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Supporting our communities during the coronavirus pandemic


Cargill is working with our nonprofit and NGO partners around the globe to help address food security, health and safety needs and industry challenges due to the spread of COVID-19.

Cargill is committing $35 million to COVID-19 relief and recovery efforts through global and regional partnerships, product donations and employee personal giving. Our response is guided by our purpose of nourishing the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way.

“We are inspired by the medical professionals, first responders, workers and farmers in our communities who are making sure our essential needs are met,” said Michelle Grogg, vice president of corporate responsibility and sustainable development at Cargill. “Our thoughts are with all those who have been impacted by the virus as we continue to work with our partners on global and local relief efforts.”

To support the communities where we live and work, we are focusing our response in four areas: 

Food security & nutrition

Vulnerable children and families around the world are facing food insecurity at unprecedented levels. We’re joining with hunger relief organizations around the world to help feed people in our communities, tailoring our approach to local needs.

  • In our U.S. headquarters community, the Cargill Foundation has donated $1 million to  Minnesota Central Kitchen for emergency food relief and has turned our corporate cafeteria into a community kitchen, preparing 5,000 meals per week. The Foundation is also partnering with Second Harvest Heartland to support shelf-stable food distribution.
  • We are contributing $1M to World Food Program USA in support of their response efforts, including their global humanitarian and health response work and school meal programs in our operating communities.
  • Through a partnership with Action for Healthy Kids, Cargill will provide supplies to help distribute meals to food insecure children at 150 schools across our U.S. operating communities.
  • We’ve donated over $2.2 million CAD to food banks and emergency support efforts across Canada, which will help provide nearly 5 million meals to Canadian families. 
  • We pledged 16 million meals for relief efforts in India, which will impact over 150,000 families across 16 cities in the country.
  • In Ghana, we provided food for over 1,000 families in the city of Tema. This will help ensure they are able to keep meals on their tables while they are required to stay home. 
  • We are partnering with FareShare UK on several projects, including supplementing school meals and serving people in isolation.
  • We are working with four municipalities in Turkey to deliver a monthly food supply for 500 vulnerable families and the elderly. Our contributions will help organizations provide elders who have to stay at home with hot, nutritious meals.
  • In Central America, we are providing food and vouchers to communities served by our longtime Nourishing the Future program with CARE.
  • The Cargill Foundation in Brazil is helping 68 local organizations purchase food baskets, which will help feed 17,000 people.
  • 1,500 children in Venezuela will have access to meals for over two months thanks to a partnership between Cargill and the United Way. 
  • In Bolivia and the Dominican Republic, we are partnering with local groups to provide over 700 families with nutritious meals and hygiene products.
  • In Colombia, Cargill participated in a campaign organized by the Government of Valle del Cauca, to distribute 240,000 food packages for vulnerable families, which included 20,000 chickens donated by Cargill.

We’ve also donated more than 3 million pounds of food to food shelves and hunger relief efforts in local communities where our employees live and work.

  • Our protein business in Central America and Colombia has donated more than 239 tons of chicken, sausage and eggs to local food banks and NGOs  across Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Colombia, benefitting almost 1 million people.
  • Our poultry joint venture in the Philippines is teaming up with the country’s first food bank, Rise Against Hunger, to help distribute 300,000 packages of donated eggs.
  • In France, we provided 58,000 litres of oil to local food banks across the country in partnership with the French Federation of Food Banks.
  • In Montana, we donated 12,000 gallons of milk to the Montana Food Bank Network.
  • Our protein business in the U.S. has contributed nearly 500,000 pounds of beef and turkey to Feeding America Food Banks in Virginia, Nebraska and Texas. These in-kind food donations are in addition to Cargill’s more than $1 million contribution to Feeding America and its affiliates to distribute food via food banks across the country.
  • The Cargill Protein Innovation Center in Wichita, Kansas is providing 100 cooked and packaged pot roasts per week to vulnerable children and families. The pot roasts will be cooked onsite by chefs at Cargill’s Protein Innovation Center for the next several weeks and distributed via local food shelves and nonprofit partners. 
  • In Kansas and Missouri, Cargill partnered with Harvesters Food Bank to distribute 2 million pounds of food to families, children and seniors, which is twice the amount of food they normally distribute.

