Who Is Responsible for the
World Food Shortage

This article appeared in the December 8, 1995 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

ARTICLES IN THIS FEATURE:

World Food Shortage Follows Imposed Import-Dependency

Kissinger's 1974 Plan for Food Control Genocide

The Windsors' Global Food Cartel:
Instrument for Starvation

Control by the Food Cartel Companies:
Profiles and Histories

The Cartel `Experts' Decide Who Eats

Introduction

by Marcia Merry Baker

This week's cover photo, showing corn piled on the ground, out in the open, near Minnesota grain elevators, is representative of the disintegration of the food supply system the world over. While the U.S. Midwest corn and soybean harvests were coming in this fall, the U.S. rail freight system broke down. After years of financial mergers, asset stripping, and rail track removal, such companies as Union Pacific, which are considered to be financial "successes," failed miserably on the economic front, and could not even supply engines to move the grain cars. Millions of bushels of grain are sitting, rotting on the ground.

This grain transport breakdown is but one recent example of breakdown in the food supply in what is considered the most food-secure nation in the world, and illustrates the fact that "natural disasters"—bad weather, floods, droughts—are not the cause of the world's food crises. These examples, and equivalent situations all around the world, are "unnatural" disasters, caused by years of takedown of agriculture infrastructure under wrong policies and assumptions, in particular, serving the interests of private financial and commodities control circles, centered mostly in London.

The worldwide food crisis is measurable in the decline of grains, of all types, produced per capita yearly. To provide every person with a daily diet of their preference, with sufficient calories and nutrients, would require well over 3 billion tons of grain produced annually. But as of around 1990, less than 1.9 billion tons were being produced yearly, and since then, world annual production has declined.

An estimated 800 million people are suffering from some degree of malnutrition. Besides the nearly continentwide food supply crisis in Africa, there are other locations, such as Russia and former Soviet bloc nations, plunged into crisis. Even under the Soviet command economy, Russia's annual grain production averaged 100 million tons. But output has fallen each year since 1991, to only around 65 million tons this year.

No paradox

What does the international community say? Officially, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and sister U.N. agencies—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Trade Organization (WTO)—blame hunger on "poverty."

The FAO gala conference in Quebec City in October, for the FAO's 50th anniversary, celebrated the fact that world tonnages of food have increased over five decades, but lamented that 800 million people don't have enough to eat—a "paradox," according to the conference speakers. But most of the 100 or more agriculture ministers present knew better.

The last 25-30 years have seen a consistent decline of agriculture output potential in almost all countries. Necessary ratios of infrastructure (water, transport, electricity) and inputs (chemicals, mechanization, quality seeds and stock) have fallen, to the point where output per capita is sharply declining.

At mid-century, after World War II, there were mobilizations to improve agriculture output potential on every continent.

• In western Europe, the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) of the European Community saw spectacular rises in agriculture productivity.
  
   
• In Africa, the wave of newly independent nations, such as Sudan (1956), made technology-based agriculture the keystone of national development plans. The "Atoms for Peace" movement backed such designs as the continental electrification of Africa, and the provision of nuclear-power-based energy grids in Egypt, Iran, and other countries.
  
   
• In North America, plans were drawn up for the North American Water and Power Alliance (Nawapa), which would divert river runoff from flowing into the Arctic Ocean, southward. The Mexico College of Engineers produced plans for sister hydraulic projects.
  
   
• In Eurasia, blasting was started on Siberian water diversion projects to channel flow southward from the Ob and Irtysh watersheds, to relieve the endangered Aral Sea Basin.
  
   
• Development of the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, and improvements in the Indian subcontinent, were outlined.

But by 1975, most of these projects were shelved. In the eyes of today's "countercultured" generation, they have receded into the mists of science fiction, if they've heard of these projects at all.

Over the 1970s, the shift was made to "post-industrial" policies, casino economics (speculation, derivatives), and free trade demands, enforced by the IMF Bretton Woods system. And now that financial system itself is in the process of blowout. The food crisis is the evidence.

Dozens of nations, once self-sufficient in many food staples, have been forced into food import dependency over the past 30 years. And now, neither the food stocks, nor the financing, exists for their food supplies. The GATT launched the "Uruguay Round" for free trade in 1986, under the slogan, "One World, One Market," which culminated in the creation in 1995 of the World Trade Organization. But the cupboard of the "World Market" is bare.

Nevertheless, in 1996, the U.N. plans another World Food Summit, on the theme of "food security," while millions more people go hungry.

Behind the scenes, the private financial interests served by the U.N., IMF, and other Bretton Woods agencies, are making sweeping moves to acquire food stocks for hoarding, and to take controlling positions in food commodities production, processing, and shipping.

This is the last phase of an era of food-as-a-weapon politics, officially ushered in in 1974, when then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (now Sir Henry KCMG) gave the keynote speech at the Rome World Food Conference, the predecessor to the 1996 Food Summit. In 1974, Kissinger publicly talked of food security, while privately he worked to use food control as a weapon against a target list of nations.

