Food
In shortfall: an estimated 8.2 percent of the global population, about 673 million people, experienced hunger in 2024 according to the UN's State of Food Security report.
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Hunger is concentrated where poverty, conflict and climate shocks meet weak public systems. The pathways out run through humanitarian aid, social protection and national agricultural policy that governments control. Corporate conduct still touches the outcome. SOMO finds that ADM, Bunge, COFCO, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus control 70 to 90 percent of global grain trade and hold unique access to market data. SOMO also finds their 2022 profits tripled against the 2016-2020 average. Lighthouse Reports documented billions of dollars of speculative money surging into agricultural futures funds in the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. Pricing and speculative conduct at listed traders, banks and fund sponsors thus shapes what poor households pay for food. Investors have begun using the proxy on nutrition, as when a ShareAction-led coalition managing 1.68 trillion dollars filed a 2024 resolution at Nestle seeking targets for healthier product sales. Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility members have shifted food company practices before; their resolutions and engagement helped push Perdue, Tyson and KFC to restrict routine antibiotic use in chicken production. No documented corporate lobbying campaign blocks hunger relief itself. If every listed trader, retailer and food manufacturer priced transparently and lobbied for food security rather than against market rules, price spikes would soften at the margin. Yet the incomes, transfers and smallholder productivity that determine whether people can eat sit with governments, donors and hundreds of millions of unlisted farms. Companies have the most influence in the narrower nutrition and price-volatility corners of the food system. The undernourishment headcount that defines this dimension turns mainly on incomes, conflict and public provision, so owners help at the margin rather than carrying the outcome.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Global hunger declines, but rises in Africa and western Asia: UN report, World Health Organization, 2025-07-28
- Hungry for Profits: How monopoly power tripled the profits of global agricultural commodity traders in the last three years, SOMO, 2024-01-30
- The Hunger Profiteers, Lighthouse Reports, 2022-05-06
- Shareholders file health resolution at Nestle, ShareAction, 2024-03-14
- Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries monitors a world out of balance, Nature (Fanning and Raworth), 2025-10-01
- In Response to Investors and Public Health Groups, Meat Producers and Fast-Food Restaurants Restrict Antibiotics in Chicken, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2017-04-13
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated institutional and retail co-filers behind a resolution asking a major grocer to raise the share of its sales that come from healthier products, and secured the target without a vote.
Tesco sets health target in response to shareholder challenge, ShareAction, 2021-03
Filed the resolution at the grain trader Bunge asking it to report on eliminating native vegetation conversion from its soy supply chain, which a majority of shareholders backed.
Co-organised 45 institutional investors pressing the largest meat producers to assess pollution across their operations and feed supply chains and to adopt water stewardship policies.
8 campaigns on record
Set a target to raise the share of sales that come from healthier products, measured against recognized nutrition standards rather than a company-chosen yardstick.
With Legal and General Investment Management, Candriam, La Francaise Asset Management, VGZ, Guy's and St Thomas' Foundation
Result: 11 percent in favor at the April 18, 2024 annual meeting, with 88 percent against and 1 percent abstaining
we found no documented change
Shareholders file health resolution at Nestle, ShareAction, 2024-03-14
Report on if and how the company could increase the scale, pace and rigour of its efforts to eliminate native vegetation conversion in its soy supply chain.
Result: A majority of shareholders backed the proposal; the exact percentage is not stated in source
Increase the proportion of sales that come from healthier products to 65 percent by 2025, publish a strategy for reaching that goal and report annually on progress.
With Robeco, JO Hambro Capital Management, Epworth Investment Management, Jesuits in Britain, Guy's and St Thomas' Charity, The Marmot Charitable Trust, The 1970 Trust
Result: Company agreed before the meeting, so the resolution was not put to a vote
Tesco announced the healthier sales target and committed to publish a strategy and report annually. ShareAction noted the scope covers Tesco own-brand UK stores and excludes Budgens, Londis and international operations.
Tesco sets health target in response to shareholder challenge, ShareAction, 2021-03
Adopt a company-wide policy to phase out antibiotics that matter to human medicine when used to prevent disease rather than treat it, and publish a timetable.
Result: 43.1 percent in favor according to As You Sow. The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reports the February 2018 vote as 43 percent
On November 30, 2018 the company said it would stop using gentamycin and virginiamycin for disease prevention by March 1, 2019. The company attributed the decision to an expert panel it had commissioned rather than to the vote
Report on ending the routine use of antibiotics that matter to human medicine in the company's poultry.
Result: 30 percent in favor at the February 2017 annual meeting
we found no documented change in that year. The company publicly rejected the case for acting
Stop using antibiotics in the chicken it buys except to treat sick birds.
Result: Withdrawn after negotiations, so it did not go to a vote
we found no documented change. The source records the withdrawal but not what the company agreed to
Stop using antibiotics in the chicken it buys except to treat sick birds.
Result: Withdrawn after the company acted, so it did not go to a vote
KFC in the United States agreed to source chicken raised without antibiotics that matter to human medicine
Assess pollution impacts across direct operations and feed supply chains and develop comprehensive water stewardship policies covering permitted and non-compliant discharges, animal waste storage and fertiliser runoff.
With Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
Result: not stated in source
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Doughnut Economics's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.