company:cargill

Caught in Russia-Ukraine storm: a cargo ship and tonnes of grain | Reuters
▻https://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKBN1O4128-OCATP

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When the Island Bay cargo ship arrived from Beirut at the Kerch Strait, gateway to the Azov Sea, it sailed into a perfect storm of geopolitics and bad weather.

The following day, Russia opened fire on three Ukrainian naval ships, impounded them and detained their sailors, some of them wounded. It then blocked the strait by putting a tanker underneath a new bridge it has built linking the Russian mainland to the Crimean peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

While the world digested the implications of the Nov. 25 incident, the most explosive clash in recent years, Russia said it had reopened the channel to the Azov Sea, which is shared by Russia and Ukraine.

But Island Bay remained at anchor outside the strait, lashed by gale force winds and sleet, its hull icing over while cargo ships amassed on either side.

On Monday, a week on, the captain reported seeing 20 vessels awaiting clearance to cross. Refinitiv data that day also showed 20 Ukraine-bound vessels held up at the strait since Nov. 25, with two others allowed through.

Meanwhile, Island Bay’s cargo of 5,500 tonnes of wheat, destined for flour mills in Libya, waited in the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk.
[…]
In Berdyansk’s port, where icy winds had recently ripped off the roof of a nearby shed, staff of stevedore company Ascet Shipping were reading the daily reports from the Island Bay with growing concern.

Ascet loads almost a million tonnes of Ukrainian grain a year onto cargo ships in Berdyansk and was waiting to load the Island Bay; its size means each day of waiting time costs around $2,000-$2,500, Ascet’s chief executive, Denis Rusin, said.

This has made Berdyansk an unpopular port in recent months.

“Ship owners do not want to go to Berdyansk,” said Rusin, whose clients include U.S. firm Cargill [CARG.UL], one of the world’s largest dry bulk and tank shipping companies. “Buyers are refusing to bet on passage.”

Un rapport de 2012 de #Oxfam sur les #céréales mais qui peut toujours être utile...

CEREAL SECRETS The world’s largest grain traders and global #agriculture

The world’s largest commodity traders have a significant impact on the modern agri-food system. #Archer_Daniels_Midland (#ADM), #Bunge, #Cargill and #Louis_Dreyfus, are dominant traders of grain globally and central to the food system, but their role is poorly understood.

https://i.imgur.com/agNJeKk.png https://i.imgur.com/0P5Qigh.png https://i.imgur.com/nsLCe7Q.png

Lien vers le rapport :
▻https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/rr-cereal-secrets-grain-traders-agriculture-30082012-en.pdf

#ABCD #sécurité_alimentaire #alimentation #prix

Guatemalan Palm Oil Supplier REPSA Caught up in Corruption and Bribery Scandal
▻https://medium.com/@foe_us/guatemalan-palm-oil-supplier-repsa-caught-up-in-corruption-and-bribery-scand

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Guatemalan palm oil company called Reforestadora de Palmas AC (REPSA) was charged with corruption last week in a high-profile investigation of systemic tax fraud in Guatemala. As of this writing, the REPSA executives named in the case are considered “fugitives from justice” by CICIG, the UN-backed anti-impunity body in charge of the case. REPSA, which supplies palm oil to the global market, is among a group of companies that the investigative website Plaza Publica calls “a cartel of millionaire influence traffickers”.

Among the global companies that are known or believed to have business links to REPSA and its owner, Grupo HAME, are agribusiness traders Cargill and Wilmar — both of which suspended purchasing from REPSA just last month — as well as a number of consumer goods companies that include Nestle, Pepsico, and Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo.

#Guatemala #industrie_palmiste #corruption #multinationales

23 Companies Sign Manifesto to Halt Destruction of Brazilian Cerrado | Sustainable Brands
▻http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/supply_chain/sustainable_brands/23_companies_sign_manifesto_halt_destruction_brazilia

http://www.sustainablebrands.com/sites/default/files/article_images/cerrado635.jpg

Soy and beef production have played significant roles in the exploitation of the Amazonian rainforest, but the rollout of regulations to protect these precious natural resources have had unexpected consequences, driving these activities into regions that have largely been left untouched, such as Brazil’s Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna ecoregion of 2 million square kilometers.

