As Cargill’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Pilar Cruz is responsible for leading the company’s efforts to drive transformational change in delivering sustainable supply chains for customers around the globe, while making agriculture part of how we deliver on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. This aim is core to Cargill’s purpose to nourish the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have, with us today, Pilar Cruz. She’s the Chief sustainability officer of Cargill. Welcome, Pilar, to the Impact Podcast.

Pilar Cruz: Well, thank you for having me, John. Good afternoon, and I’m super excited to be here with you today.

John: Before we get talking about all the impactful and important things you and your colleagues are doing at Cargill, Pilar, can you share a little bit about your background? Where did you grow up, and how did you get on this fascinating and important journey that you’re on?

Pilar: Yeah. So I grew up in Bogotá, Colombia during the 80s and the 90s; probably the most violent times in the history of my country.

John: Wow.

Pilar: Growing up in Colombia I saw a lot of poverty, violence, inequalities, social injustice. I saw how hard it was for hardworking families, hard-working people to really earn a decent income to bring food for their families. That, along with my family’s values, my dad and my mom really made me think about pursuing a career where I would have the opportunity to do great things for people, and also leave the planet in a better place. So, again, excited, super proud of the fact being part of a company that thinks about food security and supporting the planet as well.

John: Did you go to university down there, or did you go to university somewhere else?

Pilar: My undergrad was at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá Colombia. One of the main universities in the country. Then I worked for a Spanish bank for a while before I came to the U.S. I moved to Ann Arbor Michigan, and I graduated from the University of Michigan, the Ross Business school with a master’s degree in business, and MBA.

John: Got it. Understood. So now, as you and I know, Pilar, can Chief sustainability officer, can, in this world, nowadays be read broadly, or very narrowly? If we were to talk about your day-to-day at Cargill, talk a little bit about how you define sustainability there with your colleagues, and how broad or narrow is your role in terms of the sustainability journey that Cargill is on.

Pilar: Yeah, when I want to start with a high-level overview of our company, John, because you and I know that we are not a B2C company, so we don’t really go, for the most part, directly to consumers. So I wanted to provide a high-level overview of Cargill for those who are not familiar with our company. So, we are a family- owned, privately held company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We’ve been in business for 159 years, remaining private, which is remarkable.

John: Yes.

Pilar: We operate in 70 different countries. We employ over 160,000 employees today. Our company’s purpose, which is one of the main reasons why I am so proud of being part of this company, is to nourish the world. To do it in a safe, responsible and sustainable way. So, for Cargill, it is all about moving food from places where it is produced to places where it’s needed. Do it while at the same time, we protect the planet and the people along the way in every supply chain where we operate. We are a leader in food and agriculture and because of the important role that we play, we operate some of the most complex supply chains around the world. So, think about soy, corn, poultry, beef, and animal nutrition. We really take an active role in participating and working with every stakeholder around the supply chain to make sure that again, we provide food that is affordable, nutritious and sustainable around the world. I would just say the simple way to think about Cargill, John, is every time that you have something to eat, whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, they would like to be a Cargill product or a Cargill ingredient. So we are that meaningful and impactful in everybody’s lives every day.

John: That’s incredible. So, you do business with approximately 160,000 employees in 70 countries. Your revenues are very– are we allowed to discuss your revenues? Your revenues are [crosstalk]

Pilar: Yes, you can. Yeah.

John: … over 70 billion dollars. It’s such a, like you said, 159 years is incredible. How long has this role existed at Cargill? When were you named Chief sustainability officer, Pilar?

Pilar: Yeah. So I think it is safe to say that sustainability has been part of our company’s DNA for many, many years. We are all about working with farmers, with customers, with suppliers to help them do more with less. In the process of doing that, then we obviously think about protecting the planet by using greenhouse gas emissions, restoring water natural resources, and improving farmers’ livelihoods around the world. So my job was created as a dedicated chief sustainability officer about three years ago.

John: Wow.

