
Cargill: The Worst Company in the World - vollmarj
https://stories.mightyearth.org/cargill-worst-company-in-the-world/
======
rossdavidh
So, this may sound awkward but I'm going to say it anyway: this is what
globalization enables. The very fact of sourcing things as elemental as the
food you eat, from the other side of the planet (whichever side has the laxest
environmental, health, and safety rules), makes this easier. It is easier to
live far away from the things your company does, and the people it does them
to, if they're on a different continent than you. Moreover, by its very nature
globalization enables regulatory arbitrage, so you can live in a country with
relatively good EHS rules, and produce in a country with bad or no EHS rules.

There is a tradeoff between producing wealth, and trashing your environment,
and I don't judge too harshly the people who want to worry about carcinogens
later, once they've got enough to eat that they won't starve to death. But
that tradeoff used to happen within each country. When it was poor, the
production was low, and as their ability to wreck their environment scaled up,
so did their wealth to afford not to.

Only globalization allows companies like this to descend with 1st World money
on places with 3rd world EHS rules. Cargill and its ilk exist, because we
changed the rules to make it easier for them to do this.

~~~
blablabla123
>Moreover, by its very nature globalization enables regulatory arbitrage, so
you can live in a country with relatively good EHS rules, and produce in a
country with bad or no EHS rules.

It could be solved by making transitive EHS rules. I.e. rules that require the
source also applying these rules. This is still some kind of rarity but they
do exist. For instance for years it has been very difficult/impossible to
import US meat into the EU because of that. (Mostly because of different
antibiotics usage AFAIK.) To some degree such rules also exist in other
industries. For example it makes little sense to import a cheaply produced car
from a non-EU/non-US vendor into the EU (or probably US) because it won't
match the safety regulations and would at least have to go through an
expensive individual (re-)certification process, and might even need
customizations for that. Of course nobody does this and people buy a cheap
FIAT or VW instead.

Globalization is really nice I think because it connects countries and people
through economy and thus also fostering peace. ;) It could become even much
nicer by adapting regulations in the destination markets. Custom tariffs and
local subsidies are another way to solve this but those are obviously much
less fine-grained (25% on everything :)) and come from a time when there was
no globalization. In fact the high EU subsidies on agricultural products still
seem to be the reason that impede African countries to export agricultural
products into the EU. On the other hand the African market is flooded with
subsidised EU produce, making it hard to sell products for small farmers.

Probably markets could be far less distorted if the regulations in the
industry nations would be modernized... I'm not in favour of any form of turbo
capitalism but free markets cannot really be blamed for this because we don't
have them anyways.

~~~
piva00
Ideal free markets simply cannot exist when the safety of people is our
primary goal. I'm not sure if you meant that with the statement "because we
don't have them anyways" so I'm pointing this out loud because on every
discussion about regulations and free markets this is one argument I still
would haven't heard a good counterpoint to.

------
chipotle_coyote
If you're actually interested in _reading_ this report as opposed to
struggling through the web presentation, this is the link to the PDF:

[http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-
Earth-R...](http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-Report-
Cargill-The-Worst-Company-in-the-World-July-2019.pdf)

This piece did inadvertently introduce me to Shorthand, which tells me that
"the world's most successful digital storytelling teams" are using it to
"create simply beautiful stories using" Shorthand's "beautifully simple" story
editor. I can only wonder how much more successful those teams could be if
they would beautifully, simply stop.

~~~
alanbernstein
I've never heard of shorthand before, but it seems fine to me, what's your
issue with it? It works fine, and performantly, in desktop Firefox with a
moderate amount of adblock/privacy extensions active. It's mostly just text
that you can scroll through like any other article. It just has some semi-
sticky images and a timeline widget which, to me, only add to the
presentation. It's not like they're hijacking the scroll action to ruin normal
browser behavior.

If it sucks on mobile, so what? Everything sucks on mobile.