Name the names

In this Special Report, we have assembled the documentation required to understand the crisis situation in depth, in order to intervene, and reverse it.

We provide:

1. the statistical overview of the past 30 years of forcing food import dependency on nations;
   
    
2. the record of Henry Kissinger and the use of food control as a weapon;
   
    
3. the names of the companies and individuals who make up the financial and commodities cartels controlling food supply lines.

These reviews are not the usual representation of today's food crisis. The "common-sense" reasons for food shortages that you usually hear—bad weather, backwardness, civil strife, etc.—are all wrong.

Worse, the "authorities" on food and agriculture who are usually presented by the media, will tell you specific lies that have been pre-approved for public consumption by the financial and commodities cartel interests that created and continue to back such bogus authorities. For example, Lester Brown, of Worldwatch Institute, who spoke at the U.N. FAO 50th anniversary, is constantly in the media, charging that the world's population has outstripped the world's resources base, and demanding that population be cut because it cannot be fed. We supply the pedigree of Lester Brown, and other hired hands of the food cartels, so you know where the lies are coming from.

Emergency measures required

The information below (with more to come in follow-up reports in 1996), has been assembled in order to spur the mobilization for emergency financial and economic measures to deal with food shortages and the overall physical economic breakdown.

Several rear-guard actions were launched in 1995. They are well motivated, but they will not do the job. A bill is before Congress, sponsored by Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and others, to create a special commission to investigate control over the U.S. food supply by a "concentration" of processors. An Agriculture Department investigation is under way of the monopolistic actions of IBP, the Nebraska-based, London-associated, largest meat processor in the world. The Justice Department Anti-Trust Division has grand juries working on international price-fixing charges against the London-associated cartel companies Cargill Inc., ADM, Tate & Lyle (A.E. Staley), and CPC.

But dealing with the famine-scale food crisis, and financial disintegration, requires more than prosecution of isolated acts of wrongdoing, or mere "bigness." Read on, to find out what every citizen needs to know to do the right thing.

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.

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.
 

Kissinger's 1974 Plan for
Food Control Genocide

by Joseph Brewda

On Dec. 10, 1974, the U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger completed a classified 200-page study, "National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests." The study falsely claimed that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. national security. Adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President Gerald Ford, NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security adviser (the same post Scowcroft was to hold in the Bush administration), was put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture.

The bogus arguments that Kissinger advanced were not original. One of his major sources was the Royal Commission on Population, which King George VI had created in 1944 "to consider what measures should be taken in the national interest to influence the future trend of population." The commission found that Britain was gravely threatened by population growth in its colonies, since "a populous country has decided advantages over a sparsely-populated one for industrial production." The combined effects of increasing population and industrialization in its colonies, it warned, "might be decisive in its effects on the prestige and influence of the West," especially effecting "military strength and security."

NSSM 200 similarly concluded that the United States was threatened by population growth in the former colonial sector. It paid special attention to 13 "key countries" in which the United States had a "special political and strategic interest": India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. It claimed that population growth in those states was especially worrisome, since it would quickly increase their relative political, economic, and military strength.

For example, Nigeria: "Already the most populous country on the continent, with an estimated 55 million people in 1970, Nigeria's population by the end of this century is projected to number 135 million. This suggests a growing political and strategic role for Nigeria, at least in Africa." Or Brazil: "Brazil clearly dominated the continent demographically." The study warned of a "growing power status for Brazil in Latin America and on the world scene over the next 25 years."

Food as a weapon

There were several measures that Kissinger advocated to deal with this alleged threat, most prominently, birth control and related population-reduction programs. He also warned that "population growth rates are likely to increase appreciably before they begin to decline," even if such measures were adopted.

A second measure was curtailing food supplies to targetted states, in part to force compliance with birth control policies: "There is also some established precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion."

"Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these possibilities now," the document continued, adding, "Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?"

Kissinger also predicted a return of famines that could make exclusive reliance on birth control programs unnecessary. "Rapid population growth and lagging food production in developing countries, together with the sharp deterioration in the global food situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised serious concerns about the ability of the world to feed itself adequately over the next quarter of century and beyond," he reported.

The cause of that coming food deficit was not natural, however, but was a result of western financial policy: "Capital investments for irrigation and infrastucture and the organization requirements for continuous improvements in agricultural yields may be beyond the financial and administrative capacity of many LDCs. For some of the areas under heaviest population pressure, there is little or no prospect for foreign exchange earnings to cover constantly increasingly imports of food."

"It is questionable," Kissinger gloated, "whether aid donor countries will be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by the import projections on a long-term continuing basis." Consequently, "large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several decades—a kind the world thought had been permanently banished," was foreseeable—famine, which has indeed come to pass.