The pressing situation was a major topic of discussion at an event hosted by The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit and Unilever on Wednesday morning in London, during which the Prince of Wales called for greater actions to be undertaken to protect the Cerrado and other threatened areas around the globe. “An increasing concern is the extent to which success in reducing agricultural expansion into forests comes at the expense of the destruction of other wonderful ecosystems such as the Cerrado, the Chaco and the world’s remaining savannahs,” he said. “All of [these landscapes] are so vital for the services they provide and the biodiversity they sustain.”

...

Signatories include Carrefour, Colgate-Palmolive, Co-operative Group Ltd, IKEA Food Services AB, Sainsbury’s, Kellogg Company, Lidl UK GmbH, L’Oréal SA, Mars Inc., McDonald’s Corporation, Marks and Spencer Group Plc, Nestlé S.A., Tesco Stores Plc., Unilever, Waitrose Ltd and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

▻http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CerradoManifesto_September2017.pdf

Support for Cerrado Manifesto Triples, Momentum Builds for Cargill and Bunge to Agree to End Deforestation for Soy, Meat
▻http://www.mightyearth.org/support-cerrado-manifesto-triples-momentum-builds-cargill-bunge-agree-e

61 leading meat, dairy and soy companies and retailers announced today their support for the Cerrado Manifesto, a pledge to eliminate clearance of native vegetation in the Brazilian Cerrado for large-scale agriculture. This number represents a tripling of support for the Manifesto since its release in October 2017. We appreciate the leadership of companies like Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Unilever, and Carrefour on this initiative.

Cargill and Bunge, two of the world’s largest agribusinesses that are operating in the areas of Latin America with the highest levels of deforestation, are facing significantly increased pressure from their customers to expand their own success in eliminating deforestation for soy in the Brazilian Amazon to the Brazilian Cerrado, and other priority landscapes in Latin America.

#Cerrado #Brésil #engagement #agroindustrie #soja #viande

The Global Dangers of Industrial Meat | Civil Eats
▻http://civileats.com/2017/03/29/the-global-dangers-of-industrial-meat

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The world’s largest beef manufacturer is in trouble. Reports have emerged that employees in over a dozen plants knowingly packed rancid meat, covering up the smell with acid, slabs of which were then sold on to schools and Walmart.

All this happened not in the U.S., though, but in Brazil, headquarters to meatpacking giant JBS. Named for its founder, Jose Batista Sobrinho, the company turns over almost as much as the next three largest U.S. beef producers—Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef—combined.

In response, Egypt has already banned Brazilian beef, and U.S. Senator John Tester (D-Montana) recently introduced legislation to prevent Brazilian beef from entering into the country, even as JBS suspended meat production at 33 of its 36 Brazilian meatpacking plants.

But choosing “America First” for your steak misses two far larger points. The Brazilian giant is simply striving to adopt ideas from, and buy out companies in, the U.S. meat industry. Pilgrim’s, Cargill’s pork business and Smithfield’s beef operation have been acquired by what Bloomberg once called the world’s second largest packaged food company (behind Nestlé).

And even if you could stop the import of dodgy sausage, you still couldn’t avoid the bigger planetary impact of the beef industry, because it’s airborne. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), meat and dairy production alone now generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transport combined.

#viande_indus #agro-industrie

Burger King animal feed sourced from deforested lands in Brazil and Bolivia | Environment | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/01/burger-king-animal-feed-sourced-from-deforested-lands-in-brazil-and-bol

The hamburger chain #Burger_King has been buying animal feed produced in soy plantations carved out by the burning of tropical forests in Brazil and Bolivia, according to a new report.

Jaguars, giant anteaters and sloths have all been affected by the disappearance of around 700,000 hectares (1,729,738 acres) of forest land between 2011 and 2015.

The campaign group Mighty Earth says that evidence gathered from aerial drones, satellite imaging, supply-chain mapping and field research shows a systematic pattern of forest-burning.
Beauty and destruction: the Amazon rainforest – in pictures
View gallery

Local farmers carried out the forest-burning to grow soybeans for Burger King’s suppliers Cargill and Bunge, the only two agricultural traders known to be operating in the area.