~~~
umanwizard
It’s simply not true that everything sucks on mobile. A lot of sites are much
more usable than that one.

~~~
alanbernstein
I'll rephrase: 99% of the time, the desktop version of a site is better than
the mobile version in every way. This site is no exception.

I have now had a chance to see it in a mobile browser though, and yeah, it is
pretty bad. Still, the desktop site is much better, as usual.

------
brianpgordon
They'll do exactly as much damage as they can get away with. If there's no
regulation standing in their way, or the potential profits outweigh the
consequences, _of course_ they'll continue their malfeasance. I don't know why
this is surprising to anyone. The nature of any corporation is to act in its
own self-interest. I guess Mighty Earth is doing what they can, but it's like
raking leaves in the forest, in the middle of a raging wildfire. The only way
that anything is going to change is through effective regulation and credible
enforcement. Trying to wheedle and cajole Cargill into growing a conscience is
a manifest exercise in futility.

~~~
goatinaboat
_If there 's no regulation standing in their way, or the potential profits
outweigh the consequences, of course they'll continue their malfeasance_

Well, yes, but that’s really “if voters and customers are happy” isn’t it? No
corporations exist in a vacuum. It’s like Nike making shoes in sweatshops,
people moan but buy them anyway. Voters could sort it easily by imposing
punitive tariffs on any country that doesn’t comply with US labor and
environmental laws.

~~~
dual_basis
The Nike sweatshop situation is actually a counterexample to your point.
People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike
change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change
as well.

~~~
the_pwner224
Doesn't seem like it.

> People complained and, at least according to what I read, not only did Nike
> change but they lobbied for legislation to force their competitors to change
> as well.

They realized their sales would drop unless they started spending more on
manufacturing costs - which would decrease profit. Solution? Make all your
competitors spend more too. That way we all make less profit, instead of me
making less and everyone else taking over the market with their higher
margins.

~~~
dual_basis
I mean, that does seem like the optimal outcome, doesn't it? Not only is Nike
not using sweatshop labor, but all their competitors are also not using
sweatshop labor. Did you want Nike to stop just because they felt bad, but
their competitors could continue to use sweatshop labor? As you point out,
that would mean that they would be pushed out of the market and we'd just have
a new major corporation using sweatshop labor to be mad at.

~~~
the_pwner224
It is a pretty good outcome. Your comment made it seem like Nike pushed other
manufacturers to get better labor practices out of a desire to do good
(perhaps I am reading it wrong), whereas I think what happened was that a
purely-profit-driven corporation acting in its best interest ended up doing
something good.

------
rhacker
Totally distracting aside: I've always felt I wish I could walk around a store
with a special set of glasses on so I could apply my own personal voting
filters - Chili - benefits monsanto $0.05 per can, KRAFT Foods $1 per can

etc...

I mean I have a lot of values - I buy small label organics and that does a
lot, but sometimes I just want to buy cheetos- I think I would think twice if
I knew my enemies were benefitting.

Honestly I thought that was one of the purposes of something like G-Glass.

Anyway - but yeah, these companies exist because even if we know they are bad
- we have no way of knowing what we are buying that is making them stay in
power.

Money is our voting power - and unlike presidential elections, we generally
have no idea what we're voting for.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_Totally distracting aside: I 've always felt I wish I could walk around a
store with a special set of glasses on so I could apply my own personal voting
filters _

Oh it's worse than that. Go to your favorite restaurant (or any restaurant
really) and ask if they use kosher salt. If they answer in the affirmative,
ask which brand they use. Dollars to donuts it's Diamond brand.

Guess who owns Diamond?

~~~
Uhhrrr
Hah - I had to look it up (answer:Cargill). FWIW, it's good salt.

~~~
inferiorhuman
It _is_ good salt, and if memory serves the production method is patented.
Even if the production were easy to reproduce, aside from boutique stuff, I
typically only see Morton's and Diamond in the stores out here. Boycotting
Cargill completely is a monumental task.

~~~
rhacker
You know what is GOOD salt.. Costco himalayan pink salt. HOLY crap you will
never go back after that. Unfortunately they dropped their tellicherry pepper.
I'm still trying to find a replacement for it. But, I'm sure Cargill has its
hands on Costco somehow too.

------
scottlocklin
Brought to you by the Louis Dreyfus company, Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto,
Bunge, Callebaut, Glencore, Armajaro and so on...

There's a great book "Merchants of Grain" written in the 70s about the
secretive foods megabusinesses. It's arguably gotten worse since then. They
make oil companies look like public servants.

~~~
Aloha
Oil Companies are at least marginally regulated.

------
dmix
Did they really make the authors photo take up half the page on mobile, even
while scrolling down? That is a shockingly stupid idea.

~~~
james-skemp
Once you get to the actual story it goes away, at least with Brave on Android.

Very distracting, and I skipped past the foreword because of it.

