ADM Earns Foreign Policy Association Social Responsibility Award
ADM’s social investments are conducted through ADM Cares, a corporate giving program that targets up to one percent of the Company’s pretax earnings to initiatives that advance societal improvements in areas that are critical to the Company’s business.
29/05/09 Archer Daniels Midland Company Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President Patricia Woertz accepted the Foreign Policy Association’s Corporate Social Responsibility Award on behalf of the Company’s 27,000 employees during a ceremony at New York City’s Pierre Hotel on May 27.
The award, which honors individuals and companies for demonstrating exceptional corporate citizenship in the communities they serve, recognizes the meaningful role the Company has played in furthering economic, social and environmental progress through the alignment of its corporate strategy and social investments.
“Because ADM serves vital human needs—for food and energy—our work is intimately tied to our social responsibility,” Woertz told the FPA audience. “Our capital and our social investments, therefore, are aimed at enhancing our ability—and the ability of agriculture in general—to meet these vital, growing needs.
“At a time when customers, consumers, policymakers and investors are concerned about the sustainability of the economic model, our environment and the values system that guides business behaviors, we in the corporate sector have before us an unprecedented opportunity to marshal our human and financial resources to make this world—our world—a better, safer and healthier place,” Woertz said.
ADM’s social investments are conducted through ADM Cares, a corporate giving program that targets up to one percent of the Company’s pretax earnings to initiatives that advance societal improvements in areas that are critical to the Company’s business. The program directs support to organizations that promote sustainable agriculture, responsible land stewardship, agricultural education and farm safety, as well as organizations that meet pressing needs in ADM communities, particularly educational programs for children and young adults. In addition, ADM Cares serves as a channel for colleague-to-colleague assistance, disaster relief, volunteer programs and in-kind food donations.
Among ADM’s most notable programs and contributions:
• Through its Socially and Environmentally Responsible Agricultural Practices program, or SERAP, ADM works with west African cocoa farmers to help ensure a sustainable cocoa supply chain while improving incomes, labor conditions, health care, education and social services for local farm workers and community residents.
• ADM and its employees have directed financial support and thousands of hours of volunteer time to Living Lands and Waters, a not-for-profit organization that works to improve the health and cleanliness of major U.S. inland waterways. Most recently, approximately 100 colleagues from ADM’s Quincy, Ill., operations participated in a Mississippi River cleanup in which hundreds of pounds of debris were removed from the water and shoreline.
• In Paraguay, ADM’s emphasis on safety has benefitted both ADM employees and residents of ADM communities throughout the nation. In order to help curb an epidemic of motorcycle accidents in the country, where the two-wheeled vehicles are a common mode of transportation, ADM’s local employees took a safe driving campaign from the workplace into nearby communities, where the push to wear helmets and adopt safer driving practices has helped increase the incidence of helmet use.
