Posted on Jun 25 2008 at 10:50 am by dooley (see my profile)
In The Omnivore’s Dilemma -- one of the NY Times’ “10 Best Books of 2006” and the winner of the James Beard Award – author Michael Pollan talks a lot about corn.
Corn, it turns out, is in just about everything we consume – it’s in our cars, it’s in our packaging, and it’s in nearly every part of our food. Though disastrous for the environment, for farmers, and for our health, corn is something that we consume tremendous amounts of every year.
As it turns out, this corn obsession really benefits two companies. The U.S. grows about 10 billion bushels of corn per year and according to Pollan, “it has been estimated that Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland together probably buy somewhere near a third of all the corn grown in America.” These companies do even more than just buy the corn, however, “they provide the pesticide and fertilizer to the farmers; operate most of America’s grain elevators; broker and ship most of the exports; perform the wet and dry milling; feed the livestock and then slaughter the corn-fattened animals; distill the ethanol; manufacture the high-fructose corn-syrup…and exert considerable influence over U.S. agricultural policies.” They’ve nearly got a monopoly on our food system and Cargill, in fact, “is the biggest privately held corporation in the world.” (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, page 63)
But, what about the food crisis, you ask? While food crises rage across the globe, as 800 million people are malnourished, Cargill “achieved an 86 percent increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of this year.”
So, people are starving to death and Cargill is reaping massive profits. Is it that, people are starving because Cargill is reaping profits? Or is it that, Cargill is reaping profits because people are starving? Or are they related in some other way? Whatever the reasoning, if you ask me, I’d say that Cargill’s profit is murderous.
So, what do we do about this terrible greed? How do we fix it? Do we make it illegal for companies to make that much profit? Do we make it mandate that governments ensure proper nutrition for all people? Do we organize the hungry of the world to fight back against Cargill? Do we lobby in Congress for agricultural policies that are more people-focused?
It seems that ultimately we need a paradigm shift – we need to change the way that we think and act. At the end of the day, we need a popular economic thinking that defines the bottom-line not as profit, but as mutual well-being. And to get there, well, I’m tired of waiting for business or government to lead the way – I think we, the people, just need to start thinking and acting this way ourselves. If I commit to think, speak, and act in this new paradigm, and you commit the same, and so on and so on, then we’re there.
I’m in. Are you?
Tags: corn, michael pollan, cargill, food crisis, mutual well-being, paradigm, profit
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