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.
 

The Windsors' Global Food Cartel:
Instrument for Starvation

by Richard Freeman

Ten to twelve pivotal companies, assisted by another three dozen, run the world's food supply. They are the key components of the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss food cartel, which is grouped around Britain's House of Windsor. Led by the six leading grain companies—Cargill, Continental, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and Born, André, and Archer Daniels Midland/Töpfer—the Windsor-led food and raw materials cartel has complete domination over world cereals and grains supplies, from wheat to corn and oats, from barley to sorghum and rye. But it also controls meat, dairy, edible oils and fats, fruits and vegetables, sugar, and all forms of spices.

Each year tens of millions die from the most elementary lack of their daily bread. This is the result of the work of the Windsor-led cartel. And, as the ongoing financial collapse wipes out bloated speculative financial paper, the oligarchy has moved into hoarding, increasing its food and raw materials holdings. It is prepared to apply a tourniquet to food production and export supplies, not only to poor nations, but to advanced sector nations as well.

The use of food as a weapon can be found at least four millennia ago in Babylon. Imperial Rome took this tack, as did Venice and various Venetian offshoots, including the Antwerp-centered, powerful Burgundian duchy, and the Dutch and British Levant companies, East India companies, and West India companies. Today, food warfare is firmly under the control of London, with the help of subordinate partners in especially Switzerland and Amsterdam. Today's food companies were created by having had a section of this ancient set of Mesopotamian-Roman-Venetian-British food networks and infrastructure carved out for them.

The Windsor-led oligarchy has built up a single, integrated raw materials cartel, with three divisions—energy, raw materials and minerals, and increasingly scarce food supplies. Figure 1 represents the situation. At the top is the House of Windsor and Club of the Isles. Right below are two of the principal appurtenances of the House of Windsor: the World Wide Fund for Nature, headed by the Doge of London, Prince Philip, which leads the world in orchestration of ethnic conflict and terrorism, such as the British-created afghansi movement; and British intelligence's Hollinger Corp. of Conrad Black, which is leading the assault to destroy Bill Clinton and the American Presidency.

The firms within each cartel group are listed. While they maintain the legal fiction of being different corporate organizations, in reality this is one interlocking syndicate, with a common purpose and multiple overlapping boards of directors. The Windsor-centered oligarchy owns these cartels, and they are the instruments of power of the oligarchy, accumulated over centuries, for breaking nations' sovereignty.

The control works as follows: The oligarchy has developed four regions to be the principal exporters of almost every type of food; the oligarchy has historically acquired top-down control over the food chain in these regions. These four regions are: the United States; the European Union, particularly France and Germany; the British Commonwealth nations of Australia, Canada, the Republic of South Africa, and New Zealand; and Argentina and Brazil in Ibero-America. Through the centuries, the oligarchy has taken control of these regions' markets, and thus over the world food supply. These four regions have a population of, at most, 900 million people, or 15% of the world's population. The rest of the world, with 85% of the population—4.7 billion people—is dependent on the food exports from those regions.

British food cartel control intensified after World War II. Regions such as America had long been seen as important areas in which to increase control, in order to maintain the cartel's global domination, especially around the turn of the twentieth century when Minneapolis, under the control of the Pillsbury and Peavey families, replaced Hungary as the world's major miller of grain. But before World War II, the amount of grain that crossed borders, or oceans, seldom exceeded 30 million tons a year. America's share of that was usually 10 million tons or less. This was a substantial amount, but small compared to the levels of trade that would follow. World War II ravaged the globe, creating mass hunger, especially in Europe and what is today the Third World. Under the impetus of American programs such as "Food for Peace," PL 480, the worldwide trade in grain shot up to 160 million tons by 1979. Today it is 215 million tons per year. In addition, tens of millions of tons of other foodstuffs, from meat to dairy, are traded each year.

It is proper for countries with grain, meat, dairy, and other surpluses to export them. But the cartel's four exporting regions were given preeminence in a brutal manner, while much of the rest of the world was thrust into enforced backwardness. The oligarchy denied these nations seed, fertilizer, water management, electricity, rail transportation, that is, all the infrastructural and capital goods inputs needed to turn them into self-sufficient food producers. These nations were reduced to the status of vassals: Either import from the cartel's export regions, or starve.

Meanwhile, the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss food cartel reduced the export regions, which supposedly enjoy favored status, to a state of servitude as well. During the last two decades, millions of farmers in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and Argentina have been wiped out. For example, in 1982, the United States still had 600,000 independent hog farmers. Today, that number is less than 225,000. The food cartel companies have concentrated hog production into their own hands. Farmers were paid far below a parity price, i.e., a price that covers costs of agricultural production plus a fair profit for investment in future production.

