Cargill is planning to invest twice as much in China in the next five years with a focus on soybean and animal protein. The company is building a Sino-US Cargill Biotech Industrial Park in partnership with the Jilin provincial government, where it also announced an investment of USD 112 million to expand its corn processing plant. The industrial park should be able to process 2 million mt of corn by 2020, will include several warehouses and house an R&D and training centre for farmers.
Olam is hoping to use some of the USD 1.6 billion it saved when it closed several business units recently – such as its sugar desk – to buy Nigeria’s Dangote Flour Mills for which it bid USD 360 million. If successful, the acquisition would double the group’s capacity in Nigeria and allow it to capitalise on the fast-growing demand for wheat-based products.
Danone’s baby food company, Bledina France, has been certified B-Corp, a certification awarded to profit-making companies that aim to have a positive social and environmental impact. Danone now has 10 B-Corp companies representing 20% of its global sales. The CEO said the goal was for the whole group – the first multinational company ever – to be B-Corp certified. In North America, Danone launched its One Planet One Health Initiative which will give out grants to create community-based projects working on designing sustainable food systems.
Unilever North America has committed to making at least half of its plastic packaging from post-consumer recycled content and making all of its plastic reusable or recyclable by 2025. Similarly, Nestle Waters North America is targeting to use 50% recycled plastic by 2025, up from 7% in 2017. The CEO said that there needed to be better systems to encourage collection, such as bottle deposits. Nevertheless, thanks to technology, he expects that achieving 100% packaging recovery is a feasible goal.
After reviewing Burger King’s plant-based Whopper burger, an official from the Missouri Farm Bureau said that it was almost impossible to tell the difference with real meat. He said, “If farmers and ranchers think we can mock and dismiss these products as a passing fad, we’re kidding ourselves.” Luckily for them, Missouri has already banned plant-based meat from being advertised as meat. A proposal in the EU could take things even further and only allow the use of terms such as ‘sausage’ or ‘burger’ for real meat on the basis that it would otherwise be misleading.
In a US class action lawsuit, cattle ranchers are suing Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS and National Beef Packing, accusing them of colluding in offering low prices for meat since 2015. The ranchers are hoping to stop these meat packaging companies, which represent some 80% of the US fed cattle market, from exerting control over independent cattle producers and driving them out of business.
Several institutions, including the Rockefeller Foundation, have teamed up to create the Consortium for Innovation in Post-Harvest Loss & Food Waste Reduction. The aim will be for all stakeholders, from industries to NGOs and farmers, to work together on finding the best solution to reduce the estimated 1.3 billion mt of food lost every year. The director of the Rockefeller Foundation added that the consortium would work on encouraging plant-based diets as well as increasing yields, which should help reduce agriculture’s carbon emissions.
However, a recent global survey by Cargill showed that over 60% of respondents plan to continue eating just as much animal protein – if not more – and 80% are looking into adding plant-based products too. What the survey showed, according to Cargill, is that consumers believe that animal protein can be part of a healthy and environmentally conscious diet.
Similarly, a professor from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences argued that it would be environmentally better to have a ‘selectively pescatarian’ diet rather than scrapping meat altogether. He explained that a lot of the plant-based alternatives need to be shipped over long distances and, such as in the case of soybean, have a heavy carbon footprint. He added that “the lowest impact thing you could do is step outside your door and shoot a deer, eating native animals is really low impact.”
Finally, in Australia, some 40 well-known chefs have pledged to only use sustainable seafood as part of the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s Good Fish project. One of the chefs said it was important that his restaurant had a ‘clean’ menu.
This summary was produced by ECRUU