Pilar: My entire career at Cargill has been leading businesses for the company, and I’ve lived around the world as well. But I would say, three years ago, I served as Cargill’s Chief sustainability officer, and head of Global Impact. So the corporate communications function reports to me as well as corporate responsibility, which is a local community work we have going on in the company, environmental and social sustainability, as well as ESG reporting, which is becoming a very important capability for Cargill, especially today.

John: We’re going to get into that in a second. For our listeners and viewers, to find Pilar and her colleagues at Cargill, and all the important impactful work that they’re doing, please go to www.cargill, C-A-R-G-I-L-L dot com, cargill.com. Well, let’s break it down a little bit. I mean obviously your role is a very, very big role at Cargill, and Cargill is a very, as you pointed out that on a macro level, is a really important company when it comes to our food and supply chain around the world, really. Talk a little bit about innovation, and how this Cargill engages with your customers to create innovation that then creates sustainable practices, which benefit everybody.

Pilar: Yeah, so definitely working with our customers and our farmers, it is an important priority for our company because of the fact that we see that the center of the food supply chain. We believe that working with farmers, supporting farmers around the world is really critically important for us to increase food security, to increase food production and to protect the planet. So, we do not try to take a cookie-cutter approach, John. We actually don’t believe that we need to paint the whole world with one brush, but on the contrary, we take a local context-based approach. What that means is that we partner very closely with customers and farmers. We try to understand the realities of what they are dealing with, because the realities of a soy farmer in Brazil are very different from the realities of a corn farmer in Nebraska, or a cotton farmer in Australia. So, we work with them. We listen and try to understand the challenges they are facing, their needs, and we leverage our company’s capability to support those needs, and to help our customers achieve their ESG goals. I think there’s a lot of practical examples that we have that I would like to share with you.

John: Please, please.

Pilar: With one, that I think is absolutely relevant for us, and it is our signature sustainability program for the beef supply chain in North America. So the program is called BeefUp, and your listeners and yourself can actually look it up on the website. It is in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and customers such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Nestlé, and Target. The intent is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the North America beef supply by 30% by 2030. So, how we are doing that is by implementing a deploying sustainable grazing, management practices by working with ranchers specifically on what makes sense for them and how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s all about innovation. It’s all about innovative feed that reduces the climate impact. It’s about increasing carbon sequestration, and protecting natural resources such as water. What we have seen is number one, there’s a high level of adoption for a program like this, not only with customers, but also ranchers in North America. But it’s also a really good way to increase water resiliency, and we believe we estimate that there is going to be an improvement of about 25 billion liters of water, which is the equivalent of providing, or supplying water for 500 million people per year. That is a lot. So, when you think about innovation, I would say, BeefUp is a great example of the partnership that we have with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as well as key customers and ranchers in North America to reduce the impact of climate.

John: That’s so interesting. You know, sustainability, what I’m seeing used to be that people wanted to go it alone, but more and more were seeing that circularity and achieving all these decarbonization goals and other very important goals that huge organizations like yours are creating to make the world a better place are done now in collaboration. Therefore, it now expedites the process, but also gets the greatest impact. Is that what you’re seeing on a macro level, Pilar?

Pilar: A hundred percent, 100% because of the complexity of the problems that we are dealing with in the world today. So, think about climate change, food insecurity, supply chain disruptions, geopolitical issues around the world. We know, and we believe that a single company cannot fix these issues alone, and we believe that is the case for Cargill. So, our sustainability approach is all about collaboration, partnerships and alliances with not only our customers, and I mentioned a few before.

John: Sure.

