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Cargill: The Worst Company in the World
- dmix 7y agoDid they really make the authors photo take up half the page on mobile, even while scrolling down? That is a shockingly stupid idea.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoAt least Waxman is pretty :)
- james-skemp 7y agoOnce 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 7y agoBut there are other images that pop up in that spot as you continue to read later sections of the article.
- apsdsm 7y agoIt really felt like a mistake. Surely nobody would have designed that on purpose??
- sverige 7y agoIt's bad on desktop too.
- rhacker 7y agoTotally 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.
- zukzuk 7y agoNot exactly a special set of glasses, but probably as close as you're going to get right now: https://www.buycott.com/ https://www.buycott.com/ That said, the idea that you can enact change by making "good consumer choices" is probably one of neo-liberalisms greatest, most insidious triumphs. It subverts democratic ideals to make us feel like we have power, while diverting our energy away from pushing for the kinds of systemic changes necessary for meaningful impact on big problem (e.g. putting the responsibility for reduction of plastic pollution on consumers, rather than on manufacturers via legislation).
- femto 7y agoA wikipedia based on Universal Product Codes has been in the back of my mind for a long time. Scan the UPC and a page pops up. Have the data in the form of an infobox or RDF (dbpedia.org) and the basis is there for an app or glasses that does what you describe. Biggest problem would be how to defend each UPC page from astroturfing by whoever makes money off the product associated with the UPC. --- Edit: It seems like the aforementioned https://www.buycott.com https://www.buycott.com is essentially this? It's always nice to see an idea completed with no work!
- djrobstep 7y agoIf you accept that your only political power is your power as a consumer, they've already won.
- jessaustin 7y agoPatrick Henry didn't accept that, did he?
- ebcode 7y agoActually, he was the first. In his speech at the Second Virginia Convention, he spoke the immortal words: "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me voting dollars or give me death!"
- basementcat 7y ago
- seem_2211 7y agoWhat an awful company.
- xvector 7y agoAnd 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.
- vgetr 7y agoThe 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 7y agoNo it doesn't. The basis of the claim is a set of clearly communicated shortcomings.
- vgetr 7y agoAnd 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.
- munk-a 7y agoNo, it really doesn't, things need to balance out - far too long has America been perfectly fine with terrible things on the other side of the globe fueling domestic profits. Cargill's business practices are supplying economic growth that is dwarfed by the externalities that are being accrued.
- jascii 7y agoThen 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 7y agoAs 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.
- 7y ago
- chipotle_coyote 7y agoIf 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-Report-Cargill-The-Worst-Company-in-the-World-July-2019.pdf http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/Mighty-Earth-R... 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 7y agoI'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 7y agoIt’s simply not true that everything sucks on mobile. A lot of sites are much more usable than that one.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- alanbernstein 7y agoI'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.
- 7y ago
- scottlocklin 7y agoBrought 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.
- fallingfrog 7y agoNever heard of it. I suppose that's intentional.
- dbuder 7y agoThis is a podcast with a former CEO of Cargill: http://www.econtalk.org/greg-page-on-food-agriculture-and-cargill/ http://www.econtalk.org/greg-page-on-food-agriculture-and-ca...
- brianpgordon 7y agoThey'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 7y agoIf 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.
- Vinnl 7y agoBut if the EU would try to do that, the US would likely retaliate with tariffs.
- dual_basis 7y agoThe 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 7y agoDoesn'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.
- davidf18 7y agoTobacco companies are the worst companies in the world. Followed by Coke and Pepsi including junk food subsidiaries along with junk food restaurants.
- rmason 7y agoIf 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.
- hcurtiss 7y agoSeriously? 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 7y agoVoting 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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kortilla 7y agoBabies in concentration camps? I thought it was all brown people in ovens and all women in kitchens.
- dang 7y agoPlease 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
- dang 7y agoPlease 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
- durkie 7y agoWhat's partisan about it?
- refurb 7y ago
- rossdavidh 7y agoSo, 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.
- josho 7y agoGlobalization isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s the rules surrounding trade that perpetuates the problem you outlined. In some alternate universe we could have free trade laws that enshrined environmental, labor, and other protections into law to benefit all. Instead we have laws that are silent (or with what we almost had under TPP toothless) on protections for anything other than corporations.
- ggm 7y agoGlobalization isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s the rules surrounding trade that perpetuates the problem you outlined. Except I believe the lack of rules, and the specific anti-regulatory pressures of modern neoliberal economic rationalists are one of the underlying axioms of globalization as implemented: Its not a coincidence, it was designed into the DNA.
- close04 7y ago
- exabrial 7y agoJust 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.
- exabrial 7y agoThe main pollution source in ground water aquifers around here is two fold, salt water contamination or chlorinated solvent leakage. The former is caused by oil wells drilled during ww2 without proper casement and sealing, and the latter is caused by small government corruption. The plumes of each are organic, ironically enough, and can be fixed with simple bacteria and recirculation wells. Long cry from the opening statements in this article.
- threezero 7y agoNot 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.
- Camillo 7y agoDoes 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.
- thundergolfer 7y ago> 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 7y agoOkay... then lay it on us? If there’s a strong moral argument maybe you should tell us.
- thundergolfer 7y agoHere 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/what_are_the_best_arguments_in_favor_of_meat/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4i0iqx/wh...
- effnorwood 7y agoCargill *Google
- readme3 7y agolooking at the pictures of the baby orangutans melts my heart. cannot help but think , we have lost all compassion as humans.
- Gene5ive 7y agoGlobalization is inevitable. Death by self-induced extinction is not.