#viande #soja #déforestation #forêt #Brésil #Bolivie

Monsanto GMO Seeds in Nigeria, Breaking the Agricultural Cycle, Complicity of UN World Food Program | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization
▻http://www.globalresearch.ca/monsanto-gmo-seeds-in-nigeria-breaking-the-agricultural-cycle-complicity-of-un-world-food-program/5571539

Nigeria’s Farmers Alliance of over 14 million farmers have called on all farmers especially in the Northeast to reject the genetically modified organisms (GMO) and Hybrid seeds distributed by the United Nation’s World Food Program (WFP) and the World Bank.

The body in a letter to the UN Security Council (UNSC), called for intervention to stop WFP and World Bank from using their international status to spread GMO seeds for Monsanto and Cargill in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.

Farmers’ Alliance said that ‘Bill Gates has used the UN World Food Program and World Bank to promote and distribute GMO seeds aimed at displacing use of natural seeds in Black Sub-Saharan Africa as the first step of displacing all indigenous farmers, who will be left out with no means of livelihood, while Monsanto (owned by #Bill_Gates) would have a monopoly of the seed market’.

This was in reaction to a news release, by the Executive Director of WFP, Ms. Ertharin Cousin, which said that one million returning Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from the Northeast are to be assisted with improved seeds and agricultural inputs in the process of rebuilding destroyed communities during this year’s cropping season.

However, what was kept silent and unknown to the poor Nigerian farmers is that their natural crops were destroyed by hired mercenaries called Boko Haram by the same billionaire sponsors, so that they would be replaced with GMO and Hybrid seeds from Monsanto and Cargill. This would mean that after this first cropping season with the GMO and Hybrid seeds planted in the entire Northeast food basket of Nigeria, the Food Security of Nigeria would be effectively captured by Monsanto! Farmers cannot replant the patented GMO and Hybrid seeds from Monsanto.

#OGM #Nigeria #contestation #semences #privatisation

Food made from natural gas will soon feed farm animals – and us | New Scientist
▻https://www.newscientist.com/article/2112298-food-made-from-natural-gas-will-soon-feed-farm-animals-and-us

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All of the food you’ve ever eaten was made with sunlight captured by plants just a few months or years before you ate it. But some of the energy on your plate could soon come from sunlight captured by plants millions of years ago, thanks to plans to feed livestock with fossil fuels.

A biotechnology company called Calysta, based in Menlo Park, California, is set to announce the first ever large-scale factory that uses microbes to turn natural gas – methane – into a high-protein food for the animals we eat. The factory, which will be built in the US in collaboration with food-giant Cargill, will produce 200,000 tonnes of feed a year.

#alimentation_cyborg #agriculture_cyborg #élevage #gaz #it_has_begun

That Boom You Hear Is Ukraine’s Agriculture - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-14/that-boom-you-hear-is-ukraine-s-agriculture

Ukraine sold $7.6 billion of bulk farm commodities worldwide in 2015, quintupling its revenue from a decade earlier and topping Russia, its closest rival on world markets. By the mid-2020s, “Ukraine will be No. 3, after the U.S. and Brazil,” in food production worldwide, says Martin Schuldt, the top representative in Ukraine for Cargill, the world’s largest grain trader. The company, headquartered in Minnetonka, Minn., saw its sunflower-seed processing plant in the Donetsk region overrun by separatists in 2014; it still can’t regain access to the facility. Nonetheless, the company is investing $100 million in a new grain terminal in Ukraine. Bunge, the world’s biggest soy processor, opened a port this year at a ceremony with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko—another vote of confidence in the country.

Avec son graphisme qui vaut son pesant de khakhavitch !

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Russia Becomes a Grain Superpower as Wheat Exports Explode
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-06/russia-upends-world-wheat-market-with-record-harvest-exports

“Russia will be among the top exporters for a long time, especially given the potential advances in productivity there,” said Tom Basnett, general manager at Market Check, a Sydney-based commodity consultant. “Other producers need to fight harder to maintain their traditional markets.”

The boom in Russia is attracting some of the world’s biggest trading houses, with Olam International Ltd., Cargill Inc. and Glencore Plc investing into everything from silos to export terminals.

