Members of the MN350 Solutions Committee met with Cargill executives on July 11 to make them aware of changes they could make to benefit the environment.
When the activists arrived at Cargill corporate headquarters in Wayzata, they were not allowed to enter the building but rather were escorted by security to the visitor’s parking lot, where environmental organizations Mighty Earth and Clean Water Action had just arrived.
After about 10 minutes, three Cargill executives arrived and the Solutions Committee members from MN350, as well as the other organizations, were able to explain why they had come.
Kurt Kimber, of MN350, read the following:
MN350, a Minnesota organization dedicated to fighting climate change and social and racial injustice, calls on Cargill to change from their practices that are destroying the biosphere and instead use their massive resources for the healing of the planet and its people.
Being a privately held company, Cargill has the ability to change course overnight and nothing short of this is required to avert the looming climate crisis.
We call on the MacMillan and Cargill family members to awaken and realize their role in responding to the imminent climate catastrophe.
We call on Cargill and its supply chains to end their soy, cocoa and palm oil driven deforestations.
We call on Cargill and its supply chains to stop displacing, forcibly or otherwise, Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and to honor their basic human rights.
We call on Cargill and its supply chains to end the use of child labor, forced or otherwise.
We call on Cargill and its supply chains to end their destructive and unsustainable meat production practices.
We call on Cargill and its supply chains to dramatically reduce their nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer pollution of our water systems.
We call on Cargill do what it says it will do and to end its practices of giving lip service to sustainable practices while continuing or expanding their destructive practices.
According to the email description of the event, the executives listened, “largely in silence.”
Kimber said, “I think it was really good we were able to talk to them face-to-face.”
At the end, Mighty Earth gave Cargill security 1,500 signed petitions and asked for them to be delivered to the Cargill CEO.
