Cobham, Surrey : Activists Blockade Cargill Europe Head Office

1.08.2008
Since 7.50 am this morn­ing, 20 par­tic­i­pants in this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action and mem­bers of Action Against Agro­fu­els have been blockad­ing the only access gate to Cargill’s Euro­pean region­al head office in Cob­ham, Sur­rey. 8 activists have locked on to the gates clos­ing the site down com­plete­ly. Agrobusi­ness giant Cargill are being tar­get­ed by the pro­test­ers for their role in rain­for­est destruc­tion and land-grab­bing as well as for prof­i­teer­ing from the food cri­sis.

Cargill blockade, Cobham1.08.2008
Since 7.50 am this morn­ing, 20 par­tic­i­pants in this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action and mem­bers of Action Against Agro­fu­els have been blockad­ing the only access gate to Cargill’s Euro­pean region­al head office in Cob­ham, Sur­rey. 8 activists have locked on to the gates clos­ing the site down com­plete­ly. Agrobusi­ness giant Cargill are being tar­get­ed by the pro­test­ers for their role in rain­for­est destruc­tion and land-grab­bing as well as for prof­i­teer­ing from the food cri­sis.

Han­nah Ritchie from the group says: “Cargill is using the boom in agro­fu­els to expand soya, palm oil and sug­ar plan­ta­tions, dis­plac­ing com­mu­ni­ties, food crops and destroy­ing ecosys­tems. Destroy­ing rain­forests and oth­er bio­di­verse ecosys­tems, includ­ing healthy soils, is one of the quick­est ways of heat­ing the plan­et. This is why we are blockad­ing the Cargill office two days before the offi­cial start of the Cli­mate Camp at Kingsnorth.”

Accord­ing to the UN World Food Pro­gramme, 100 mil­lion more peo­ple are going hun­gry as food prices have risen by 83% in three years. At the same time, Cargill’s prof­its have risen to record lev­els, going up by 86% in just nine months, since the com­pa­ny is prof­i­teer­ing from high food prices.

Jor­dan Craig says: “For com­pa­nies like Cargill, agro­fu­els are an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make more prof­its from food, to take over more land from small farm­ers and com­mu­ni­ties and to fur­ther destroy local food pro­duc­tion. This is why we need an imme­di­ate halt to gov­ern­ment poli­cies such as the manda­to­ry blend­ing of petrol and diesel with bio­fu­els in the UK, as well as an end to ‘free trade’ food and agri­cul­tur­al poli­cies which sole­ly boost the pow­er and the prof­its of agribusi­ness­es like Cargill. Instead of agro­fu­els, we need to have poli­cies that sup­port Food Sov­er­eign­ty, i.e. which put peo­ple’s right to food first and sup­port small-scale, bio­di­verse, organ­ic farm­ing, instead of ener­gy-inten­sive agri­cul­ture.”

Con­tacts:

Par­tic­i­pants in the action can be con­tact­ed at the fol­low­ing num­bers 07527–124478 or 07964–068147

Notes:

1. Agro­fu­els are bio­fu­els made from crops and trees grown on mono­cul­tures for that pur­pose.

2. Cargill owns 25% of shares in the UK’s biggest bio­fu­el sup­pli­er, Green­er­gy Inter­na­tion­al. They have major invest­ments in US corn ethanol, Brazil­ian sug­ar cane ethanol, as well as palm oil and soya, and they are involved in joint ven­tures to devel­op GM agro­fu­els. Cargill is the world’s biggest grain trad­er, the biggest exporter of sug­ar cane and soy­bean from Brazil, the biggest soy­bean crush­er in Paraguay and one of the world’s five largest palm oil traders.

3. For more infor­ma­tion about the harm which Cargill is caus­ing to com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems in Brazil, Paraguay and Papua New Guinea, see http://understory.ran.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/cargill_letter1.pdf

www.biofuelwatch.org.uk