Target 2.c: Functioning food commodity markets
Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Food price volatility is shaped by the conduct of listed commodity traders and financial firms. 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. The US Senate Levin-Coburn investigation found commodity index traders held 35 to 50 percent of Chicago wheat futures after the CFTC waived position limits, facilitating excessive speculation. Financial-industry lobbying against limits is documented. ISDA and SIFMA sued in 2011 to block the CFTC's Dodd-Frank position-limits rule. Owners of traders, banks and index-fund sponsors can push for disclosure and restraint in speculative positioning and for lobbying alignment. Market rules, reserves and information systems require government and international action, so owners supply a necessary input and others must act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
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
- Hungry for profits: Monopoly power in global agriculture, SOMO, 2024-01-30
- Investigations Subcommittee Releases Levin-Coburn Report On Excessive Speculation in the Wheat Market, U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, 2009-06-23
- ISDA and SIFMA File Lawsuits Challenging Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Rule on Position Limits, International Swaps and Derivatives Association, 2011-12-02
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates member filings asking banks and asset managers to disclose lobbying payments and trade association memberships, including at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and BlackRock in 2025.
2 campaigns on record
Disclose lobbying expenditures, including payments to the trade associations that lobby on the company's behalf.
Result: Challenged by the companies at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and BlackRock; put to a vote at Visa.
Publish an annual report disclosing lobbying policies, payments and recipients for direct, indirect and grassroots lobbying, and payments to tax-exempt organizations that draft model legislation.
With Oblate International Pastoral Investment Trust
Result: 39.4 percent of votes cast in favour, up from 35.6 percent the previous year.
Lobbying proposal gains traction at Goldman Sachs AGM, Governance Intelligence, 2024-04
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 UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.