Concerns related to food touch all our lives deeply and personally. Food shapes people’s sense of dignity; its scarcity can breed conflict and violence; its distribution raises issues of justice; it can threaten communities and individuals; and impacts environmental sustainability — all are part of MMA’s Stewardship Investing Core Values.

MMA has been in recent dialogue with food companies regarding the safety and security of their supply chain. MMA co-filed a resolution with Yum! Brands in December, calling for a thorough sustainability report on the company’s supply chain. MMA withdrew the resolution in April due to the Yum!’s responsiveness and willingness to dialogue. Yum! Brands is the parent company of fast food restaurants including Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Long John Silvers.

MMA met with Hormel managers in February to discuss their latest sustainability report and suggest improvements, and help strategize about ways to decrease energy use and pollution. MMA also has continuing conversations with ConAgra management about improving the environmental impact of their operations. Hormel and ConAgra are two of the nation’s largest food corporations, owning hundreds of household food brands.

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Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” -Matthew 19:14 (NIV)

Every day tens of millions of children are forced – by outright coercion or economic desperation – to work to help their families survive. MMA believes that a reality that limits the health and potential of future generations is incongruous with the vision God has set before us. All children—like our own—deserve the opportunity to be educated, to learn a trade and to just be children. The role they must play in some parts of the world indicates the failures in the economic system as a whole.

MMA has participated in a letter-writing campaign to reach companies who source cotton from Uzbekistan, imploring them to pressure the government of Uzbekistan to rid the industry of forced child labor. The Uzbek government is complicit in human rights abuses involving children, going as far as to close schools to force the nation’s children to pick in the cotton fields. Cotton is Uzbekistan’s most valuable export and the material finds its way onto the shelves of most global clothing and apparel retailers.

In March-May 2008, concerned investors sent letters to 113 companies which source Uzbek cotton. Of those companies, 28 responded to the letter and began dialogue with investors on how to improve the situation. The latest campaign MMA is joining is a second round of communication with companies that were either unresponsive or responded weakly to the first letter.

The goals of the Uzbek Cotton Campaign are to:

1) Leverage the purchasing power of U.S. and international companies to stop the use of forced labor and forced child labor throughout their supply chains in Uzbekistan and globally

2) Encourage the creation of a credible tracking system to record and track the harvesting practices and country of origin of cotton used in global supply chains, which can then be applied to other industries

3) Use the position of investors and corporations to engage the U.S. government and international institutions to address eradicating forced labor in Uzbekistan and globally.

The charge to care for God’s creation and leave a better world for future generations is a responsibility we all carry. The MMA Praxis Intermediate Income Fund exhibits this stewardship investing value by investing in bond issues that help finance major wind and solar energy projects.

One of these projects is the Biglow Canyon Wind Farm in Sherman County, Oregon. This wind farm is a project of Portland General Electric Company (PGE) and will eventually include 217 wind turbines – 76 are already operational and generating electricity. The Biglow Canyon facility will help PGE with its plans to satisfy Oregon’s renewable energy standard, which requires the utility to meet 15 percent of its load with renewable resources by 2015 and 25 percent by 2025.

The second bond investment is in FPL Energy/Caithness Funding Corp’s solar farm in the Mojave Desert of California. The bond issue was used to fund construction of two 80 Megawatt solar electricity generating stations and continues to help finance other aspects of the project. The solar electricity generated is sold to Southern California Edison, an electric utility.

Combined, these investments are valued at around $1.2 million. When possible, MMA seeks to invest in projects that produce clean, renewable energy.

Bank of America’s (BAC) annual meeting took place last week, amid major investor dissatisfaction with the way the company has been run. The contentious meeting lasted over four hours, pitting angry shareholders against BAC management. There were a number of shareholder resolutions on the ballot, and many of them received substantial support.

The shareholder resolution MMA co-filed at BAC on predatory credit card practices received a strong vote of 33.38%, 43.06% if abstentions are included. BAC is one of six companies where MMA filed the resolution; three resolutions were withdrawn due to productive dialogue and the three were kept on the ballot at BAC, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase. MMA believes that BAC’s troubles are partially due to poor credit card lending practices that created short term profits but long term pain for the company, in addition to placing further stress on customers.

Another shareholder resolution called for the separation of CEO and Chairman duties – a way to improve corporate governance and criticize the work of CEO and Chairman Ken Lewis. Lewis was forced to step down as chairman of the board after this proposal passed by 50.34% of the vote. This was the first time that a company in the S&P 500 has been forced by shareholders to strip a CEO of chairman duties, according to RiskMetrics. You can read about it here.