In 1983, Robert Bergland, President Jimmy Carter's agriculture secretary in 1976-80, told an interviewer concerning Cargill, the world's largest grain company: "Cargill's view is ... [that] they generally regard the United States as a grain colony." Bergland continued, "When [in 1979] the Russians invaded Afghanistan and Jimmy Carter asked how much grain the Russians had bought [from the United States] ... we couldn't tell him because we didn't know." But Cargill and the other grain cartel companies knew. In 1976, when Cargill, Continental, and other grain cartel companies sold the Russians a record 12.4 million tons of American and Canadian grain (creating a grain shortage in the United States), the administration of President Gerald Ford learned of the sales only after the fact. The grain may have been American grown, but the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss cartel disposes of it as it pleases.

This article will document, for the first time, the extent of concentration and control that the British-centered raw materials cartel exercises over both the international and domestic trade in food. It will look at the food cartel's international and domestic control of grains, milk, edible oils and fats, and meat. The article which follows provides a more detailed profile, with names and addresses, of the key forces in the cartel's control of the world's food supply.

Concentration in four food groups

Grains and grain products, milk and dairy products, edible oils and fats, and meat provide the majority of the intake of calories, as well as proteins and vitamins, which keeps the human species alive. Grain and grain products can be consumed as animal feed (especially corn and oats), and directly for human consumption, sometimes in grain form (the case of rice or barley), but often in a milled form, such as in bread and tortillas.

The "Big Six" leading grain cartel companies are: Minneapolis- and Geneva-based Cargill; New York-based Continental; Paris-based Louis Dreyfus; São Paulo, Brazil- and Netherlands, Antilles-based Bunge and Born; Lausanne, Switzerland-based André; and Illinois- and Hamburg, Germany-based Archer Daniels Midland/Töpfer. The first five of the companies are privately owned and run by billionaire families. They issue no public stock, nor annual report. They are more secretive than any oil company, bank, or government intelligence service. Just two of these companies, Cargill and Continental, control 45-50% of the world's grain trade.

We look at the food cartel's control over each of the four dominant food groups.

Grains: Grains, or cereals as they are often called, consist of wheat; the coarse grains, including corn, barley, oats, sorghum, and rye; and rice.

The Anglo-Dutch-Swiss cartel's control over wheat exports is shown in Figure 2. For the crop year 1994-95, the cartel's four food export regions produced and traded 88% of the world's wheat exports of 97.2 million metric tons.

But, the four cartel food export regions, while accounting for 88% of worldwide wheat exports, accounted for only 39% of all the world's wheat production of 522.4 million metric tons in the 1994-95 crop year (see Figure 2). That is, their share of world wheat exports was more than double their share of world wheat output. This underscores the point that the cartel built up four regions as the choke points over the world's food supply, even though these regions, collectively, are not often the largest producers.

Figure 3 shows, for the 1994-95 crop year, the percentages that the cartel's four food export regions control of the exports of the leading coarse grains. They control 95% of world annual corn exports, of 69.9 million metric tons; 76% of world barley exports, of 14.8 million metric tons; and 97% of world sorghum (milo) exports, of 6 million metric tons.

Within these export regions, the cartel's six leading grain companies have, historically, built up total domination of the external grain markets. While the cartel's export regions dominate 76-97% of the world's grain trade, depending on the grain, the cartel's six grain companies also control the exports of the four regions.

For example, in the 1994-95 crop year, the United States exported 102 of the world's 215 million metric tons in grain exports, nearly half the total. It accounted for 33% of world wheat exports, 83% of world corn exports, and 89% of world sorghum exports, making it the leading exporter in each of these three markets.

Now, let us turn to the leading grain companies' command of America's grain export market, with America itself controlling nearly one-half of all world grain exports. Figure 4 shows that the cartel's Big Six grain trading companies own and control 95% of America's wheat exports, 95% of its corn exports, 90% of its oats exports, and 80% of its sorghum exports. A few smaller companies, almost all in the grain cartel's orbit, control the remaining market share. The grain companies' control over the American grain market is absolute.

The Big Six grain companies also control 60-70% of France's grain exports. France is the biggest grain exporter in Europe (the world's second largest grain exporting region), exporting more grain than the next three largest European grain exporting nations combined.

Figure 5 shows that the Big Six, along with some affiliated Argentine companies such as Nidera and ACA, control 67.8%, or two-thirds, of Argentina's grain exports. Argentina is the fourth largest grain exporter in the world.

Canada and Australia combined are the world's third largest grain exporting region, after America and Europe. Although they have their own unique internal picture, with a modicum of political influence from farmers, both are British Commonwealth nations, under the thumb of Queen Elizabeth II.

In sum, the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss food cartel dominates 80-90% of the world grain trade. In fact, however, the control is far greater than the sum of its parts: The Big Six grain companies are organized as a cartel; they move grain back and forth from any one of the major, or minor, exporting nations. Cargill, Continental, Louis Dreyfus et al. own world shipping fleets, and have long-established sales relationships, financial markets, and commodity trading exchanges (such as the London-based Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange) on which grain is traded, which completes their domination. No other forces in the world, including governments, are as well organized as the cartel, and therefore, London's power in this area remains unchallenged.

