FILE - Cars sit parked at a Cargill Inc., turkey processing plant on Aug. 4, 2011, in Springdale, Ark. An activist group and researchers tried to increase pressure on agribusiness giant Cargill on Wednesday, June 14, 2023, to do more to fight deforestation and human rights abuse, releasing a report that accuses the company of not following through on commitments to help end such practices.
Besides the news conference, Stand.Earth highlighted the report by buying full page advertisements in The New York Times and Minneapolis Star Tribune newspapers. Later Wednesday, the group planned to deliver documents backing its report to the Wayzata headquarters of the families that own a majority of Cargill and ask that they be given to 20 leading members of the families.According to its 2022 annual report, Cargill recorded $165 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ending May 31, 2022.
The report cited a U.S. Department of Labor-funded study that found the number of children harvesting cocoa in the Ivory Coast and Ghana and the prevalence of hazardous child labor in those countries had both increased.