Pilar: But also, with farmers around the world, who we consider customers as well. Strategic NGOs that we partner with local governments, local communities, and obviously, I can give you a practical example of where as well, as to, what does it mean for Cargill? One of the issues as you know, that we are dealing with at the moment is protecting critical biomes with Latin America. Me, coming from Latin America, of course, I know the landscape and the criticality of the biomes that we need to protect, particularly in Brazil. So eliminating the forestation is a topic that we have been working with our company internally for four years. So, how do we eliminate the forestation? We really had a breakthrough last year in November. We announced in partnership with WRI, which is the World Resources Institute. One of the great partnerships or partners that we have in the sustainability space, a commitment to eliminate forestation by 2025. There is a huge improvement from what we have seen historically, obviously in our company. But the fact that we are partnering with local communities, both organizations as well as farmers in Brazil, as well as the entire community to make sure that we are advancing our commitment, we are protecting these biomes, we’re supporting farmers with access to financial resources. Access to sustainable best practices to support their production of soy, specifically in this case. But again, to answer the question, this is an example of how we know we cannot do it alone. These challenges are so massive that partnering with WRI in this case plus farmers in Brazil and local community organizations has proven to be effective for Cargill.

John: Talk a little bit about farmers; you just mentioned them. What are the pieces of terminology that keep coming up with regards to agriculture and farmers is regenerative agriculture. How much with regards to your innovation and your sustainability practices when you’re working with farmers, how much does regenerative agriculture now play a role? What other Innovations are you working on with farmers right now?

Pilar: Yeah. So obviously, climate change, protecting the soil. Making the soil more resilient is an important opportunity for farmers, and we hear that every day, again, whether it is in Latin America, Asia, Europe, Africa, or North America. It is an important element of what our farmers are dealing with today. Regenerative agriculture is obviously one of the priorities for our company. We have produced, a few years ago, our signature regenerative act program in North America called Region Connect, which actually pays or provides farmers with an economic incentive for environmental outcomes. So, the more greenhouse gasses that a farmer reduces, the more compensation they get. Farmers adoption has been fantastic.  Again, it is a really good program in terms of the regenerative agriculture practices that we are deploying, whether it is cover crops, no-till or whether you-till in North America, has been super effective. But again to my point before, some of the farmers are dealing with different conditions, whether it is climate, soil, precipitation, the temperature they are dealing with. So we’re actually working closely with farmers in Australia and introduced a similar program called Sustained Connect, but it is very, very specific for the farmers’ needs in Australia. So again, it demonstrates an example of how we believe that it takes a local context approach working closely with our farmers, listening to their needs. Instead of really dictating and telling farmers what they need to do, is co-creating these solutions that make sense for them.

John: That makes a lot of sense. For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Pilar Cruz with us today. She is the Chief sustainability officer at Cargill. To find Pilar and her colleagues of all the impactful work they’re doing in sustainability, please go to www.cargill.com. With regards to, you mentioned earlier, ESG, talk a little bit about ESG. You tied it back to your youth and understanding, and up-close-and-personal seeing the inequalities and inequities that can exist in any culture, in any society and wanting to make the world a better place, and more equitable place was something that’s part of your DNA. As you point out, Pilar, Cargill has been acting sustainably as part of their DNA way before they created a Chief sustainability role. Explain a little bit about, when you take over and you’re given a new role that’s called Chief sustainability officer, it’s almost that proverbial blank page, and it’s easy to get lost in overwhelmed. How do you break down environmental issues that you need to attack? Obviously that includes decarbonization and water issues, which you gave a great example of earlier. Now, it also goes into this massive trend of the shift from the linear to circular economy. There’s also another trend of ESG and making the world a more equitable place. Talk a little bit about how you spend your days, and in terms of juggling all those very important topics? Where are we now on the ESG journey with regards to what you do at Cargill?

Pilar: Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack in there.

John: I know.

Pilar: That’s a really great question, John.

John: I know, sorry, for the long questions.