Milk and Milk Products: The big exporters of milk and milk products are three out of the cartel's four basic export regions: the United States; the European Union plus Switzerland (which is not an EU member); and the British Commonwealth countries of New Zealand, in particular, and Australia.

In 1994, the cartel's domination of dairy and dairy products was astonishing. Figure 6 shows that the cartel's food export regions controlled 89% of the world's export of whole milk powder, of 1.08 billion metric tons; 94% of the world's export trade of 653 million metric tons of butter; and 86% of the world's export trade of 1.11 billion metric tons of cheese. It also controlled a huge portion of the export of condensed milk.

The case of whole milk powder exemplifies the process of the cartel's control. Milk is not usually exported in liquid form, except for short distances over nearby borders; it is usually exported either as whole milk or skim milk powder, or as condensed milk. When it is exported as whole milk powder, it is reconstituted upon delivery, usually at the ratio of 10 parts water to 1 part whole milk powder. Of the world's export of 1.08 billion metric tons of whole milk powder in 1994, the developing world imported 885 million metric tons, or 82% of the total.

Nestlé Corp., S.A., based in Vevey and Cham (near Geneva), Switzerland, and Borden, Inc., based in Columbus, Ohio, are the two largest exporters of whole milk powder in the world. Founded in 1867, Nestlé grew significantly in 1905, when it merged with the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company, also of Switzerland. Nestlé S.A. illustrates the food cartel's global reach: It is the number-one world trader in whole milk powder and condensed milk; the number-one seller of chocolate, confectionery products, and mineral water (it owns Perrier); and the number-three U.S.-based coffee firm. Its products include Nestlé chocolate and candy; Libby fruit juice; Carnation Condensed Milk; Buitoni spaghetti; Contadina tomato paste; Hills Brothers and Nescafé coffees; and Stouffers' restaurants and frozen foods. (It also owns 26% of the world's biggest cosmetic company, L'Oreal.) All told, it is the biggest food company in the world. In 1994, there were 13 countries in which Nestlé had sales of 1 billion Swiss francs or more, including all advanced sector nations. Its total 1994 sales were SF 56.9 billion, or $45.5 billion. Its 1994 profits were $4.8 billion, bigger than all but a half-dozen companies.

Nestlé chairman Helmut Maucher is on the board of J.P. Morgan, British intelligence's leading bank in the United States. Its board of directors serves as a retirement home for the world's central bankers: Fritz Leutwiller, former chairman of the Basel, Switzerland Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of central banks, is on Nestlé's board, as is Paul Volcker, who, as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board in 1979 and the early 1980s, put the world economy through what was referred to as "controlled disintegration."

Borden is the second biggest milk powder producer, through its KLIM milk powder division. It is also one of the world's biggest condensed milk producers, through its Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk. In 1995, Borden was bought by the leveraged buy-out firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which is headed by Henry Kravis, who was finance committee co-chairman of George Bush's 1992 Presidential campaign. As a result of the 1988 merger of R.JU. Reynolds and Nabsico, KKR now owns 33% of, and effectively controls, RJR Nabisco, which produces nine of the top ten cookies and crackers brands sold in America. KKR also owns a portion of Beatrice Foods, a conglomerate, which makes KKR one of the top five food companies in the world.

Completing the picture of world control of whole milk powder is Unilever, a large player in this area as well as the number-one world producer of ice cream and margarine. Typifying the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy's joint control over raw materials, Unilever, which is the result of a 1930 merger of a British and a Dutch firm, has headquarters in London and Amsterdam. On the Unilever board is Lord Wright of Richmond, GCMG. From 1986 through 1991, he was head of Britain's Diplomatic Service and also permanent undersecretary of state at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Lord Wright is also a director of Barclay's Bank, which is a major funder of Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature.

Unilever is an example of how the different corporate entities operate as part of one interlocked syndicate. The former chairman of Unilever, M.F. Van den Moven, now sits on the board of the other Anglo-Dutch giant, Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, the world's largest marketer of oil and a controlling force in the energy cartel.

Meat: The cartel's four major export source regions (the United States; the European Union; the British Commonwealth countries of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada; and the Ibero-American nations Argentina and Brazil) exert enormous dominance over meat exports. As well, a Chinese bloc of China, Taiwan, and Hongkong (the last nation a re-exporter) is important in pork and poultry exports.

Figure 7 shows that for 1994, the cartel's basic food export regions commanded 85% of the world's export of beef and veal of 4.95 million metric tons; when the Chinese market is added in, these regions commanded 92% of the world's export trade of 2.1 million tons of pork, and 93% of the world's export trade of 5.84 million metric tons of poultry. The export of pork and poultry in China and Taiwan is increasingly run by the food cartel.

