This article appeared as part of a feature in the December 8, 1995 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. See Feature Introduction and Table of Contents.
Control by the Food Cartel Companies:
Profiles and Histories
by Richard Freeman
Here
are strategic profiles of 11 of the principal companies that constitute
the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss food cartel. The profiles confirm that through
multiple forms of concentration, these companies dominate grain, meat,
dairy, and other food production, and the processing and distribution
system of food, all the way to the supermarket. Very little food moves
on the face of the earth without the food cartel having a hand in it.
#1
U.S. grain trader/exporter (25% of market, which is equivalent to
Cargill exporting 25.1 million tons or 1.0 billion bushels of grain); #1
world grain trader/exporter (25% of market, which is equivalent to
Cargill exporting 52.9 million tons, or 2.11 billion bushels of grain);
#1 U.S. owner of grain elevators (340 elevators); #1 world cotton
trader; #1 U.S. manufacturer of corn-based high-protein animal feeds
(through subsidiary Nutrena Mills); #2 U.S. wet corn miller; #2 U.S.
soybean crusher; #2 Argentine grain exporter (10% of market); #3 U.S.
flour miller (18% of market); #3 U.S. meatpacker, through Excel division
(18% of market); #3 U.S. pork packer/slaughterer; #3 U.S. commercial
animal feeder; #3 French grain exporter (15-18% of market); #6 U.S.
turkey producer.
Cargill
raises 350,000 hogs, 12 million turkeys, and 312 million broiler
chickens. In the United States, it owns 420 barges, 11 towboats, 2 huge
vessels that sail the Great Lakes, 12 ocean-going ships, 2,000 railroad
hopper cars, and 2,000 tank cars.
Cargill and its subsidiaries operate 800 plants. It has 500 U.S. offices, 300 foreign offices. It operates in 60 countries.
History:
Shortly after the Civil War, William Cargill, a Scottish immigrant sea
merchant, bought his first grain elevator in Conover, Iowa. In 1870,
with his brother Sam, William Cargill bought grain elevators all along
the Southern Minnesota Railroad, at a time when Minnesota was becoming
an important shipping route. But Cargill's biggest break came when he
bought elevators along the line of James J. Hill's Great Northern
railroad line, which went west of Minneapolis, and into the Red River
Valley as far as North Dakota, and also into South Dakota. Hill was the
business partner of Ned Harriman (father of Averell Harriman), who
became the business agent for England's Queen Victoria's son, Prince
Edward, later King Edward VII. Through a preferential rebate system, and
other arrangements, Hill's rail line helped build the Cargill
operation.
Twice
during the twentieth century, the Cargill firm nearly went under.
William Cargill, Jr., the son of company founder Will Cargill, made some
bad investments in Montana during the first decade of the twentieth
century, and between 1909 and 1917, Cargill hovered on the brink of
bankruptcy. Some British capital came in to rescue the company. William
Cargill, Sr. had a daughter, Edna, who married John MacMillan. The
financiers designated John MacMillan and the MacMillan family to come in
and reorganize Cargill. This was the period in which the MacMillan
family started running Cargill.
Cargill
also nearly went under following the 1929 U.S. stock market crash, and
ensuing Great Depression. There is not a word of what happened to
Cargill Co. during the depression in the History of Cargill, 1865-1945.
But two forces came to the rescue: John D. Rockefeller's Chase National
Bank, which sent its officer John Peterson to help run Cargill.
Peterson became Cargill's top officer. The other force was a
Byelorussian Jewish grain merchant, Julius Hendel, who joined the
company in the late 1920s. It would seem odd at first that a European,
and a Jew at that, would be admitted into the inner councils of a
rock-ribbed Scottish-American firm, but this indicates the international
scope of forces that shape the grain trade. Hendel would later also
school Dwayne Andreas, when Andreas worked for Cargill after World War
II.
During
the mid-1930s, Cargill used cut-throat tactics. In September 1937, corn
was a scarce commodity. The 1936 American crop had been a failure, and
the new crop would not be harvested until October. Cargill bought up
every available corn future, to the tune of several millions of dollars,
and created a squeeze on the market. The Chicago Board of Trade ordered
Cargill to sell some of its futures to relieve the squeeze. Cargill
refused. The CBOT expelled Cargill from the Board of Trade. The U.S.
secretary of agriculture accused Cargill of trying to destroy the
American corn market.
In
1922, Cargill had opened up a New York office; in 1929, it opened an
Argentine office, and it continued to expand, especially after the
Second World War, as the United States exported large quantities of
grain to Europe and other parts of the globe. In 1953, Cargill
established Tradax International in Panama to run its global grain
trade. In 1956, it set up Tradax Genève in Geneva, Switzerland, as the
coordinating arm of Tradax. Tradax subsidiaries were set up in Germany
(Deutsche Tradax, GmbH), England (Tradax Limited), Japan (Tradax
Limited), Australia (Tradax Limited), France (Compagnie Cargill S.A.),
and so forth. Thirty percent of ownership of Tradax is held by old-line
Venetian-Burgundian-Lombard banking families, principally the
Swiss-based Lombard, Odier, and Pictet banks. The financier for Tradax
is the Geneva-based Crédit Suisse, which has been cited repeatedly for
drug-money laundering. On Feb. 7, 1985, the U.S. government caught
Crédit Suisse and other large banks laundering $1.2 billion in illegal
money—much of it suspected drug money—to the First National Bank of
Boston.
In 1977, Cargill's involvement in a "black peseta"-laundering operation at Cargill's offices in Spain was revealed.
Cargill
has been repeatedly cited for "blending"—that is, adding foreign matter
to its grain. For example, an export contract may allow for 8% of the
grain volume that a company is exporting to be foreign matter. If
Cargill's grain load is only 6% foreign matter, it will mix in dirt and
gravel. A Cargill superintendent told the Kansas City Times in
July 1982, "If we've got a real clean load, we'll make sure we hold it
until we can mix it with something dirtier. Otherwise, we'd be throwing
away money."
Cargill
has expanded into every major crop and livestock on the face of the
earth, in over 60 countries. It has also expanded into coal, steel (it
is America's seventh largest steel producer, owning LTV), waste
disposal, and metals. Today, Cargill runs one of the 20 largest
commodity brokerage firms in the United States, trading on the Chicago
and world markets, which is larger than those of most Wall Street
brokerage houses. Another division, Cargill Investor Services, has
offices throughout the United States, as well as in London, Geneva, and
Zurich.
Key personnel and policy:
The combined Cargill and MacMillan families of Cargill own 90% of the
company's stock (the rest is owned by company executives). They are one
of the ten richest families in America: According to the July 17, 1995 Forbes
magazine, the combined Cargill/MacMillan families are worth $5.1
billion, making them richer than the Mellons. Whitney MacMillan, W.