Pilar: I’m just going to start by simply saying that, for Cargill, sustainability is not a new initiative. It is not a new project. It is not the flavor of the month. When you go to an ice cream shop, there’s always a flavor of the mouth, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. It isn’t like that. For us, we made a deliberate decision to ensure that sustainability is aligned with our company’s purpose, and I mentioned that before. To nourish the world and to do it in a safe, responsible and sustainable way. The word ‘sustainability’ has been part of our purpose since the inception of our purpose. So, it’s nothing that we added now, because it’s important. It’s the buzzword of the moment, not the case. So we start with the fact that sustainability is part of our company’s DNA. It is part of our company’s purpose, and it is how we run our businesses, and how we think about supporting our customers as well. So we begin by taking a very practical and pragmatic approach to sustainability. Our business leaders are fully aware of the criticality of sustainability. We partner with our customers to understand their needs. We partner with our customers to ensure that we help them achieve their ESG goals. Thinking about sustainability as a core capability that we have developed in our company. So it isn’t me, coming up with a new project or a new initiative. Also, I think it is important that the commitment from the top has truly made a huge difference in our company. My boss, the CEO of Cargill, Bryan Sikes, is fully committed to sustainability. I report to Brian. I’m a member of the executive team, and together with my peers, we have conversations about investments that we are making. Commitments and progress against our commitments. Compliance obviously, particularly as it relates to the CSRB, EUDR, CSDDD, or even the requirements around reporting in North America, or any country around the world. So, we really take a very comprehensive and integrated approach to sustainability, which is through the business leaders, through the company strategy, through the business unit strategy, and in a way that we are building this capability to support our customers. I would say because of that, again, the conversations even though they are challenging, are a lot easier, because all of us are fully aligned in terms of our company’s intent related to our purpose, related to sustainability and supporting our customers. That’s all. So, I spend my time obviously making that very strong connection between how to run our businesses. This is why I believe my commercial background has been very useful for our company. I don’t have a sustainability background other than probably the last five years. But before that, I had the opportunity and the privilege to lead businesses for Cargill. Therefore, I would say we have a really very strong connection with the business leaders to advance our sustainability, commitments, strategy and practices as part of how we are running our company. That has proven to be very effective for Cargill.

John: Well, you make a great point. You come from a commercial background. You’re not an environmental scientist or engineer, or things of such. Fifteen, 16, 17 years ago, when I started this show, Pilar, when people heard the word ‘sustainability’, when the C-suite heard it, all they heard was that it’s going to take money to invest and they thought it was dead money. That money is gone and sustainability was going to be a cost. Talk a little bit about, really that that’s been turned on its head. Sustainability really means resilience. It really means that it could mean massive profit savings, and all sorts of great benefits that accrue. Not only hard benefits when it comes to tangible things so that it comes to the bottom line. But also the soft benefits that come to attraction of great employees, retention of great employees. Talk a little bit about sustainability with regards to the commercial opportunity to sustainability, and then also the, business opportunity it terms of
resilience.

Pilar: Yeah. I think you did a really good job at explaining the complexity, but also the criticality of sustainability. I would say for Cargill, again, in line with our purpose, it is the right thing to do. No question, and because we operate in 70 different countries, it is understanding the intersection between the environmental aspect and the social aspect. So, it’s not just about climate, water, land use, protecting critical biomes, biodiversity, but it’s also partnered livelihoods and supporting local communities. So, we think about investments in sustainability as advancing our purpose, advancing our company strategy, developing capabilities that are needed to support our customers, and we work with the largest global region. But also medium size, smaller companies around the world to understand their commitments, to understand their needs. Occasionally, I would say, John, some of the questions from our customers are less about sustainability depending on where they are in the world, and more around efficiency, improvements which to your point, everything that we do to make, or to improve the operations of our customers to reduce the use of electricity, or energy, or power or water, or fertilizer has a tangible economic benefit for them, which is important for us to explain and to understand. Because then you see that our solutions, our investments have definitely a top line or bottom line benefit for our customers. We are investing. I had the example or I’ll share the example of BeefUp, which is truly an exciting investment that we have in partnership with our customers. But we are co-investing, partnering together because we understand the criticality of helping our customers achieve their goals. Do what is right for the planet or people, complying at the end of the day, and ultimately I think helping attraction and retention. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with our interns this year and last year, and I can tell you that by far, one of the main questions they keep asking is more about sustainability. Very curious and interested about, “Tell me more about your scope three. Tell me more about scope one and two. What are some of the examples you have?” It’s fascinating because I think the more and more that we understand what the next generation of future employees are asking for, it’s all about values and planet sustainability protecting people’s social equality, certainly are at the top of the list.