Four of the cartel's biggest companies in beef export are Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland/Töpfer, ConAgra/Peavey, and Iowa Beef Processors, now called IBP. The Dakota City, Nebraska-based IBP exemplifies how the oligarchy employs its corporate offshoots. Once owned by Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum Co., today 13% of the stock of IBP is owned by FMR Corp., the holding company for Fidelity Investments, the largest family of mutual funds in the United States, which is run by the Boston Brahmin oligarchical families. FMR is interlocked with other parts of the Windsor cartel—it is a large owner of raw material cartel companies, including shares of 5% or more of Homestake Mining, Coeur D'Alene Mines, and Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corp., three of the world's largest gold mining companies.

Through IBP, the food cartel is intervening in the U.S. Presidential elections, giving heavy backing to the "free enterprise" Presidential campaign of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.). On IBP's board of directors is Alec Courtalis, a Florida real estate magnate who was national finance co-chairman of the 1992 Bush-Quayle campaign, and is currently chairman of the futuristic Armand Hammer United World College and finance committee chairman of the Gramm for President campaign. In addition, Gramm's wife, Wendy Gramm, is an IBP board member. From 1988 to 1993, Wendy Gramm chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, during which time the CFTC rigged the explosive growth in speculative derivatives instruments.

Edible oils and fats: The United States, the European Union, and Argentina and Brazil thoroughly dominate the export market in the soybean and its by-products, the most basic source of edible oils and fats. Figure 8 documents that the food cartel export source sectors are the masters of 90% of the international trade in soybeans, of 32.1 million metric tons per year; 90% of the international trade in soybean meal, of 31.1 million metric tons; and, along with British Commonwealth member India, 92% of the 31.1 million metric tons of soybean meal exports.

According to spokesmen for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as private industry, the same six companies that dominate the international grain trade also dominate the international trade in soybeans and by-products. The one additional cartel member company which is influential in the soybean trade, and which is smaller than the leading six companies, is S.I. Joseph Co. of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Burton Joseph, chairman of this company, is a former national chairman and a leading member of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. He is a longtime enemy of Lyndon LaRouche.

Feed and seed: The cartel also controls feed for animals and seed for planting. British Petroleum, through its Nutrition division, is the largest feed producer in Europe. Having bought Purina Mills from Ralston Purina Company, British Petroleum, one of the House of Windsor's key energy companies, is now the second largest feed producer in America. Cargill, the world's largest grain exporter, through its Nutrena Feed division, is also the biggest producer of animal feed and hybrid seed in the world, while Continental Grain, through its Wayne Feed division, is one of the biggest producers of feed and a major force in hybrid seed production.

Domestic markets

The cartel exercises an iron hand over the domestic agricultural economies of nations, especially those that comprise the four export source regions of the food cartel. This is exercised through the processing industries: If one controls the processing industries, one controls domestic trade. Except for use as animal feed, corn, wheat, and soybean cannot be eaten in their unrefined form (excluding sweet corn, which is eaten by humans, but which is a minuscule percentage of the annual corn harvest). The grain, or soybean (which is a legume), must be processed. The same is true of meat, which must be slaughtered and cut, before it is fit for human consumption.

This is where the processing-milling industries, in the case of grains and soybean, and the packing/slaughtering industries, in the case of meat, come in.

Taking America as the test case, in order to make the case generally, one can see the cartel's domination.

For example, Figures 9, 10, 11, and 12, demonstrate that the main grain companies of the oligarchy's food cartel control 71% of the milling of America's flour; 57% of the dry milling of America's corn; 74% of the wet milling of America's corn; and 76% of the crushing of America's soybeans.

        

(In the dry milling of corn, the corn is turned into corn meal, muffins, corn flakes, etc. In the wet milling of corn, the corn is turned into sweetener, starch, alcohol, ethanol, etc. Of America's corn crop of 7.4 million bushels, 5.6 million bushels will be consumed as animal feed; 1.5 million bushels will be wet milled; and 0.3 million bushels will be dry milled.)

Figures 13, 14, and 15 confirm that the largest meat companies in the food cartel (IBP, ConAgra, Cargill, and two smaller companies) control 72% of America's beef slaughtering/packing; 45% of its pork slaughtering/packing; and 70% of its sheep slaughtering/packing. The meatpacking industry demonstrates the accelerated rate at which the cartel is building its concentration in these industries. In 1979, the top four packers controlled 41% of the industry. Today, they control 72%.

        

Finally, as Figure 16 shows, four of the six leading grain cartel companies own 24% of America's grain elevator storage capacity. However, this figure is deceptive. Many of the grain elevators in America are in local areas, where there is a substantial degree of individual or cooperative ownership. When one gets to regional grain elevators, the grain cartel's ownership percentage is higher. And at ports, where grain is transshipped, the same four grain cartel companies own 59% of all American grain elevator facilities.