Duncan MacMillan, John Hugh MacMillan III, and Cargill MacMillan, Jr.,
are each worth $570 million.
The
British connections of the MacMillan family are evident. John Hugh
MacMillan II (1895-1960) was the president of Cargill from 1936 until
1957, and was chairman from 1957 until 1960. He was a hereditary Knight
Commander of Justice of the Sovereign Order of St. John, the chivalric
order run by the international oligarchy grouped around the Anglo-Dutch
monarchy. Whitney MacMillan, chairman of Cargill from 1976 until 1994,
was educated at the exclusive British-modeled Blake School (where the
chairman of General Mills was also educated), and then Yale University.
Showing the link with the gangster-ridden Democratic Party of Minnesota, Walter Mondale was elected a director of Cargill.
In
1983-84, the family-controlled Cargill Foundation contributed $50,000
to the University of Chicago's monetarist Economics Department.
#2
U.S. grain trader/exporter (20% of market), and #2 world grain
trader/exporter (20% of market) (according to official Continental
documents). #1 U.S. exporter of soybean products and derivatives
(through joint venture called Conti-Quincy Export Co.); #1 world cattle
feedlot operator (7 feedlots in southwestern and plains states of United
States); #1 shrimp farm in Ecuador; reportedly #2 French grain
exporter; #3 owner of U.S. grain elevators; #3 or #4 U.S. animal feed
manufacturer (through subsidiary Wayne Feed Division); #3 or #4 world
cotton exporter; #8 Argentine grain exporter (7% of market).
Continental
processes and markets 2 billion pounds of poultry, beef, pork, and
seafood, along with 5 million tons of animal feeds and wheat flour. The
company transports nearly 75 million tons of grains, oilseeds, rice,
cotton, and energy products annually, an amount that exceeds the annual
production of almost every country in the world.
Continental
owns a fleet of towboats and 500 river barges. It owns over 1,500
hopper cars. It has offices and plants in 50 countries, on 6 continents.
History:
Simon Fribourg founded the predecessor organization as a
commodity-trading company in Arlon, Belgium in 1813. By the middle of
the nineteenth century, the Fribourg family went into milling, building
mills in Luxembourg and Belgium, especially Antwerp, which, with its
deep harbors and connections to the Rhine River, transported Fribourg
flour and wheat to and from the rest of Europe. Toward the end of the
nineteenth century, Michel Fribourg, a great-grandson of founder Simon,
went with bags of gold to Bessarabia (today Moldova and Romania) to buy
grain. This was a large grain-producing region. By 1914, the heirs of
the family, under the name Fribourg Frères, moved operations to London,
to capitalize on the ability to trade grain internationally. In 1920,
the headquarters moved again, this time to Paris, and the company's name
changed to Compagnie Continentale. Thus, 100 years after its founding
in 1813, the Continental Company had established firm links into the
cities and channels of the European grain trade, as well as to
Australia, through London.
In
1921, the Continental Company opened an office in Chicago, and another
in New York. In 1930, it leased a terminal in Galveston, Texas. During
the Depression of the 1930s, the Continental Company made out like
bandits. As reported in one history, the head of the family, Jules
Fribourg, instructed his New York agent to buy Midwest grain elevators,
which were at depressed prices, with the instructions, "Don't bother to
look at them—just buy them." The Fribourgs lived very, very well. René
Fribourg, the co-head of the company, lived like a Medici prince,
collected gold snuff boxes and Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture, and
dined off eighteenth-century china. But when the Nazi Army invaded
France in June 1940, the Fribourgs fled to America.
In
1968-69, the Fribourgs, working with the Cargill company, and through
an agent of the grain cartel in the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Clarence Palmby, helped destroy the American merchant fleet, by
convincing President Nixon that the "50-50" provision, by which half of
all American grain exports had to be carried on American vessels, should
be abolished, in order to land a large Russian grain deal. Almost all
of the grain went on Russian-bottom boats. Various favors paid off, for,
in 1973, the Russians rewarded Continental by making an unprecedented
purchase from the company of 6 million tons of grain and soybeans. The
head of Continental was and remains Michel Fribourg. His personal
financial adviser, Sasha Maximov, was the son of the last czarist
ambassador to Constantinople, a post usually held by a Venetian agent.
In
1976, Continental was fined $500,000 for short-weighting ships. In the
late 1970s, when Zaire, which was very poor, was unable to pay its
bills, Continental cut off food shipments to that starving nation. In
the 1970s, Continental became the first grain company to sell grain to
China.
Key personnel and policy:
The heir apparent of the company is Michel Fribourg's son, Paul, who,
at the age of 41, is president of Continental. Michel Fribourg,
great-great-grandson of Continental's founder, and his immediate family,
own 90% of Continental's stock (other members of the Fribourg family
own the rest). The Oct. 17, 1994 issue of Forbes magazine lists the worth of Michel Fribourg alone at $1 billion.
#1
French grain exporter; #3 world grain exporter; #4 U.S. grain exporter;
#5 Argentine grain exporter (8% of market); #1 world exporter of grain
to Russia.
Louis Dreyfus operates 47 vessels—bulk carriers, lakers, panamaxes, and chemical and natural gas carriers—worldwide.
History:
Léopold Louis Dreyfus, who was born in Sierentz, France, set up his
wheat trading operations in Basel, Switzerland, at the age of 19, in
1852. He bought wheat from Vojvodina plain, which went to Budapest,
Hungary, for milling, then the milling capital of the world. He also
purchased grain from Moldova and Wallachia (present-day Romania) and
shipped it to Liverpool for milling. In the process, he became close
friends with King Carol I of Romania, whom he charmed so much that he
was appointed a councillor at the king's court. In the first decade of
the 1900s, Léopold Louis Dreyfus was appointed Romania's consul to
Paris.
Léopold
Dreyfus also invested heavily in grain elevators and the grain trade in
Odessa, Ukraine. He began importing Russian wheat into Marseilles,
France. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, he was marketing grain
through a network of offices in Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Mannheim,
Duisburg, in Germany, and Paris, thus having a healthy share of the
German market. Léopold Louis Dreyfus expanded into corn, barley, and
other crops, and as a wholesaler of grain, dealt with Canada, Australia,
and the United States. He moved to Paris, married a Florentine
baroness, and ran a newspaper, L'Intransigent.
In
the 1940s, the company was run by Jean, François, and Pierre Louis
Dreyfus. After the Nazis liquidated France's Vichy government in 1942,
Jean and François left for Argentina and Pierre for London.
Louis
Dreyfus, although privately owned, is also a cooperative under French
law. It owns 49% of the shares of the co-op Union Française des Céréales
(UFC, better known as La Cooperative Lafayette). Under this
arrangement, UFC sells French grain exclusively for itself and Dreyfus,
both within the European Union and to third markets. This allows Dreyfus
to obtain credit at low interest rates from the quasi-official French
banking institution Crédit Agricole, which terms are not available to
purely private corporations.