~~~
etbebl
But there are other images that pop up in that spot as you continue to read
later sections of the article.

------
Camillo
Does anybody else get a Bernie Sanders type of feeling from this? A throwback
to older issues and older battles, not seen since the 90s? It's refreshing to
see that someone still cares about the rainforests, but I don't know if it's
going to stick. The energy of the environmental movement is now elsewhere; at
the cosmic scale, in the fight against climate change; at the scale of
smaller, practical changes, it's in things like banning plastic straws.

------
rmason
If you want to know more about the five grain companies read the book
Merchants of Grain. All five have very sharp elbows and only one (Bunge) is
public so a lot of the wrangling goes on in private. Cargill is the largest of
all of them.

------
exabrial
Just want to point out that I'm a Midwesterner and the line "drank their
polluted water" is neither factual nor representative of me or any of my
family or friends. There are a valid points you point out but please exclude
hyperbole in your arguments.

~~~
threezero
Not sure why it’s hyperbole - they never said all Midwesterners drank it, just
that there were Midwesterners who drank it. And did you only drink water at
home or from a bottle? If not, you can’t be sure you never drank Cargill
polluted waters.

------
readme3
looking at the pictures of the baby orangutans melts my heart. cannot help but
think , we have lost all compassion as humans.

------
seem_2211
What an awful company.

~~~
xvector
And what an awfully designed webpage. I’ll never know why Cargill is bad
simply because of this utterly incompetent web designer who is making images
take up half of the page even when scrolling.

------
thundergolfer
> In contrast to the oil and tobacco industries, for instance, the bad
> practices documented here are not inherent to the products Cargill sells,
> and are, in fact, entirely avoidable.

On the contrary, there are strong philosophical arguments that selling meat
and eggs, as Cargill does, is 'inherently' immoral.

~~~
mruts
Okay... then lay it on us? If there’s a strong moral argument maybe you should
tell us.

~~~
thundergolfer
Here are a couple of links. The basics are that animals, like humans, have
moral status and thus we are not justified in unnecessarily bring harm to them
through practices like egg farming and cattle farming. Cargill's agriculture
practices are a far far far way from the ideal farming scenarios described in
the common "Happy Cows" argument. It's pretty clear that even if their meat
wasn't poisoning people, their production of it would still be immoral.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-
animal/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-animal/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4i0iqx/wh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4i0iqx/what_are_the_best_arguments_in_favor_of_meat/)

------
Gene5ive
Globalization is inevitable. Death by self-induced extinction is not.

------
fallingfrog
Never heard of it. I suppose that's intentional.

------
hcurtiss
Seriously? Worst company in the world? Come on. They’re responding to demand.
If Cargill doesn’t buy the palm oil, another importer/distributor will. Sure,
educate customers regarding the impacts of their purchases, but “worst company
in the world” is just trolling. It’s this kind of partisan over-the-top
hyperbole that turns people off and, IMHO, gets dudes like Trump elected.

~~~
empath75
Voting for a racist that puts babies in concentration camps is a fairly
extreme overreaction to someone criticizing the environmental impact of a
company to say the least.

~~~
kortilla
Babies in concentration camps? I thought it was all brown people in ovens and
all women in kitchens.

~~~
dang
Please don't use HN for partisan flamewar. It's exactly the opposite of what
this site is for.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
vgetr
The basis for this claim seems to hinge on the facts that Cargill is a) big
and b) privately owned, both of which are sins in today's political orthodoxy.

As a Minnesotan, I was wondering how long it would take before someone would
notice them and shift their attention from Koch, but it had to happen at some
point.

~~~
kjjw
No it doesn't. The basis of the claim is a set of clearly communicated
shortcomings.

~~~
vgetr
And it completely ignores what the company has done for Minneapolis and the
surrounding area. But it’s easy to disregard local knowledge when Internet
outrage is the preferred reaction.

~~~
jascii
Then please inform us what the local benefits are that justify a global
history of forced child labor, slavery, dumping toxic waste, poisoning food
products, etc, etc?

~~~
duncan-donuts
As a Minnesotan, probably nothing. Jobs? It’s probably the only argument one
could make, but I’m not going to make it. It wouldn’t make me sad if Cargill
stopped exploiting everyone and everything.

