumer to be more engaged and more thoughtful when mindlessly buying clothes. By researching how well the brands you want to buy from monitor their factories and what their code of ethics details, you can make a sound decision on if this is where you would want to buy your clothes. The author writes about brands that improve employers lives like SoleRebels, a shoe company who employs workers and gives them health insurance, school funds for their children, and six months of maternity leave. Brands like soleRebels that give workers benefits most factory workers have never even heard of help improve the lives of garment workers and future generations. From reading this book, Timmerman wants us to be more educated about the lives of garment workers, bridge the gap between consumers and manufacturers, and be a more engaged and mindful consumer when purchasing our
In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.
Bob Jeffcott supports the effort of workers of the global supply chains in order to win improved wages and good working conditions and a better quality of life of those who work on sweatshops. He mentions and describes in detail how the conditions of the sweatshops are and how the people working in them are forced to long working hours for little money. He makes the question, “we think we can end sweatshops abuses by just changing our individual buying habits?” referring to we can’t end the abuses that those women have by just stopping of buying their products because those women still have to work those long hours because other people are buying their product for less pay or less money. We can’t control and tell what you can buy or what you can’t because that’s up to the person...
More and more farm-to-table restaurants, farmer’s markets, and food co-ops are cropping up to meet the demand among consumers for healthy, local foods, as more chefs and consumers recognize the poorer taste and nutritional integrity of ingredients shipped in from far away. Fruits and vegetables that have to be shipped long distances are often picked before they have a chance to fully ripen and absorb nutrients from their surroundings. Because local food doesn’t have to travel long distances, it is grown in order to taste better and be healthier rather than to be resilient to long travel. The farm-to-table movement also helps local economies by supporting small farmers, which is a dying
“Attention Whole Foods Shoppers” is an essay written by Robert Paarlberg for the May/June 2010 edition of Foreign Policy magazine. Foreign Policy was originally founded in 1970 with the intention of providing views on American foreign policy during the Vietnam war and does more or less of the same today. Paarlberg’s purpose in this essay is to convince an educated western audience that the Green Revolution was not a failure and improved life everywhere it took place, organic food having advantages over non-organic food is a myth, and the solution to food disparity is investing into agriculture modernization. With logos as the main mode of appeal, Paarlberg’s organization effectively sets up his points throughout the essay with consistently
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
Cargill is the largest private firm in America that is key in cultivating trade deals all across the world. The company runs about 110 billion dollars in revenue over a year and continue to bring this number up. Cargill uses their reach to make deals happen by contemplating opportunity costs. In 2015 they purchased a Fish food company as they realized that while
Apple’s maintenance of its image in the global marketplace comes with a price on how ethnically Apple conducts business practices while promoting environmentally safe products for the consumer. Apples’ Code of Conduct, voluntarily executed, exemplifies to the global market, investors, regulators, that Apple’s standards and codes of environmental conduct are universal. To maintain Apples’ universal symbolism, systematic inspections into Apples’ supply chain, conducted regularly, are to expose violations of its work ethics not surpassing apples’ comprehensive standards established for its suppliers.
In this particular paper I will be stating what DuPont is, going through a breakdown of my topic which is Together, We Can Feed the World and I will express my personal beliefs and thoughts on this particular mater, the potential that this topic holds for the future, what new strategies could we use to reduce food waste, how can we advance the nutritional content of crops, what are ways we will help farmers increase productivity, and what can we do to decrease the number of food-borne illnesses. DuPont is a science company founded in 1802, DuPont puts science to work by creating sustainable solutions essential to a better, safer, healthier life for people everywhere. Operating in more than 70 countries, DuPont offers a wide range of innovative products and services for markets including agriculture, nutrition,
Skinner, author of “Big Mac and the Tropical Forests,” also exposes Hardin’s all or nothing rhetoric. According to Skinner, “tropical forests in South America are being destroyed in order to raise cattle to produce beef for companies such as McDonald’s and Swift-Armor Meat Company (413).” Skinner’s argument supports Durning’s argument because Skinner states that the amount of beef imported was a “concomitant with this increase in consumption (415).” When North Americans import the beef from Central and South American countries they are making it where “Central Americans cannot afford their own beef” (415). From Joseph K. Skinner’s perspective we are actually the people on the outside of the lifeboat. Skinner states that, “the United States began to import beef, so that by 1981 some 800,000 tons were coming in from abroad, seventeen percent of it from Latin America and three fourths of that from Central America (415).” From the way Skinner looks at things, we are basically the people on the outside of the lifeboat. While Hardin states that the poor have pirate-like tendencies, Skinner believes that the Americans are the actual pirates because we are taking things from others for our own benefit. It is visible that Garrett Hardin is using his rhetoric to make the poor out to be the issue. After reading Joseph K. Skinner’s article and Alan Durning’s argument, one would believe that Garrett Hardin’s perspective is no longer
Farmers are essentially the back-bone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production, (CSS statistics). Without farmers, there would be no food for us to consume. Big business picked up on this right away and began to control the farmers profits and products. When farmers buy their land, they take out a loan in order to pay for their land and farm house and for the livestock, crops, and machinery that are involved in the farming process. Today, the loans are paid off through contracts with big business corporations. Since big business has such a hold over the farmers, they take advantage of this and capitalize on their crops, commodities, and profits. Farmers are life-long slaves to these b...