Louis Dreyfus also has a bank bearing its name, which in the 1970s rose to become the fifth largest private bank in France.
Key personnel and policy:
The current head of the company is Gerard Louis Dreyfus. Gerard is the
son of Pierre Louis Dreyfus and Pierre's first wife, who was the
daughter of an American industrialist. Gerard was educated in the United
States, attended Duke University, attended law school, and worked for a
while at the organized crime-connected law firm Dewey Ballantine.
Gerard now resides in France, and by conservative estimates, he and his
immediate family are worth $0.5-1 billion.
#1
U.S. dry corn miller (through its subsidiary, Lauhoff Grain) (18% of
the market); reportedly #1 Brazilian grain exporter; #2 U.S. soybean
products (soymeal and soy oil) exporter; #3 U.S. grain exporter; #3 U.S.
soybean processor; #4 world grain exporter; #4 U.S. grain elevator
capacity; #7 Argentine grain exporter.
Bunge
operates 50 grain elevators in the United States, most of them located
along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans. It also has a
giant grain export elevator in Quebec City, Canada.
History:
In 1750, in Amsterdam, the Bunge family had started trading hides,
spices, and rubber from Dutch overseas colonies. After a century of
lucrative trade in this area, in 1850, Charles Bunge moved the family
business to Antwerp, Belgium. Charles's two sons established a merchant
monarchy straddling the Atlantic Ocean. Edouard Bunge stayed in Antwerp,
and Ernest Bunge emigrated to Argentina in 1876. With his
brother-in-law George Born, Ernest established the firm Bunge and Born.
In 1897, a Mannheim Jewish grain trader by the name of Alfred Hirsch
joined the firm in Buenos Aires. In 1927, Hirsch became president of
Bunge and Born, and held that position for 30 years.
Hirsch and others at Bunge and Born accumulated estancias—plantations
of hundreds of thousands and even millions of acres of land, many in
the rich soil region of the Pampas plains. The extent of Bunge and Born
domination of the Argentine economy was revealed in 1974, when the
Montoneros terrorists kidnapped the heirs to the firm, Jorge and Juan
Born, and held them for many months. During the time that the brothers
were held in captivity, they revealed that Bunge and Born not only
dominated Argentina's agriculture, but also that Bunge companies
produced 40% of Argentina's paint, one-third of its tin cans, 20% of its
textiles, etc.
Argentine
President Juan Perón attempted to suppress the power of Bunge and Born
and other grain cartel companies in Argentina. When Perón became
President for the first time in 1946, he moved to have the government
buy the grain from the Argentine farmer and export it. The profits were
used to finance the industrialization of Argentina. In 1948, he
established the Institute for the Promotion of Trade (IAPI) to achieve
this purpose. However, the grain cartel companies, weakened by Perón's
reforms, wanted him out of power. In 1955, Perón was deposed and the
IAPI system he had set up was disbanded. When Perón returned to power in
1973, he established a National Grain Board for the same purpose.
Again, Perón was fiercely opposed by the grain cartel companies. He died
in 1974, and was succeeded by his wife, Evita. In 1976, Evita Perón was
overthrown. The National Grain Board was dismantled, and control of
grain and meat exports was returned to the private grain companies.
In
the meantime, Bunge diversified a large share of its capital into
Brazil and the United States. However, the power of Bunge and Born is
still strong in Argentina. The first two ministers of economy in the
government of President Carlos Menem, were executives of Bunge and Born,
first Mor Roig, and Nestor Rapanelli.
Key personnel and policy:
The Born and Hirsch families, which run Bunge and Born today, are each
conservatively estimated to be worth half a billion dollars.
#1 South African grain exporter; #5 world grain trader; #5 or #6 U.S. grain exporter.
History:
Founded in 1877 by George André in Nyon, Switzerland. He imported hard
durum wheat for pasta from Russia. The grain was unloaded at Marseilles
and railed up to Switzerland. In 1937, Frederic Hediger, also Swiss,
came to the United States and founded Garnac, using money from George
André. Garnac became a subsidiary of the André Holding Company. In the
1970s, André was accused, along with Bunge Company, of wrecking the
Spanish corn growers by importing corn at low prices into Spain from the
United States. During the 1970s, after an embargo had been placed on
the commercial activities of what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),
André helped sell Rhodesian grain on the world market through illegal
channels.
Key personnel and policy:
Georges André, a member of a very strict Calvinist sect, lived, until
he died in 1942 at the age of 86, in an Alping chalet in Gstaad,
Switzerland. His neighbor was Axel Springer, the German publishing
mogul. André's three sons, Henri, Pierre, and Eric, inherited the
company. The André family is conservatively estimated to be worth more
than $0.5 billion.
#1
U.S. soybean crusher (between 30 and 35% of market); #1 U.S. wet corn
miller (approximately 50% of market); #1 world processor of combined
grain and oil seed; #1 world producer of ethanol; #1 U.S. producer of
corn-based additive (60% of market); #2 U.S. flour miller (23% of
market); #2 in U.S. grain elevator capacity; #3 U.S. dry corn miller,
through subsidiary Krause Milling (10% of market); #5 or #6 world grain
export trader (combined ADM and Töpfer) (9% of market).
ADM/Töpfer
makes enough flour every year to bake 16 billion loaves of bread and
enough soybean meal to feed 13 billion chickens—twice as many broilers
as the United States produces.
History:
In 1878, John W. Daniels began crushing flaxseed to produce linseed oil
and in 1902 formed Daniels Linseed Company in Minneapolis. George A.
Archer, another experienced flaxseed crusher, joined the company in
1903. In 1923, the company bought Midland Products and adopted the name
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).
In
the United States, the use of the soybean had been pushed by Dr. John
Harvey Kellogg, brother of the Battle Creek, Michigan cereal magnate and
a leading exponent of the cultish health-food "wellness" movement.
Dwayne Andreas, who was born into a Mennonite family in Decatur,
Illinois in 1918, joined his father's R.P. Andreas firm in the
mid-1930s. In 1936, the Andreas family changed the name of the firm to
the Honeymead Company, and in 1939, Honeymead began to diversify from
linseed crushing to soybean crushing. In 1945, when Dwayne Andreas
thought he was about to be drafted—by this time he was chief executive
officer of Honeymead—he sold 60% of the family's Honeymead to Cargill.
From
1946 through 1952, Dwayne Andreas worked for Cargill, learning how to
hedge and speculate in commodities from Julius Hendel, a top European
Jewish grain trader who came to the United States to help salvage
Cargill from disaster in the 1930s. In 1945, Dwayne Andreas met Hubert
Humphrey, who was tied into organized crime. Andreas contributed $1,000
to Humphrey's first senatorial campaign in 1948. Later, writing about
this contribution, Humphrey called it a "spectacularly large amount."
