Control Freaks Cargill
EXCERPT:
Cargill has sold its seed interests, outside North America in 1998 to Monsanto, and the North American business in September 2000 to Dow subsidiary Mycogen (although Cargill has kept InterMountain Canola, which has been developing GM varieties, Goertzen Seed Research and its West Canada seed distribution business). Cargill felt it did not have sufficient biotechnology expertise to compete in the seed market. In both deals, it lost money due to legal liabilities arising from misappropriated seed technology.

In June 2000, Cargill announced the sale of all of its coffee business to Ecom Agroindustrial Corp of Switzerland. It alsoplans to sell its rubber businesses. Both of these offer little opportunity either for vertical integration or for profit mark-up.


Undercover investigation 'Amazon' being destroyed by Cargil (soy)
EXCERPT:
Three major companies - ADM, Bunge and Cargill - account for 60 percent of the total financing of soy production in Brazil. By building soy silos and terminals at the rainforest edge and buying soy from illegally cleared and operated farms - including farms with a documented record of slave labor - these companies are both spurring and profiting from the soy plunder of the Amazon.

Cargill is the worst of the worst. It has constructed a massive and illegal port facility in the frontier city of Santarém. Cargill projects that two to three million tons of soy a year will be trucked into its Santarém plant once a highway is completed - a volume of exports that demands a huge increase in soy cultivation in the region. Cargill constructed the $20 million terminal over the objections of local people, without conducting the environmental impact assessments required by Brazilian law.