Palm Oil Newsroom

Agricultural company Cargill is fully aware that its business practices contribute to the destruction of rainforests, activists said from Minneapolis.

Activists with environmental advocacy group Rainforest Action Network demonstrated in front of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange to protest Cargill's political influence in the United States.

Protesters said Cargill was responsible not only for the destruction of rainforests in countries like Indonesia but its practices contribute to what Rainforest Action Network described as slave labor.

FORTUNE -- Greg Page's only misgiving about the job offer he received from Cargill in 1974 was that it was from Cargill. He had grown up in tiny Bottineau, N.D., six miles from the Canadian border. His dad was the local John Deere dealer, who also owned an 800-acre hobby farm with 40 cows. "Cargill has historically had probably mixed sentiments about it out on the prairie," says Page. "That's who you sold your grain to." Farmers knew that if they didn't keep their wits about them, they might well get squeezed by the food giant. You knew to "keep a weather eye out," he says.

Two Girl Scouts have earned their merit badge in effecting social change.

Madison Vorva, 16, and Rhiannon Tomtishen, 15, of Michigan started a campaign five years ago urging the Girl Scouts of America to stop using palm oil in its cookies, the Wall Street Journal reports. Now, the company will tell bakers to use as little of the oil as possible, purchase GreenPalm certificates and will try to switch to sustainable oil by 2015.