Humphrey and Andreas became intimate. Humphrey was godfather to
Andreas's son. Former U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neill said of Andreas,
"Hubert was his first love." In 1977, Humphrey, then on the Senate
Agricultural Committee, wrote legislation to establish government
supports for sugar, which saved Andreas from huge losses. In the 1980s,
Andreas funded a Hubert Humphrey Room at the Anti-Defamation League's
new headquarters at U.N. Plaza in New York City. While Humphrey lived,
Andreas and Humphrey took 85 trips together.
In
1974, ADM entered into a price-fixing scheme that overcharged the U.S.
government $19 million in sales of soy-fortified food to the Food for
Peace program. As one reporter commented, the money was stolen "either
from the taxpayers or the starving poor, depending on which devout
Mennonite perspective you prefer." ADM was convicted. In 1976, the
company pleaded no contest to federal charges that it had systematically
short-weighted and misgraded federally subsidized grain that was being
shipped abroad.
Andreas's
investment in high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) production prospered,
when the soft-drink industry bought it. By 1983, HFCS accounted for 75%
of sweeteners purchased by Coca-Cola and 50% of Pepsi's sweeteners.
Andreas
became deeply involved in grain sales to Russia and was active in the
U.S.-U.S.S.R. Trade and Economic Council, eventually becoming USTEC's
chairman. In 1984, Andreas met Mikhail Gorbachov for the first time. In
1990, Andreas contributed $1 million to create a Gorbachov Institute in
the United States and Russia.
ADM
purchased a 50% stake in Alfred C. Töpfer International, one of the
most powerful second-tier grain cartel companies. This purchase also
works the other way, with the older, Hamburg-based Töpfer Company, with
extensive roots in Europe, exercising an influence over ADM. The Töpfer
Company has an over 70% equity position in two French firms—Compagnie
Européene des Céréales and G. Muller. The remaining shares in these
companies are held by the Rothschild Group in France. These two French
companies and the Töpfer Company own at least ten large grain elevators
in France and Germany. Also, before the Iron Curtain came down, Töpfer
controlled 50% of the grain imports into East Germany.
Andreas
was always close, as a result of his friendship with Hubert Humphrey,
to the organized crime-linked Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai
B'rith. During the 1980s, Andreas was persuaded by another major grain
trader, Burton Joseph, of the Minneapolis-based S.I. Joseph Company, to
contribute $1 million to the ADL. Andreas made the payments in amounts
of $50,000 to $100,000 per year.
In
1995, the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into fraud
and anti-competitive price-fixing in ADM's handling and marketing of
corn sweeteners and lysine. The latter enhances growth in chickens and
hogs, while making meat leaner.
Key personnel and policy:
Board of directors: Howard Buffett, vice president of ADM and son of
Berkshire Hathaway (men's clothing brand) owner Warren Buffett (at the
beginning of the Justice Department's investigation, Howard Buffett
resigned from ADM board); Robert Strauss, George Bush's ambassador to
Russia, 1991-93, and a long-time friend of Andreas. Strauss is also a
member of the board of British intelligence's chief propaganda
mouthpiece, the Hollinger Corp.; Brian Mulroney, former prime minister
of Canada, and associated with the Hollinger Corp.; several members of
the Andreas family, including Dwayne's brother Lowell Andreas, and his
son, Michael Andreas, who is also ADM's vice chairman and the heir
apparent.
#1
U.S. flour miller (24% of market); #1 U.S. sheep slaughterer (33% of
market), through Sipco and Montfort meats; #2 U.S. beef slaughterer (20%
of market); #2 U.S. pork slaughterer; #4 U.S. dry corn miller (8% of
market);
History:
ConAgra was founded in Omaha, Nebraska in 1919 as Consolidated Mills, a
grain processor. (The name was changed to ConAgra in 1971.) In 1982,
ConAgra bought the Peavey Company. Peavey, along with its Minneapolis
confederates, the Pillsbury and Washburn families, dominated the milling
of American flour, which came up the Mississippi River or along the
railroads from the American Midwest to Minneapolis. This immediately
made ConAgra America's largest flour miller. This was followed by a slew
of purchases in the meatpacking industry, including Armour (1983),
Northern States Beef (1985), E.A. Miller (1987), Montfort (1987), and
Swift (1987).
The
purchase of Montfort Meats typifies the takeovers in the meat industry.
The Colorado-based Montfort Meats was America's third largest
meatpacker, and an independent. In 1986, Cargill Meat Company made a bid
for Spencer Beef. Montfort Meats took legal action to block the
takeover, on the grounds that it would make Cargill too large in the
meatpacking industry, and thus it clearly violated U.S. anti-trust laws.
Even though a local court and a district court ruled in Montfort's
favor, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the takeover. Fearing it was just a
matter of time, and that it could not survive on its own, Montfort
tendered itself for takeover to the giant ConAgra.
ConAgra
also bought Elders, the largest beef producer/processor in Australia
and the largest beef and lamb exporter in the world. ConAgra continued
its takeover binge: Since the mid-1970s, ConAgra has acquired over 100
companies. It bought the Chung King line of foods; Beatrice Foods,
including Butterball Turkeys; Peter Pan peanut butter, and others.
Major brands:
Hunt's Tomato Sauce and Ketchup; Wesson Oil; Banquet TV dinners;
Armour, Swift, Eckrich, and Hebrew National meats; Healthy Choice foods;
Orville Redenbacher popcorn; Peter Pan peanut butter; LaChoy Chinese
foods; Swiss Miss cocoa; Reddi-Whip whip cream.
Key personnel and policy:
Board of directors: Dr. Ronald Roskens, president of Action
International, former president of the University of Nebraska,
reportedly dismissed for pedophilia, and George Bush's director of the
State Department Agency for International Development; Marjorie
Scardino, chief executive of the Economist Newspaper Ltd. and Economist
magazine, which is jointly owned by Britain's Rothschild and Lazard
Frères banking houses, both close to Britain's royal family; Charles
Harper, chairman and chief executive of RJR Nabisco.
#1
U.S. beef slaughterer (26% of market); #1 U.S. pork slaughter (12% of
market). IBP, the largest butcher in the world, accounts for 9 billion
pounds of meat a year, or about 14% of U.S. total. Japan, which consumes
half of all U.S. meat exports, is a major market for IBP.
IBP
was bought in 1981 by Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum Corp.
Occidental sold 49.5% of the company in 1987, and the remaining 50.5% of
IBP in 1991. FMR Corp. is the holding company for Fidelity Mutual
Funds, the largest family of mutual funds in the United States, with
over $300 billion in investments. FMR Corp. is run by Boston Brahmin
oligarchical families, and owns 13% of IBP's stock. FMR is also a large
owner of raw material cartel companies, including shares of 5% or more
in: Homestake Mining, Coeur D'Alene Mines, and Santa Fe Pacific Gold
Corp., three of the largest gold-mining companies in the United States.