Health & safety

Medical workers are on the front lines of this pandemic, and keeping them safe is crucial for the health of our communities. We’re providing personal protective equipment and supplies for medical workers and sanitization products for healthcare facilities around the globe

  • Our early response focused on relief efforts in China, working with community organizations to source and distribute medical supplies for five hospitals in Hubei province. 
  • In an effort to provide support and relief to the Italian health system, we contributed €400,000 to civil protection services and hospitals across the country.
  • In Spain, Switzerland, Hungary and Poland, we are working with hospitals, foundations and the Red Cross to support emergency medical response efforts in our communities. We also provided 1,000 meals for night shift workers at local hospitals in Wroclaw, Poland, to ensure they had nutritious meals as they tended to patients.
  • As healthcare facilities across Europe face shortages of disinfecting alcohol, we have so far made donations of a combined 160,000 liters to the Dutch and Belgian governments.
  • Through a partnership with Gastromotiva, we are providing 3,000 meals a month to doctors, nurses and the relatives of patients staying at hospitals in Mexico City. We also contributed to the Red Cross in Mexico to support hospitals, ambulances and medical teams working in our operating communities and in areas with the highest need. 
  • In Brazil, we’re converting part of a sugar mill in São Paulo to produce disinfecting alcohol for donation to hospitals and other organizations. 
  • In Central America through our partnership with CARE, Cargill is delivering food packages, hygiene kits and personal protection supplies to 8,000 people in our operating communities.
  • Cargill donated 2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines to facilities testing COVID-19 patient samples in Chile. The first PCR went to the University of Concepcion and will quadruple the school’s testing capacity to 800 patients per day. The second PCR went to Magallanes University in Patagonia, Chile.
  • Cargill businesses collaborated to respond to the lack of personal protective equipment at hospitals in Indonesia. We supported the donation of 2,250 coverall suits and more than 56,000 masks in eight different cities.
  • Our teams in Blair, Nebraska and Kansas City, Missouri collaborated together to donate 3,300 liters of glycerin to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UN-L) to produce more than 330,000 liters of hand sanitizer for health care workers throughout the state. 
  • In Minnesota, our team partnered with J. Carver Distillery to donate hand sanitizer to the Minnesota’s Children’s Hospital and 15 different first response locations across the Twin Cities.
  • As part of our efforts to provide access to vaccines, we have provided funding to CARE’s fast & fair campaign, which aims to support vaccination around the world with emphasis on equitable distribution.

Agriculture community support 

At the heart of our food system, farmers carry on their essential work of nourishing the world. During this unprecedented time, Cargill is reinforcing our partnership with farmers.  We will continue to invest in programs and partnerships that support the resilience of farmers, ranchers and agricultural communities around the world. 

  • We’re supporting the American Farmland Trust’s Farmer Relief Fund, which will provide producers in the United States with grants up to $1,000 each to help them navigate the current market disruptions during the crisis.
  • We’re mobilizing our response in rural communities in the U.S. to support more than 65 food shelves, ensuring food reaches vulnerable populations in these areas.
  • In our palm plantation communities in Indonesia, we’re supporting efforts to disinfect neighboring communities and residential areas, sanitizing local schools and redirecting school meals to be delivered to homes with the help of our NGO partners.  
  • We’re also helping share critical information to keep agricultural communities safe. In Ivory Coast, cocoa farming communities now receive information through our digital farming app about government-recommended safety and sanitation measures to fight the spread of the virus.
  • In Ghana, we’re working with Unilever to distribute hand washing soaps and hand towels to 30,000 cocoa farmers through out cooperatives.
  • We’re working with our strategic seaweed suppliers to provide 1,750 seaweed farmers in Madagascar with 100,000 pounds of rice during these difficult times. These farmers, many who live in remote villages, now face the challenge of transportation limitations and lower availability of basic stable foods. 
  • Together with longstanding partner CARE, we’re reaching farming communities in Indonesia – distributing hygiene kits, setting up handwashing facilities and providing food vouchers to vulnerable families. Together, our efforts will reach 12,000 community members and 10 health and public service centers in Serang and Bone by the end of 2020.

Food industry support 

Food industry workers have been significantly impacted by the pandemic. We’re committed to helping them through these challenging times.

  • To help U.S. restaurant workers facing economic hardships as a result of COVID-19, we are supporting the National Restaurant Association Foundation Employee Relief Fund. Through the fund, impacted workers can apply for a one-time, $500 grant to assist with living expenses such as food, transportation and medical bills.
  • In support of small businesses in Turkey, Cargill donated 250 tons of edible oils and fats to 5,000 artisanal bakeries to support their efforts to continue to serve food in communities.
  • In Germany, where truck drivers are unable to exit their vehicles to use the cafeteria, Cargill teams are safely distributing lunch boxes and disposable surgical masks to these supply chain partners. 
  • In China, Cargill teamed up with the China Animal Health and Food Safety Alliance to publish a handbook of COVID-19 prevention at grow-out farms to be shared within the food industry. We’re also working with the China Meat Association to share best practices for resuming operations in the Chinese meat industry.

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