A farmer must sell his grain either to a grain elevator, or, in the rarer case where he can afford transport, to a grain miller. In either case, it is a grain cartel company to which he must sell. By this process, the grain cartel sets the price to the farmer—at the lowest level possible.

The control apparatus

The control of food for use as a weapon is an ancient practice. The House of Windsor inherited certain routes and infrastructure. One finds the practice in ancient Babylon/Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago. In Greece, the cults of Apollo, Demeter, and Rhea-Cybele often controlled the shipment of grain and other food stuffs, through the temples. In Imperial Rome, the control of grain became the basis of the empire. Rome was the center. Conquered outlying colonies in Gaul, Brittany, Spain, Sicily, Egypt, North Africa, and the Mediterranean littoral had to ship grain to the noble Roman families, as taxes and tribute. Often the grain tax was greater than the land could bear, and areas of North Africa, for instance, were turned into dust bowls.

The evil city-state of Venice took over grain routes, particularly after the Fourth Crusade (1202-04). The main Venetian thirteenth century trading routes had their eastern termini in Constantinople, the ports of the Oltremare (which were the lands of the crusading States), and Alexandria, Egypt. Goods from these ports were shipped to Venice, and from there made their way up the Po Valley to markets in Lombardy, or over the Alpine passes to the Rhône and into France. Eventually, Venetian trade extended to the Mongol empire in the East.

By the fifteenth century, although Venice was still very much a merchant empire, it had franchised some of its grain and other trade to the powerful Burgundian duchy, whose effective headquarters was Antwerp. This empire, encompassing parts of France, extended from Amsterdam and Belgium to much of present-day Switzerland. From this Venetian-Lombard-Burgundian nexus, each of the food cartel's six leading grain companies was either founded, or inherited a substantial part of its operations today.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British Levant and East India companies had absorbed many of these Venetian operations. In the nineteenth century, the London-based Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange became the world's leading instrument for contracting for and shipping grain.

The five privately held grain companies were carved out from the centuries-old Mesopotamian-Venetian-Burgundian-Swiss-Amsterdam grain route, which today extends around the world. The Big Five are Cargill, Continental, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and Born, and André. The Continental Grain Company is run by billionaire Michel Fribourg and his son Paul. Simon Fribourg started the company in 1813 in Arlon, Belgium. He moved the company to Antwerp, and then, in the 1920s, to Paris and London. Today, it has a New York office, along with a strong Swiss-French base.

In 1852, Léopold Louis Dreyfus, who was born in Sierentz, France, established wheat-trading operations in Basel, Switzerland. In this century, except during World War II, Louis Dreyfus has been headquartered in Paris (part of the old Lombard-Burgundian route).

Bunge and Born was founded by the Bunge family from Amsterdam in 1752. The company was eventually moved to Antwerp (today it is technically headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil and the Netherlands Antilles). The André Company was founded by Georges André in Nyon, Switzerland, and today is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Cargill Company, the world's largest grain company, is based in the Minneapolis, Minnesota suburb of Minnetonka. It was founded by Scotsman William Cargill, in Conover, Iowa in 1865, and has been run, since the 1920s, by the billionaire MacMillan family. But the true nexus of Cargill is in Geneva, Switzerland, where Cargill's international trading arm, Tradax, Inc., is headquartered, having been established there in 1956 (technically, Tradax is a Panamanian-registered company). Tradax has divisions all around the world, including in Argentina, Germany, and Japan. It is the major source for Cargill's international trading; Cargill has a lot of money invested in it, and Cargill reaps a large return from Tradax's operations. Tradax also has partial Swiss ownership. The Lombard, Odier Bank, as well as the Pictet Bank, both old, private and very dirty Swiss banks, own a chunk of Tradax. The principal financier for Tradax is the Geneva-based Crédit Suisse, which is one of the world's largest money-launderers.

Archer Daniels Midland's purchase of Töpfer, a Hamburg, Germany-based grain company, vastly increased ADM's presence in the world grain trade. Töpfer's trade is situated within the old Venice-Swiss-Amsterdam-Paris routes, and it has extensive business partnerships with the British Crown jewel, the Rothschild Bank.

Secret intelligence

The manner in which the grain cartel companies operate is highly secretive. All but ADM-Töpfer are private companies, and Bush ally and former Cargill employee Dwayne Andreas runs ADM as his personal fiefdom.

A strategic profile of each of the leading food cartel companies is contained in the following article, but it is worth noting here a few critical points about how they work. Much of their workings is shrouded in mystery, because they release little information to the public. People who have attempted to write books about the grain companies have spent years without getting a single interview from any of the reigning grain company families. Unlike many American companies, where the founding family has long since departed the scene, such as in the case of Morgan bank or Chrysler Corp., the grain cartel companies are run by the same families that have run them for centuries. The inter-married MacMillan and Cargill families run Cargill; the Fribourg family runs Continental; the Louis Dreyfus family runs Louis Dreyfus; the André family runs André; and the Hirsch and Born families run Bunge and Born.

