MINNETONKA, Minn. - Cargill is one of the largest privately-owned corporations in the world. Now, the Minnetonka-based grain industry giant is making one of the largest food donations in history.
"Cargill has made a 10,000 metric ton, or 22 million pound, contribution of rice to the World Food Program to help support the relief efforts in the Horn of Africa," said Mark Murphy, Cargill Assistant Vice President and Executive Director of the Cargill Foundation.
Not only was the project expensive, with a $5 million price tag, but transporting the food was daunting, even for a major Ag product business like Cargill.
"We did not announce this until we actually were arriving with the grain, with the rice, because of exactly those reasons; fear of piracy and things like that," Murphy said.
The rice was shipped from India to the Port of Mombasa in Kenya. A number of camps have been set up in Kenya where refugees fleeing the famine and unrest in Somalia have gathered. The rice is being distributed to those camps now and the deliveries will continue through January.
The idea is for this one donation to feed a million people for one month.
The project began in the summer of 2011 when Greg Page, Cargill CEO, had a conversation with Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Shad told Page that what they really needed in East Africa was food.
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