History:
Formed in 1960 by A. Anderson and C. Holman, as Iowa Beef Processors;
the first plant was in Denison, Iowa. IBP broke with tradition: It built
the plant in a rural area where the cattle was raised. In 1967, it took
another step: Its Dakota City, Nebraska plant cut the meat and shipped
it, pre-cut, in vacuum packs to stores (called boxed beef). IBP reached a
marketing agreement with Cactus Feeders, the nation's largest
commercial feeder, to supply it with beef cattle. In the early 1990s, it
purchased 40 hog-buying stations from Heinhold Hog, Inc. in Missouri,
Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota.
IBP
makes money by driving down the wages of its workforce and the price of
beef paid to farmers. IBP tried to ban union wages and the union. In
1965, a strike against this IBP policy became so violent that the
governor of Iowa had to intervene to settle it. A 1969-70 strike,
provoked by IBP, resulted in one death. A similar pattern prevailed in
the 1980s. On Aug. 15, 1995, the Wall Street Journal reported:
"In May, the Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested 24 illegal
aliens, who worked for an IBP contractor, at the company's Council
Bluffs plant: a month earlier, 35 illegals were arrested at an IBP plant
in Minnesota."
For
the third quarter of 1995, IBP's net income/profit rose to $85.4
million, an increase of 74% from its net income of $49.2 million during
the third quarter of 1994. But IBP's quarterly sales, for the third
quarter of 1995, were virtually the same as those of the third quarter
of 1994, $3.3 billion and $3 billion, respectively. So how did IBP
nearly double profits on the same sales volume? By driving down the
price of beef paid to the farmer. It is now $60 per hundredweight of
beef, when a price of $75 to $80 is needed for cattle ranchers to break
even. Cattle ranchers are not selling, because they can't afford to
accept the low price.
IBP attempted to get its meat into the New York market by forming ties with the Mafia, which was exposed in trials in the 1980s.
Key personnel and policy:
Board of directors: Wendy Graham, wife of the budget-cutting lunatic
Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.). From 1988 to 1993, Wendy Gramm was George
Bush's chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, during
which time derivatives holdings at large U.S. financial institutions
exploded from $2.5 billion to over $20 billion. In August of this year,
IBP offered free tickets and bus transportation to its employees (paid
for by the Gramm campaign), if they would go to the Iowa Republican
Party Presidential straw poll and vote for candidate Phil Gramm, whom
IBP backs, over local favorite, Kansan Bob Dole. Also on IBP's board is
Alec Courtelis, a Florida real estate developer and the nation's largest
Arabian horse breeder. Courtelis was National Finance co-chairman of
the 1992 Bush-Quayle campaign, and is now Finance Committee head of the
Gramm for President campaign and chairman of the Armand Hammer United
World College.
#1
world food company; #1 world trader in dry milk powder; #1 world trader
of condensed milk; #1 seller of chocolate and confectionary products;
#1 world seller of mineral water; #3 U.S. coffee firm.
In
1994, there were 13 countries in which Nestlé had 1 billion Swiss
francs or more in sales; the countries (with sales in billions of Swiss
francs in parenthesis): U.S. (SF 12.2); France (SF 6.5); Germany
(SF 6.1); U.K. (SF 3.3); Italy (SF 3.2); Japan (SF 3.1); Brazil
(SF 2.9); Mexico (SF 1.8); Spain (SF 1.8); Australia (SF 1.1);
Switzerland (SF 1.1); the Philippines (SF 1.1); Canada (SF 1.0).
Nestlé's has 400 manufacturing facilities on 5 continents.
History:
In 1866 in Cham, Switzerland, Charles Page founded the Anglo-Swiss
Condensed Milk Company. In 1867, in nearby Vevey, Henri Nestlé founded
Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé. In 1905, Nestlé and the Anglo-Swiss
Condensed Milk Company merged.
In
1922, a banker, Louis Dapples, took over management of the company, and
eventually became chairman of Nestlé. Over the next 70-odd years,
Nestlé made one takeover after another, especially during the past ten
years. It controls the export of powdered milk to the developing sector.
Brand names:
Nestlé's chocolate mix and chocolate milk; Nestlé's candy bars,
including Crunch, Butterfinger, Kit-Kat, After Eight dinner mints;
Peter-Cailler-Kohler Chocolats; Perrier, Vittel, Fuerst Bismarck,
Spring, Arrowhead, and other brands of bottled mineral water; Libby
fruit juices; Hills Brothers, Zoega, and Dallmayr roasted coffee;
Carnation sweetened condensed milk and Carnation breakfast bars;
Coffee-Mate creamer; Stouffer's restaurants, frozen foods, and other
products; Findus and Surgela frozen products in Europe; Nescafe instant
coffee; Taster's Choice coffee; Nestea instant tea; Buitoni spaghetti
and Contadina tomato paste, sauce, and Italian food products; Friskies
cat food; and Alpo dog food.
Nestlé's
also owns Alcon eye products, such as Opti-Free, and 26.3% of L'Oreal,
the world's largest shampoo and cosmetics company.
Key personnel and policy:
Board of directors: Nestlé chairman Helmut Maucher is also on the board
of J.P. Morgan Bank, British intelligence's leading bank in the United
States, and Allianz Versicherung of Munich, an insurance firm; Fritz
Leutwiller, who was also chairman of Swiss National Bank and, in
1982-84, of the Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of
the central banks; Paul Volcker, chairman of U.S. Federal Reserve Board
of Governors 1978-85, currently chairman of Blackstone Group, a Wall
Street investment firm.
#1
world producer of ice cream; #1 world producer of margarine; one of the
top five world exporters of dry milk powder; #1 European tea seller; #2
or #3 world producer of soaps and detergents; one of the top five world
crushers of palm oil and palm kernel; one of world's largest producers
of olive oil.
History:
In 1885, Englishman William Lever and his brother James formed Lever
Brothers. It produces Lux, Lifebuoy, Rinso, and Sunlight soaps. In the
Netherlands, rival buttermakers Jurgens and Van den Berghs were pioneers
in margarine production. In 1927, they created the Margarine Union, a
cartel that owned the European market. In 1930, the Margarine Union and
Lever Brothers merged, forming Unilever. This paralleled the merger of
Royal Dutch Oil Company and Britain's Shell Transport Company at the
turn of the century, to form the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company, the
world's largest. Both Unilever and Royal Dutch Shell are corporate
entities that express the joint interests of the Anglo-Dutch monarchies.