However, the little that has been gleaned is very revealing. In 1979, Dan Morgan wrote The Merchants of Grain, about the world grain trade. He disclosed that Cargill's Geneva-based trading arm, Tradax, operates not only such as to park sales of grain in order to escape taxes in the United States and most countries, but it confounds anyone trying to follow Cargill's grain movements. In his book, Morgan reported:

"When Cargill sells a cargo of corn to a Dutch animal-feed manufacturer, the grain is shipped down the Mississippi River, put aboard a vessel at Baton Rouge and sent to Rotterdam. On paper, however ... its route is more elaborate. Cargill first sells the corn to Tradax International in Panama, which will 'hire' Tradax/Geneva as its agent; Tradax/Geneva then might arrange the sale to a Dutch miller through its subsidiary, Tradax/Holland; any profits would be booked to Tradax/Panama, a tax-haven company, and Tradax/Geneva would earn only a 'management fee' for brokering the deal between Tradax/Panama and Tradax/Holland."

While evading taxes and inspection, Cargill also uses its network to move large shipments of goods anywhere on the globe, on split-second notice. It has an in-house intelligence service that matches the CIA's: It uses global communication satellites, weather-sensing satellites, a database that utilizes 7,000 primary sources of intelligence, several hundred field offices, etc.

Cargill is representative of all of the grain companies, and a brief examination of it gives insight into all the others. Cargill, which had $51 billion in annual sales in 1994, has a dominant position in many aspects of the world food trade. It is the world's and the United States' number-one grain exporter, and has a market share of 25-30% in each of several commodities. It is the world's number-one cotton trader; the number-one U.S. owner of grain elevators (340); the number-one U.S. manufacturer of corn-based, high-protein animal feeds (through subsidiary Nutrena Mills); the number-two U.S. wet corn miller and U.S. soybean crusher; the number-two Argentine grain exporter (10% of market); the number-three U.S. flour miller (18% of market), U.S. meatpacker (18% of market), U.S. pork packer/slaughterer, and U.S. commercial animal feeder; the number-three French grain exporter (15-18% of the market); and the number-six U.S. turkey producer. It also has a fleet of 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 has been able to place its people in top posts around the world. Daniel Amstutz, a 25-year Cargill man, was U.S. Undersecretary of Agriculture for International Affairs and Commodity Programs in 1983-87, from which post he decided on the export policy of U.S. grains. He later became a leader of the U.S. trade commission in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations on agricultural trade. Meanwhile, the head of Bunge and Born, Nestor Rapanelli, became Argentina's economics minister within weeks of Carlos Menem coming in as Argentine President in 1989. Rapanelli began shifting Argentina from "State intervention to a 'market driven' economy."

Today, Cargill Company is privately owned and run by the MacMillan family. The MacMillan family's collective wealth, at $5.1 billion, according to the July 17, 1994 Forbes magazine, is larger than that of the better-known Mellon family. The MacMillans have always been of service to the British. John Hugh MacMillan, president of Cargill from 1936 to 1957, and then chairman from 1957 through 1960, held the title of "hereditary Knight Commander of Justice in the Sovereign Order of St. John (Knights of Malta)," one of the British Crown's most important orders.

The drive to the East

The food cartel continues to consolidate its worldwide control in the face of the oncoming financial disintegration. In the past four years, the food cartel has bought up many milling-processing plants and bakeries throughout the former Soviet Union and East bloc, bringing these nations under tight food control. Recently, IBP moved to dump cheap Mexican meat there, in order to bankrupt beef producers. The Clinton Agriculture Department has brought them up for investigation.

The food cartel has also built up its control, in the food distribution industries, through such combines as Philip Morris, Grand Metropolitan-Pillsbury, and KKR-RJR-Nabisco-Borden. In the case of Philip Morris, which owns Kraft Foods, General Foods (Post cereals), the Miller Brewing Company, and a host of other brand names, 10¢ of every $1 that an American spends on brand-name food items is for a Philip Morris product.

The food cartel's power must be broken. This year, the U.S. Justice Department's Anti-Trust division launched an investigation into price-fixing in the case of corn-based fructose and lysine, by Archer Daniels Midland and some of the other food cartel companies. The case, if brought to trial, could provide valuable information and help to expose and possibly halt, in a limited way, a few of ADM's practices. But the Anglo-Dutch-Swiss cartel is playing for high stakes—the ability to constrain the supply of raw materials, and above all, food, to turn back the clock of history, and reduce mankind from the 5.6 billion population it currently enjoys to the state of a few hundred million semi-literate souls scratching out a bare existence.

That assault cannot be fought timidly. The full truth about the food cartel must be known.

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, includ