I attended the Discover meeting in Chicago on Tuesday to deliver a shareholder statement on predatory credit card practices, which is shown below. The meeting was short (around 30 minutes) and went well. I met with Craig Streem (shareholder relations), Simon Halfin (senior counsel) and Kathryn McNamara Corley (general counsel), who were welcoming and made sure all the logistics were taken care of. And I also got to speak with CEO/Chairman David Nelms for about five minutes before the meeting began. He seemed to be somewhat informed about our discussions, and he listened well to what I said, and himself said all the right things about what Discover is doing to strengthen consumers and the company. We’ll see, I guess.

I read our statement during the Q & A session near the end of the meeting. I could tell the people in attendance were very interested, including the board of directors and the many employees in the audience. Our statement seemed to clearly be the most interesting part of a rather ordinary meeting. Mr. Nelms responded in general to the statement, briefly and cordially. I made sure to state that we look forward to further dialogue.

Here is the statement I read:

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Goshen, Ind. – MMA Praxis Mutual Funds and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) announced today that shareholder resolutions addressing predatory credit card practices will appear on the ballots of the nation’s three largest credit card companies. These harmful practices, shareholders say, helped build up nearly $1 trillion in high-cost, unsecured debt that is burdening consumers and undermining critical financial institutions at the heart of the current economic downturn. Concerned investors are also in active discussions with American Express, Discover Card, Capital One and Wells Fargo on similar issues.

“Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America drive more than 60% of the credit card business in the United States. Their past practices, intentional or not, played a significant role in shaping the over-leveraged consumer lending environment we have today. We are calling on these important companies to do more than make incremental improvements in their practices. Our economy–and the banks themselves–need new models for consumer lending that strengthen borrowers, rather than weaken them,” said Mark Regier, Stewardship Investing Services Manager for MMA Praxis and lead filer for the resolution at JP Morgan Chase.

The resolution seeks the creation of a report to shareholders reviewing company practices related to credit card marketing, lending and collections with particular attention those that can be considered predatory or abusive. These tactics include universal default policies, bait-and-switch marketing tactics, hidden fees, and intentionally complicated cardholder agreements. While some approaches have been abandoned under increased public and regulatory scrutiny, shareholders are concerned that too little attention has been focused on the human and economic impact of past practices and the need for more sustainable and transparent approaches.

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MMA’s practice of stewardship investing is informed through our faith tradition, our core value guidelines, and Scripture.

The Bible has a lot to say about money. The central message many people get is that wealth is dangerous, and there is much truth in this message. But it isn’t so much wealth by itself that creates the danger - it is how we use our wealth.

One of the better known passages in the New Testament is the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), a familiar story to many Christians. A man called three of his servants and gave each of them some of his money to take care of while he was away. When he returned, the man asked for an accounting from each of his servants. The servants who used the money productively were praised, while the servant who simply protected it was chastised. Here is a demand that the gifts we have been given (including financial gifts) be used productively.

But there is also the demand of The Great Commandments (Mark 12:28-31). “Which command is the first of all? Jesus answered, ‘Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’”

Derived from these passages, MMA believes there are two primary Biblical demands that inform stewardship investing:

1) Be productive stewards of God’s gifts
2) Care for others

Because understanding the social impact of our investments is a reflection of our faith, MMA seeks to ensure that its portfolios are as aligned as possible to MMA’s stewardship investing core values. Twice annually, MMA updates its stewardship investing restricted lists for both domestic and international portfolios. Working in partnership with KLD Research & Analytics–one of the nation’s leading providers of environmental, social and governance investment research–hundreds of companies are reviewed and evaluated.

In the most recent update, 25 companies were added to the Domestic Restricted List, while 29 were removed. On the International Restricted List, 16 companies were added and 52 were deleted. Because of the breadth of holdings in various portfolios—often exceeding 800 companies at any given time—MMA seeks to maintain as broad a universe as possible. Companies are often added or removed when they first become publicly listed, are bought or merged, or divest/add particular, troubling business units. Some items of particular note:

• Chiquita Brands International was added to the restricted list because of increasing human rights violations in Colombia.

• Sempra Energy was added to the restricted list when its involvement in nuclear power exceeded MMA’s tolerances.

• Eastman Kodak was deleted from the list because it ended significant military contracting activities.

• Matrix International (Malaysia) was added to the restricted list because of its gambling involvement.

• Lagardere, primarily a major French sports and media company, is now available for investment having significantly decreased its ownership in military aerospace contractor, EADS.

•Kikkoman Corporation (Japan) was deleted from the restricted list because it no longer violates MMA’s alcohol screen.