Brand names:
Breyers, Good Humor, Klondike, Magnum, Carte D'Or, and Popsicle brands
ice cream; Bird's Eye and Iglo frozen foods; Ragú and Chicken Tonight
pasta and meal sauces; Lipton Tea and Brooke Bond Tea (leading European
tea company); Lipton soups; Continental Cup-a-Soup; Country Crock, Blue
Bonnett, Flora, Becel and Rama margarines; Bertoli and La Masia olive
oil; Wishbone salad dressing; Boursin and Milkana cheeses; Bon Vivant
cookies; Pepsodent, Close-Up, and Mentadent tooth pastes; Dove, Lux, and
Lever soaps; Wisk and Surf laundry detergents; Vaseline Intensive Care,
Pond's Cold Cream, Elizabeth Arden, Fabergé (Brut, Chloe) and Calvin
Klein skin care cosmetics.
Key personnel and policy:
Board of directors: Lord Wright of Richmond, GCMG, from 1986-91,
permanent undersecretary of state at the British Foreign and
Commonwealth Office and head of the Diplomatic Service, also a director
of Barclay's Bank; Sir Derek Birkin, from 1985-91, chairman of
London-based RTZ (Rio Tinto Zinc), the world's second largest mining
company, in which the Queen of England has a substantial investment;
Frits Fentener Van Vlissingen, from 1974 through 1991, member of the
Supervisory Board of the giant Rotterdam Bank of the Netherlands; Sir
Brian Hayes, former permanent secretary of Britain's Ministry of
Agriculture; Viscount Leverhulme, KGTD, grandson of William Lever,
largest stockholder in Unilever, and funder and builder of Prince
Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the coordinating arm for
British intelligence.
#2
world food company; #1 U.S. food company (10¢ of every $1 Americans
spend on branded food items in the United States is for a Philip
Morris/Kraft food product); #1 world processed cheese seller; #1 world
cream cheese seller; #1 U.S. seller of luncheon meats; #1 U.S. seller of
powdered soft drinks; #1 world cigarette producer; #1 U.S. and Japan
cigarette producer (44.8% of U.S. market); #2 U.S. beer brewer, through
Miller Brewing; #3 world beer brewer; #3 world confectionery business;
#3 U.S. breakfast cereal company (Post cereals).
History:
In 1847, Philip Morris opened a London tobacco store, and by 1854 he
was making his own cigarettes. In 1919, U.S. financier George Whelan
purchased the rights to market Philip Morris brands such as Marlboro,
Ovals, Players, and Cambridge. Ten years later, Whelan's successor began
manufacturing the cigarettes in Richmond, Virginia.
In
1985, Philip Morris bought General Foods, producer of Jello brand
gelatin and Post cereals, for $5.75 billion. In 1988, Philip Morris
spent $12.9 billion to acquire Kraft Foods.
Brand names:
Kraft Products, such as Kraft Mayonnaise and Miracle Whip and Kraft
cheese; Velveeta; Philadelphia Cream Cheese; Dairylea; Cool Whip; Post
cereals; Entenmann's Cookies; Jello; Kool-Aid, Country Time, Crystal
Light and Tang powdered drinks; Maxwell House, Sanka, Maxim, Gevalia,
Jacobs, Kaffe Hag, and Carte Noire coffees; Milka and Toberlone
confectionery chocolates and candies; Jacobs Suchard, a Swiss maker of
chocolate and coffee (Philip Morris bought it in 1990; Jacobs Suchard is
one of the ten largest European food companies); Tombstone Pizza;
Miller, Miller Lite, Molson, Lowenbrau, Red Dog beers; Oscar Mayer,
Louis Rich, Simmenthal and Negroni lunch meats; Lender's Bagels; Budget
Gourmet frozen dinners; Shake N' Bake; Stove Top Stuffing; Log Cabin
syrup; Good Seasons salad dressing; Marlboro, Lark, Philip Morris,
Benson and Hedges, Chesterfield, Virginia Slims, Merit cigarettes.
Key personnel and policy:
Board of directors: Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation.
The Australian-born Murdoch runs major propaganda organs for the
British, including his company's flagship newspapers, the Times and Sunday Times of London; Richard Parsons, president of Time Warner. The publisher of Time
magazine and of Warner records, Time Warner is partially owned by the
mob Bronfman family of Seagram's Liquor, which family is reputedly a
major force in the world's illegal narcotic trade; Stephen Wolf, senior
adviser of Lazard Frères investment bank.
Philip
Morris is one of the largest corporate sponsors of Prince Philip's WWF.
It is one of the largest smugglers of illegal cigarettes, both for sale
and as barter for other illegal goods. It has been cited repeatedly in
the Italian press as one of the world's largest marijuana dealers.
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This article appeared as part of a feature in the December 8, 1995 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. See Feature Introduction and Table of Contents.
World Food Shortages Crisis Follows
Decades of Imposed Import-Dependency
by John Hoefle and Marcia Merry Baker
The
current world food crisis is usually portrayed as a grains shortages
crisis. Annual world grains output (grains of all kinds, including
wheat, corn, barley, millet, rice, etc.) has stagnated, or declined, to
around 1,900 million tons or less for the past five years (see Figure 1),
at a time when, based on 1980s population figures, over 3,000 million
tons of grains produced annually is required to ensure that dietary
needs are met globally. There is something radically wrong when the
total of the world's grains harvested stagnates, or drops.
The picture is even worse on a per-capita basis (see Figure 2).
For everyone to have decent daily rations, whatever the relative
percentages of cereals, animal proteins, and the other food groups that
anyone's dietary preferences dictate, there needs to be well over 14
bushels of grains available in the world food chain per person, on
average. But millions are without even their daily bread. For millions,
there are fewer than 10 bushels of grain per capita in the food chain.
Production is below 1980s level of use
An indication of just how low annual grains output is, is that production is below
the average utilization level of the 1980s (see Figure 1). Today's
global grains output of about 1,900 million tons a year, means that
annual grains output is dropping below the level of yearly global grains
utilization (for direct human consumption, livestock feed, seed, and all other uses) which existed for several years in the 1980s (see EIR,
Sept. 15, 1995). This means that more and more people don't have the
food they need. And whatever stocks of grains were on hand in recent
years as carryover from harvest to harvest or reserves for emergencies,
have been, relatively speaking, wiped out. Only in exceptional places,
such as India, are there, at present, significant reserves.
Today,
world grains carryover stocks are at the same absolute levels they were
20 years ago. Stocks have dropped from 460-490 million metric tons in
the late 1980s, down to less than 250 million tons projected for
year-end 1995—the level of stocks in 1969.
The
only reason that there are stocks reported at all is that consumption
itself (for livestock feed, cereals consumption, etc.) is declining.
This has been apparent for the past few years.
If
this grains gap is obvious on the crude scale of world tonnage
statistics, it is even more manifest at the local level, where there are
millions of undernourished people at points of need around the globe.
Thus,
the situation in grains production and shortages is a good marker of
the overall food crisis. Dozens of countries, with millions of people,
have gone from national self-sufficiency in basic grains, to dependency
on imports or donated cereals aid. And now the grain isn't there. Figure 3
shows the decline in annual global food aid in grains from the World
Food Program over the past 10 years, from a peak of 15 million tons,
down to little more than 7 million tons this year.