John: You mentioned that Brian, your CEO who you report to, it all starts from the top, and so I believe your idea about that, that is so important that from the top down sustainability has to be a key important pillar of every organization. Talk a little bit about how size matters. Obviously your size and how you touch almost everything on our food plate every day in over 170 billion in revenue, with over 160,000 employees. Size matters because when you do something, Pilar, and Cargill does something, it makes a true impact. The needle moves, but talk a little bit about the counter productive situation, when it comes to that kind of size, 160,000 employees. How do you best communicate with them so you get them aligned on the sustainability journey, and you create ambassadors out of a large part of those great employees at Cargill?

Pilar: Yeah, I think communicating in a more proactive and strategic way is always key. Whether you’re thinking about your internal audiences or external audiences is super important, and we are definitely doing our part. We’re a private company and therefore, we are probably expected to communicate, or report less. Nonetheless, we have taken a very proactive and strategic approach around communicating internally, but also externally, because our customers, it is important for our customers, it is important for our partners, our suppliers, our farmers. So, we are definitely taking a more strategic approach about the work we do. Again, it begins to me less about the headlines, and the big commitments, and what about the impact that we are truly having around the world. It is about explaining the criticality of how we are embedding sustainability as part of the business strategy, and really driving the acceleration of our sustainability strategy through our business leaders. But truly having discussions about what is that everybody, what is the rule that every employee has to play? Little things like projects that help us introduce the use of energy at a plant. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a plant. Improve the use of water at one of our animal nutrition feed mills. I can give you many examples of how employers have raised their hands and said, “Hey, I have an interesting idea. Here’s what I think we should be thinking about.” Many of those we have gathered through just to give you an example. The sustainability data challenge and we introduced a sustainability data challenge, and we challenge all the employees around the world to give us ideas, initiatives that could be important to help us advance sustainability strategy. I was thrilled and excited to see the creativity, the level of boldness, and just the great ideas that we got from around the world. We celebrated some of them. Some of them are actually probably going to be taken to the next phase of potential commercializing these solutions, and it’s fantastic. So, the more you engage your employees, the more you practically communicate externally. I think it’s helping us communicate clearly our company’s purpose or intent, and how important our company is, and how consequential Cargill is around the world.

John: It’s so interesting. Talk a little bit about ESG. As sustainability and the shift from the linear to circular economy and ESG, all relatively new terminologies and new trends that are here to stay. Thank gosh. But with all new trends, there becomes a need for some form of regulation of our guidelines. Obviously Europe is creating their own set of guidelines. Gary Gensler of the SEC, and other organizations in the United States are creating guidelines around these issues. Then in Asia and South America are, as well. Talk a little bit about the patchwork quilt of guidelines. How difficult is that to navigate, and how can there be some harmonization of these, to make it easier for great leaders like you to navigate these, so you could focus on the main thing, which is the main thing instead of having to worry about this whole disparate patchwork quilt of guidelines that seem to be being created around the world with not a lot of harmonization in mind?

Pilar: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head as it relates to the complexity of the topic particularly from a policy perspective. It’s not just about recording, but it’s around complying. It’s around due diligence. It’s our own expectations from human rights, from climate change, from a deforestation perspective. We work very, very closely with our government relations team as well as the legal team, to first and foremost understand the regulatory changes and policies that are coming to our company. To better understand the impact, the implications both for Cargill and for our customers. Once we do that we have been building capabilities both for reporting transparency, traceability as well as complying with expectations or specifically the EUDR, would be an example together with the business leaders. Because again, we are not dictating. We’re working very, very closely with our business leaders to understand expectations, deadlines and how to comply. But I would say, this is a great example of how we are partnering with customers to better understand the complexity, the potential opportunity to harmonize to the extent that we can. But also potentially to leverage capabilities that can help us and our customers with reporting or due diligence. We still have a long way to go as you know. The deadline, some of them are next year and the year after, but I would say is one that we are taking with great responsibility, we definitely want to comply. We continue partnering with government officials with our GR, government relations team, and the legal team as well as customers were appropriate to tackle this one. The conversations are actually interesting, John. I think everybody is in the same place. So rather than sitting down in your own office, I think we’re saying, let’s sit down and collaborate to the extent that we can, when we can, and if we can. But again, excited with the fact that we are building these capabilities and we feel confident that we’ll support our customers with what is expected from a compliance perspective.

