Now that I’ve been back in the office for a few days, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the intensely rewarding, multi-city, multi-layover, whirlwind inspiration that was our international delegation and U.S. speaking tour. Delegates from Brazil, Paraguay and Papua New Guinea traveled up to 46 hours in order to tell their stories to the U.S. public about living and fighting on the frontline of the expanding soy and palm oil frontier. They spoke to overflowing room-fulls of students at Power Shift in Maryland, to ally organizations like the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in Minneapolis, and at visionary venues like Common Roots Cafe, also in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis, of course, besides being home to ally organizations and super-sustainable cafe’s is also the headquarter city of U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill. For several of the delegates, no trip to Minneapolis would have seemed complete without a visit to the Cargill headquarters and a face-to-face with some of the execs. Francisco Avalos, from Paraguay, Hiparidi Top’Tiro from Brazil, and Lynette Hambuga from Papua New Guinea decided that they would write a collective letter to Cargill enumerating their grievances against the company, and hand the letter directly to the executives. So, on Tuesday, November 6th the rainforest agribusiness campaign team accompanied our delegates as they handed their letter over to Cargill. (PDF of the letter.)

We didn’t surprise folks at Cargill with our visit; they knew in advance that we were coming. When we arrived at the company compound, we were greeted and told to put name tags on, and then ushered up a staircase and to a back room. We sat across from each other at a long board room table–delegates and RAN staff on one side, Cargill on the other. Sitting across from us were some of Cargill’s corporate affairs executives from Malaysia, Brazil, and Argentina. According to Cargill, they all happened to be in town already (odd coincidence perhaps–these are some of the very countries that our campaign is most concerned about). After a quick go-round of introductions, Lynette Hambuga from Papua New Guinea stood up and presented the letter on behalf of the delegates. After the letter was exchanged, the air in the room felt slightly heavier and the folks on the other side of the table realized that we weren’t there to listen to corporate greenwashing or self-congratulatory talk. The delegates made their message clear: they don’t have time for more excuses or false promises.