Cargill targeting to enrich communities

Today, Cargill is also known for being a responsible corporate citizen strongly engaged with the local communities through various community enrichment initiatives.

Cargill is a US company established in 1865. Today, Cargill’s 155,000 employees across 70 countries work relentlessly to achieve the purpose of nourishing the world in a safe, responsible, and sustainable way.

Cargill connects farmers with markets, customers with ingredients, and people and animals with the food they need to thrive. The company combines its 153 years of experience with new technologies and insights to serve as a trusted partner for food, agriculture, financial, and industrial customers in more than 125 countries. Side-by-side with customers, they endeavour to build a sustainable future for agriculture.

Operating in Vietnam since 1995, Cargill currently owns and operates 12 animal nutrition plants, two grain and oilseed warehouses, and two aqua technology application centres and employs almost 2,000 employees nationwide.

Its operations include animal nutrition, animal protein, food and beverage ingredients, agriculture supply chain, metals trading, and unique macro feed ingredients.

Besides business operations, through diverse community enrichment initiatives, Cargill’s businesses and employees are actively engaged in giving back to the local communities where they live, work, and do business. This has become a major goal for the company in Vietnam.

Cargill has also been improving the livelihoods of animal farmers. Since 1997, the firm has been conducting training workshops for farmers to transfer best practices in animal health and nutrition. The goal is to help improve animal productivity and health, ultimately raising farmers’ income. To date, the programme has benefitted more than 1.65 million farmers across Vietnam.

Cargill has also been changing people’s lives through education. Cargill’s school building programme for Vietnam started in 1997 to create safe and conductive education infrastructure for rural communities across the country. Under the umbrella of Cargill Cares, a 100-per-cent employee-led volunteering initiative, by August 2018, they have raised more than $5.3 million and built 88 schools in 47 provinces, benefitting more than 14,000 children annually.

Funds come from Cargill customers, partners, and employees as well as a matching fund from Cargill that doubles the financial resources. Cargill’s employee volunteers have been engaged in the entire process from fund raising and site selection to construction management, facility hand-over, and follow-up inspection. They have committed to building a total of 100 schools by 2020 to help communities in Vietnam thrive.

A typical Cargill Cares school consists of four or five classrooms, a schoolyard, a fence, and restroom facilities, and normally serves about 150 students.

For its efforts in this school-building programme, Cargill received an award from the minister of Education and Training and the deputy prime minister in 2007. In 2009, Cargill was honoured to receive the third-Grade Labour Order granted by Vietnam’s former President Nguyen Minh Triet.