John: Pilar, we can’t open up any day the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or turn on CNBC or Bloomberg, and all wonderful other business news outlets without hearing the terminology AI. How does AI get employed, embedded into Cargill’s practices to help your sustainability to impact efforts?

Pilar: Yeah, it’s a really good question, and I think it is the buzzword of the moment, AI, whether it is for cybersecurity for technology, for efficiencies, and plant improvements. We are definitely thinking about how we can use AI to help us improve our processes to be more efficient, more effective as well as supporting our customers? I would say we’re looking at it from a couple of ways or angles. One is related to reporting. So automating our parts of our traceability and transparency to become more effective and improve the quality of reporting. That could be one, but I think the other one, and that’s probably not so soon, which would be technical solutions in partnership with farmers. That can help our farmers be more efficient and more effective. I think it is too soon for us to talk about a specific tangible solution in the sustainability space. Other than, again, probably the solutions that we are developing around transparency and traceability. So, as I mentioned before, we operate many supply chains around the world. One of those is the I had the opportunity to visit West Africa, I think two and a half years ago, and understood the criticality and the complexities of farms in Koforidua in Ghana. So together with our customers, our teams develop a digital solution called CocoaWise. It’s a platform that helps farmers provide or input the data related to their farm. So the size of the farm, the geolocation of the farm, the specifics around, greenhouse gas emissions, number of people that work at the farm, capture all that data and make it accessible for our customers, which I think is an amazing example of how we are leveraging technology. Again, I think it is a huge opportunity for Cargill. Also, one that we are exploring carefully and thinking about what opportunities do we prioritize.

John: The largest Cargill, do you put out now, a sustainability impact report on an annual basis as an internal scorecard not only for all of your colleagues to look at, and be proud of, but also, for your customers and other people that are part of your massive ecosystem?

Pilar: Yes, we do, and we published our latest ESG report last year in November before CAF, and we are obviously getting ready to publish our next report in November 2024. You can see it on cargill.com website. It’s a very comprehensive report, but also a great opportunity to understand the impact stories. We talk about the environmental side, the social side, the community efforts, and our focus around prioritizing our employees. Prioritizing our workforce. I’m very, very proud of the report. It is on our website. It includes our ESG scorecard as well as impact stories around the world. Coming up, just for everybody who is listening, we’ll publish the next one in November 2024.

John: Pilar, you’re in a very important role in a very large and iconic brand. Where do you find your inspiration and benchmarking? Do you benchmark against just other food-related companies when you’re looking for impact and sustainability inspiration and aspirational opportunities? Where do you look at? That’s maybe not in the same industry for your inspiration to get you excited every day about how far you could take this. Because as you and I know, sustainability, there’s no finish line. It’s just a journey.