Decline in national food self-sufficiency
The decline in national food self-sufficiency for certain food items is shown in Table 1
for 15 selected countries at two points in time, 1963 and 1990. The
countries analyzed include the 13 nations specified in National Security
Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM-200), prepared under Henry Kissinger in 1974
(see article), plus the former U.S.S.R. and China (see Figure 4). All 15 nations are hereafter called the "targetted" group.
By
1990, there were significant drops in food self-sufficiency over the
prior 27-year period. Look first at cereals (Table 1, column one). In
1963, Mexico was 100% self-sufficient in grains output; it was a
grains-exporting nation. As of 1990, Mexico was only 79%
self-sufficient, i.e., a grains importing nation. The situation is even
worse today.
Elsewhere
in the Western Hemisphere, Brazil was about 90% self-sufficient in
cereals in 1963, but dropped to 76% self-sufficient in 1990. Colombia
remained about the same, staying at only 86-87% self-sufficient. Other
nations in Ibero-America (not shown), saw drastic declines in basic
grains self-sufficiency. For example, Haiti, in 1970, was close to 95%
self-sufficient; but, as of 1990, self-sufficiency had dropped down to
45%.
In
Africa, Egypt was 84% self-sufficient in cereals production in 1963,
and only 62% self-sufficient in 1990. Ethiopia was over 100%
self-sufficient in grains supply in 1963, and dropped down to 81%
self-sufficient in 1990. Nigeria remained at 99% self-sufficiency in
grains the entire period, but, as will be shown below, grains declined
markedly as a component of the daily diet. Other locations in Africa saw
drastic declines in grain self-sufficiency. For example, Algeria was
76% self-sufficient in grains in 1970; in 1990, Algeria was only 44%
self-sufficient.
On
the Asian subcontinent, the cereals self-sufficiency ratios show no
declines for India, which went from 96% to 105% over 1963 to 1990, and
Pakistan, which stayed at the 93-95% level. India has managed to
stockpile as much as 40 million tons of grains as of year-end 1995, and
may undertake certain exports. However, Bangladesh has gone from 106%
grains self-sufficiency in 1963, down to 87%, and is subject to wide
swings from year to year in grains supplies.
In
Southeast Asia, wide annual swings in staple grains are also now
common. In 1963, Indonesia was 89% self-sufficient in cereals; in 1990,
it was 100% self-sufficient. But in several years since then, it has
fallen back to rely on imports. Similarly, the Philippines stayed at
80-83% self-sufficiency levels for 1963 and 1990, but in recent years
has seen growing dependency because of shortfalls in rice. Thailand,
from which the cartel trading companies export many kinds of commodities
(corn, livestock feed, meat, processed foods, etc.), was 159%
self-sufficient in cereals in 1963, and 131% in 1990.
In Western Asia, Turkey was 113% self-sufficient in grains in 1963, and was still 99% self-sufficient in 1990.
China,
throughout the period, was 95-100% self-sufficient in grains, with
changes from year to year from being a net importer or exporter.
The
Soviet Union, likewise, remained grains import-dependent throughout the
1963-90 period, showing about 87-89% cereals self-sufficiency.
Grains supply is misleading
However, restricting the food crisis to the metric of the grains supply situation is a deliberately misleading practice (see article)
which leaves out the essentials of the crisis that has come, over the
past 30 years, to extend throughout the entire national agricultural
sectors and food supply systems.
Many
of these 15 nations also became supply-short and import-dependent,
i.e., experienced food self-sufficiency declines, for other basics in
their diet. Also shown in Table 1 are pulses (peas, beans), oils
(tropical, olive, corn, or other vegetable fats), and milk (including
dairy products other than butter).
Note
the sharp declines in food self-sufficiency in non-grains diet staples.
For example, for pulses, Mexico dropped in self-sufficiency from 104%
in 1963 down to 85% in 1990; in oils, from 110% down to 57%; and in
milk, from 87% self-sufficiency down to 68%. Brazil became a source of
soybean oil exports over this period—for the cartel companies.
Egypt's
self-sufficiency in pulses and oils declined. Nigeria, which had been a
source of cartel tropical oils exports, experienced a decline as well.
In 1963, Nigeria was 207% self-sufficient in oils, and in 1990, only
102% self-sufficient.
On the Indian Subcontinent of Asia, note the declines in Bangladesh's self-sufficiency in pulses and milk between 1963 and 1990.
In
Southeast Asia, various patterns are apparent. The Philippines dropped
in self-sufficiency from 97% to 47% in pulses, and also declined as a
source of tropical oils commodities for cartel export.
China
remained relatively the same in self-sufficiency for these staples.
And, likewise, Turkey and the former U.S.S.R. did not experience radical
changes.
Overall,
the increase in food import-dependency during 1963-90, although hailed
by United Nations officials and the commodities cartel-backed "experts"
and others as reflecting geographical "competitive advantages,"
"consumers' rights to access world markets," or other such euphemisms,
in fact, reflects the impact of successive years of International
Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities and Bretton Woods policies, in
which developing nations were denied the means to build up needed
agricultural infrastructure (energy, water, transport, handling,
storage, processing) to provide for national food supplies.
Over this period, nutrition levels have dropped
in most countries, as nations were increasingly forced into food
import-dependency. At the same time, cartel commodities companies made a
killing in profits off of their domination over both the export-import
trade, and domestic food processing and distribution.
The
deficits in food supplies shown in the food self-sufficiency ratios in
Table 1, are not measured against what people ought to be eating for a
decent diet, but rather, merely show what part of their diet, however
inadequate, is imported. Look at what this means in the case of Mexico.
Figures 5 and 6
show the drop in cereals self-sufficiency in Mexico from 1970 to 1994,
and the drop in per-capita cereals consumption (whether for direct
consumption, or via the animal protein cycle) over the same time period.
It is estimated that up to one-third of the Mexican population is now
suffering some form of malnutrition. In the spring of 1995, the federal
government declared 12 official hunger zones in the republic.
Start from food use profiles
To
provide an overview of the world food crisis, apart from any one food
commodity, one country, one crop season or harvest, we here publish a
series of figures based on the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
agricultural database. The figures take 14 basic food groups common to
most countries' diets, and their tonnages in terms of annual supplies,
over the time period approximately 1960-90, in terms of several ratios,
including production compared to "supply" (the quantity available from
production, plus the net adjustment of stocks, plus the net adjustment
for imports and exports), and production and supply per capita.
The 14 food groups are listed in Table 2. For purposes of comparison, we have not listed seafoods.
We
begin by looking at the world profile of annual utilization of the
total tonnages of these 14 food groups, and major geographic regions. We
then proceed to look at the food supply and import-dependency ratios on
a per-capita and national basis for two selected groups of nations, as
explained below.