Rich soil, government support and proximity to Black Sea ports for shipping means Russian costs can be as little as half those of major competitors supplying key import markets in the Middle East, according to researchers at Kansas State University.

#Blé #Russie

Colombia: Zidres Law promotes land grabbing, affects communal territories
▻http://www.farmlandgrab.org/25932

On 3 February, President Santos signed the Zones of Rural, Economic and Social Interest Law (Zidres in Spanish) in the central-eastern department of Casanare. He could not have chosen a more defiant location. In this highland region (Altillanura), domestic and foreign companies see the potential for securing long-term investments to accumulate thousands of hectares of land. Indeed, congresspeople, academics and farmers have denounced the shortcuts used by these companies to acquire land, including vacant lands that exceed the limit established by the 1994 Law of Family Agricultural Units (Law 160). This scandal even resulted in the resignation of the Colombian ambassador to the United States, Carlos Urrutia. Urrutia had signed legal documents permitting the creation of fictitious companies that were listed as owners of properties, which in fact all belonged to the same company.

President Santos seemed to be saying that, through this law, those who seek justice in cases of land grabbing would ultimately get their revenge. However, the Zidres Law, which critics call the “Urrutia Law”, actually serves the interest of land grabbers [helping them access lands] in areas where there is little infrastructure, where the land needs a large investment in order to be productive, and where investors must demonstrate that they possess a large amount of capital. Most frightening are the acquisitions already made by companies like Cargill, Riopaila Castilla and Poligrow, in complete disregard for the law.

#Colombie #foncier #terres #agro-industrie

L’agriculture ukrainienne livrée aux multinationales ?
▻http://multinationales.org/L-agriculture-ukrainienne-livree-aux-multinationales

L’agriculture ukrainienne est-elle en train de passer sous la coupe d’entreprises comme #Monsanto et #Cargill ? Derrière les grands titres sur la guerre civile dans l’Est du pays, les multinationales occidentales ont renforcé leur #influence sur le nouveau gouvernement et accru leurs investissements dans le secteur agricole ukrainien. 1,6 million d’hectares de terres seraient ainsi passées sous le contrôle de firmes étrangères au cours des dernières années. #Ritimo publie la traduction française d’une (...)

Actualités

/ #Ukraine, Cargill, Monsanto, #Accaparement_des_terres, #Agriculture_et_alimentation, #Agroalimentaire, #agriculture, #alimentation, #accaparement, influence, #concentration, Ritimo, Oakland (...)

#Oakland_Institute
« ▻http://www.ritimo.org/article5525.html »

The Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture | Inter Press Service
▻http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/01/opinion-the-corporate-takeover-of-ukrainian-agriculture
By Frederic Mousseau

At the same time as the United States, Canada and the European Union announced a set of new sanctions against Russia in mid-December last year, Ukraine received 350 million dollars in U.S. military aid, coming on top of a one billion dollar aid package approved by the U.S. Congress in March 2014.

Cargill is involved in the sale of pesticides, seeds and fertilisers and has recently expanded its agricultural investments to include grain storage, animal nutrition and a stake in UkrLandFarming, the largest agribusiness in the country.

Similarly, Monsanto has been in Ukraine for years but has doubled the size of its team over the last three years. In March 2014, just weeks after Yanukovych was deposed, the company invested 140 million dollars in building a new seed plant in Ukraine.

DuPont has also expanded its investments and announced in June 2013 that it too would be investing in a new seed plant in the country.

Western corporations have not just taken control of certain profitable agribusinesses and agricultural activities, they have now initiated a vertical integration of the agricultural sector and extended their grip on infrastructure and shipping.

For instance, Cargill now owns at least four grain elevators and two sunflower seed processing plants used for the production of sunflower oil. In December 2013, the company bought a “25% +1 share” in a grain terminal at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk with a capacity of 3.5 million tons of grain per year.

All aspects of Ukraine’s agricultural supply chain – from the production of seeds and other agricultural inputs to the actual shipment of commodities out of the country – are thus increasingly controlled by Western firms.