Pilar: It is. I’ll talk about the inspiration piece first, and I’ll give you two examples that make me so proud of Cargill’s employees. Again, I get my inspiration from our teams around the world. I have the honor and the privilege to work with the most talented people around the world. It’s not just my team in global impact, but it is each of the 160,000 people that work for Cargill. I haven’t met all of them, but certainly I have met many throughout my experience of working and living abroad, but also in my business trips around the world. I would say, I mean, I grew up in Columbia. I mentioned this before, and I took my birth certificate for granted, John, because when I was born, my mom came home with me and my birth certificate home and I never even thought about it because I had access to education and health care. But I think I underestimated personally that not every country around the world has a system in place to allow families to get a birth certificate. When I had a chance to visit West Africa, I saw how difficult it is for our farmers to get access to their birth certificate. For one, the system isn’t set up in a way that they have access to getting a birth certificate really quickly. Secondly, it becomes really expensive for a family to afford a birth certificate. So, together with our employees in West Africa, partnering with local community organizations, we set up a system where we allow families to get a birth certificate for their children for free, which gives them an identity, access to education, and access to school. It makes me very proud because our teams didn’t give up, didn’t give in and didn’t say, “Well, okay, there’s not a whole lot we can do.” But they worked really, really hard, the local Cargill teams in West Africa to make it happen. So that’s how I get my inspiration. Just an example of little things that make a difference. Small steps really have a huge impact, especially knowing that today, we have granted over 40,000 birth certificates in West Africa, and that’s a lot. That is huge.

John: That’s a lot.

Pilar: The other one I would say, it’s innovation, and you ask the question before. So we all know that greenhouse gas emissions within food, agriculture and transportation accounts for about 30% of the total greenhouse gasses in the world.

John: Right.

Pilar: So we focus a lot on agriculture and food; that’s the primary industries. But we have an ocean transportation team that challenge themselves, and started thinking outside of the box. So, what is possible to reduce emissions, or greenhouse gas emissions within ocean transportation? So we move a lot of food through vessels in the ocean, and in partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation, Yara and BAR Technologies our teams came up with a concept that many people said that is just not going to happen. That is impossible. That’s not going to work, and today it is a reality. So our teams develop giant wind sails to put on our vessels, and we are talking about 150 feet high on vessels that harness the power of wind to move these vessels using the power of wind. The first vessel, which is the Pyxis Ocean– and you can also Google it, you can find it online– actually move food around the world, from China, Brazil into Europe. I think that is a great example that truly inspires me, and says, “How can we raise the bar? How can we do more? How can we continue finding and identifying these great opportunities or these great partnerships that can help us in coming up with what many people thought was not possible? That’s my source of inspiration.

John: I love it. Now, Pilar, we’re halfway through 2024, and so we have the rest of the year to go. When you look at what gets you excited right now, about opportunities that you’re working on with your colleagues at Cargill to create more impact and more resiliency at Cargill for you and for your customers and ecosystem of everyone you get to touch, what gets you most excited. What one or two most things that– what projects are you really excited about as we have another six months left in this year?

Pilar: So what gets me excited is, again, number one; the people that I get to work with. Number two; we are problem solvers. We love to think about this challenge of climate change, food insecurity, partnering with great organizations around the world, and tackling these issues. But I would say, I’m excited about the fact that we are gaining momentum, John. That we are finding solutions that have been accepted and supported by customers and farmers. I’m feeling that we are advancing our sustainability strategy across the company. Because of the complexity and the size and how consequential our companies are, I’m feeling that we are moving the needle in a positive way, and that is exciting. When you have customers calling you, when you have farmers calling you, when you have employees interested and excited about the future of our company, that makes me super excited. I’m just privileged to be the CSO of Cargill, and ahead of global impact. It’s an amazing company. It’s a consequential company. It’s a company that leaves our values, family-owned. We’re excited about what is possible in terms of increasing food securities, supporting farmers, and really making a difference every day.

John: I love your mission. Your purpose is to nourish the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way. Tremendous, tremendous, and thank you for your time today, Pilar. I hope you get to come back on the show because the journey is long, and it’s not easy. But it’s fascinating and important to have great leaders like you share this journey to inspire others out there that are just getting on the journey, or in some other point, where they are to get inspired by you, because I’m inspired by you, and it’s just wonderful to have you on today. For our listeners and viewers to find Pilar and her colleagues, and all the important work they’re doing in sustainability at Cargill, please go to www.cargill.com. Pilar, thanks again for your time today, but more importantly, thank you, and all your colleagues at Cargill, for making the world a better place.

Pilar: I appreciate that. Thank you for having me, John, and looking forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you.

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