Figure 7
shows the total tonnages of annual use of the 14 selected food groups,
from 1961 to 1990, in terms of how much tonnage goes for feed (food for
livestock), food (direct human consumption, the largest tonnage),
"other" uses (ranging from using biomass for fuel, to plastics),
processing (intermediate stages of food preparation), seed, and waste.
The
increase from less than 3 billion tons of basic food commodities in the
food supply to close to 6 billion tons over the roughly 30-year period,
comes out to a change per capita of from about 2,050 pounds of food
commodities per person in 1963, to about 2,200 pounds per person in
1990. However, on a regional and national scale, the volumes and ratios
differ greatly.
The next series of figures (Figures 8 through 15)
show the food supply utilization profiles for major geographic
regions—the Western Hemisphere, western and eastern Europe, Africa, the
Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and East Asia.
Some
of the most striking differences, even at this gross level of
aggregation, are noted, taking each of the uses for food commodities in
order shown on the graphics.
- Feed
for livestock. North America and Europe show relatively the largest
volume of agricultural commodities going into livestock feed. In
contrast, very little goes for livestock feed in Africa or in the Indian
subcontinent.
- Food.
Africa shows the highest relative share of food going for direct human
consumption. This reflects the extensive subsistence production of
cassava and various grains, that do not go through even intermediate
processing.
- Other
uses. Extensive use of agricultural commodities for non-food or feed
uses show up dramatically in the Americas. Beginning in the 1970s, the
use of sugar cane and other biomass for alcohol fuel, e.g., "gasohol,"
was initiated on a large scale in Brazil. In the United States,
beginning in the late 1970s and increasingly up to the present, corn has
been processed for ethanol.
- Processed.
The regions show differences in the degree of intermediate processing
of food commodities, with the least processing being done in Africa and
the Middle East.
- Seed. The necessary volumes of seed for the annual crops cycles are shown for each geographic region.
- Waste.
Relatively the largest volume of food commodities wasted shows up in
Africa and in eastern Europe. What this reflects is the absence of
protection—storage facilities, pesticides and other chemicals,
refrigeration, and transportation. Loss rates to waste add up to 40% in
many tropical regions.
Who eats, and who doesn't?
For
a closer look at the food supplies crisis, we focused on two groups of
countries (see Figure 4) for five points in time from 1963 to 1990.
There are the "targetted" nations, the 13 designated in the Kissinger
NSSM-200, plus China and the former U.S.S.R. In contrast, there are the
"export source" countries—the United States, Canada, Australia, France,
South Africa, and Argentina. These latter six nations together are the
origin for a large percentage of the total tonnages of food products
that the commodities cartels control and use to dominate world trade and
food supplies (see article).
Compare Figure 16 with Figure 17,
and you see that, per capita, the levels of food production and supply
are about the same in the "targetted" nations; but in the "export
source" group of nations, production far exceeds supply.
Moreover,
the level of production and supply in the targetted nations is less
than a metric ton per capita per year, whereas in the "export source"
nations, there are about 1.75 tons of food supply per capita per year.
Over
1963-90, there is an increase in the per-capita production and supply
levels in the targetted countries, from 0.7 metric tons in 1963 up to
0.9 tons in 1990, but the targetted nations group never comes close to
even the 1963-67 level of supplies per capita in the "export source"
nations.
Furthermore, Figure 18
shows the food production per capita in each of the six "export source"
nations. Look at the high tonnages in Australia and Canada, in
particular—the Commonwealth nations used as postwar "granary" economies
for London-interlocked commodities cartels.
Now
look at certain individual nations in the other group, the "targetted"
nations, in terms of levels of production relative to supply (Figures 19 to 23).
Shown are Mexico, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, and China. In none of
these nations does production or supply come near that of the "export
source" nations.
Diet deteriorates
While
Figures 19 to 23 indicate how low the absolute tonnages of food
production and supplies are in the targetted nations, the deterioration
in the composition of the diet can be seen by looking in more detail at
the constituent food groups that make up the diet. Look, for example, at
Nigeria.
Figure 24
shows the relative percentages of the different food groups that make
up the total annual food utilized in the country, in 1963, and then in
1990. We are looking at production, because it is about equivalent to
supply in Nigeria.
The
largest component is starchy roots, about 56% of the diet in 1963. In
1990, this has gone up to almost 67% of the diet. Mostly, this is
cassava, which, along with a variety of companion foods, is part of West
African cuisines. However, the increased use of cassava from 1963 to
1990 reflects not a dietary preference, but rather a forced reliance on
the root vegetable as a heavy-bearing crop, on which people can subsist,
i.e., it's filling, but not nutritious.
This
monoculture reliance is labeled a "success story" by cartel-affiliated
groups active in promoting cassava in Nigeria and Zaire, such as, for
example, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and the
International Food Policy Research Institute.
What
is shown as the "other" segment on the Nigeria food charts, is the
total of all 12 other food types. In 1990, this included 5.4%
vegetables; 3.5% fruits; 2% peas and beans; 1.6% sugar crops; 1% meats,
and even lesser amounts of the remaining food groups.
For comparison, look at the shares of different food groups in the U.S. diet in 1967 (Figure 25).
This shows supply, not production, because the United States is a
cartel "export source" nation. The most striking feature of the U.S.
food supply, is the variety and quantity of many different foods.
For further comparison, look at the relative shares of food groups in the food supply in China, in 1963 and in 1990 (Figure 26).
Burden of producing food
These data document the worsening inadequacies in the food supplies of many nations, from the 1960s to the present. But, producing
the food supply, however inadequate in amount and make-up, nevertheless
involves most of the time and effort of the populations in the
"targetted" group of nations.
One
measure of the burden of producing the daily diet is the relatively
large percentage of workers engaged in agriculture, as opposed to
manufacturing, construction, and socially necessary tasks such as
education, transport, and other infrastructure. Figure 27 shows
agricultural workers as a percentage of the total work force, for five
time periods, from 1963 to 1990, for the United States and the two
economic groups of the study.
Over
70% of the work force of the "targetted" nations were in the
agricultural sector in 1963; and during the subsequent three-decade
period of increasing world food import-dependency, and poorer diets,
this percentage fell to only about 58%. Moreover, for most countries,
this does not reflect greater agricultural productivity gains, but
rather a dispossession of farm populations, and their migration into the
shanty camps of urban areas.
In
the United States, the percentage of the work force in agriculture
dropped from 5% in 1963 to under 3% by 1990. In the "export source"
nations overall, the percentage of workers in agriculture dropped from
11% in 1963, down to 4.5% by 1990.
In the next installment of this EIR
series on food import-dependency and free trade, we will show in detail
the lack of necessary ratios of inputs (fertilizers, mechanization,
transport, and other infrastructure) that characterizes the agriculture
sectors over the past 30 years.
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