#Ukraine #terres #semences #ogm #agrobusiness

Twenty-first-century land grabs : Accumulation by agricultural dispossession
▻http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22761-twenty-first-century-land-grabs-accumulation-by-agricultural-dis

Land grabs—whether initiated by multinational corporations and private investment firms emanating from the capitalist core, sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, or state entities such as China and India—are now in the news constantly.1 For example, in July 2013 the Colombian ambassador to the United States resigned over his participation in a legally questionable effort to help the U.S. corporation Cargill use shell companies to amass 130,000 acres of land. This land was supposed to be used for agricultural production, but there is also land being grabbed for other purposes—such as mining or to construct roads, buildings, and dams. In human terms, land grabs mean real people and families are dispossessed. When people lose access to their land, they also lose their means to obtain food, their communities, and their cultures.

#terres

Colombian ambassador resigns after land grab scam
▻http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22341

Colombian Ambassador to the United States, Carlos Urrutia, has resigned under a cloud of scandal involving the illegal purchase of protected peasant land holdings by multinational companies facilitated by Urrutia´s law firm, Brigard & Urrutia.

The story was first appeared June when the Wall Street Journal reported the illegal purchases involving US food giant Cargill Inc., Colombian sugar company Riopaila, and Grupo Aval, a financial firm owned by Luis Carlos Sarimiento, a personal friend of President Juan Manuel Santos and owner of El Tiempo, the country´s largest newspaper.

#terres #Colombie #magouille

The G8 and Land Grabs in Africa

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/world-hunger/land-ownership-and-hunger/52346-the-g8-and-land-grabs-in-africa.html?itemid=id#1292

The G8, several African governments and transnational corporations such as Cargill came together in 2012 to form the “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition”. Cooperation framework, an agreement that forms part of the New Alliance, binds the African governments involved to reform land laws to facilitate foreign investment. As part of the agreement, foreign companies promise to invest heavily in agricultural expansion and development. At the beginning of this year, the government of Cote D’ivoire leased the grain trader Louis Dreyfus 100,000-200,000 hectares of land for rice production. These steps are the G8’s response to the global food crisis. However, these dealings force thousands of local communities and farmers off their land; undermine local food markets and lead to the destruction of livelihoods and the deepening of food insecurity. There are no policy obligations in the New Alliance to ensure the protection of peasants’ and farmers’ human rights or land rights. Instead, the group suggests voluntary guidelines for governments to monitor private investment. The UK presidency of the G8 meeting in June 2013 is citing food security as its top priority and will encourage transparency in foreign land deals. However, the guidelines will not be made compulsory and corporations will only be required to reveal basic information surrounding land acquisitions.

#faim #alimentation

Monopoly of grain trade has forced millions into starvation, say charities
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/monopoly-of-grain-trade-has-forced-millions-into-starvation-say-chari

Hundreds of millions of people face starvation because five multinational companies control 90 per cent of the world’s grain trade, leading charities were protesting last night as they launched a campaign to reduce levels of hunger in developing countries.

It says five multinationals – ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Glencore and Louis Dreyfus – control all but ten per cent of the world’s grain supplies.

Goodbye mozzarella : du « fromage » sans lait pour des pizzas moins chères
►http://www.rue89.com/rue89-eco/2012/05/26/goodbye-mozzarella-du-fromage-sans-lait-pour-des-pizzas-moins-cheres-232425

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La bourse ou le goût. Les amateurs de pizzas surgelées ont parfois un choix cornélien à faire : privilégier la saveur de la mozzarella ou payer moins cher et manger du fromage fabriqué sans une goutte de lait.

Depuis 2009, le « lygomme ACH Optimum », composé de trois amidons et de deux gélifiants (le galactomannane et le carraghénane), peuvent remplacer l’intégralité des protéines de lait d’origine animale contenues dans la mozzarella. Cet ingrédient permet ainsi de produire un substitut de fromage... sans lait.

Surnommé « fromage analogue », il est utilisé par l’industrie alimentaire dans les plats cuisinés, notamment dans les garnitures des pizzas surgelées. Le lygomme ACH Optimum – qui n’est pas, contrairement à ce qu’on lit sur le Web, le « fromage analogue » mais l’un des composants pouvant servir à le fabriquer – a été inventé par Cargill, un groupe agroalimentaire américain.