“Oligopoly in action.”
That’s how Kartick Raj, a Human Rights Watch researcher focused on poverty and inequality in Western Europe, responded Tuesday to The Guardian’s new reporting on the world’s four grain giants raking in record profits — which is fueling calls for a global windfall tax.
After noting United Nations agencies’ estimates that while about 345 million people endure acute food insecurity — up over 200 million from before the COVID-19 pandemic — food prices have skyrocketed by over 20%, journalist Fiona Harvey highlighted remarks from Olivier De Schutter, a co-chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
“The fact that global commodity giants are making record profits at a time when hunger is rising is clearly unjust, and is a terrible indictment of our food systems,” he told Harvey.
“What’s even worse, these companies could have done more to prevent the hunger crisis in the first place.”
As Harvey explained:
“Four companies — the Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus, known collectively as ABCD — control an estimated 70-90% of the global grain trade. ‘Global grain markets are even more concentrated than energy markets and even less transparent, so there is a huge risk of profiteering,’ said De Schutter.
“He said this year’s food price surge happened despite what are thought to be abundant global grain reserves, but there was insufficient transparency from the companies to show how much grain they hold and no way to force them to release stocks in a timely way.
“‘We need to be looking at the grain giants and asking what they could have done to avert the crisis, and what they could be doing now,’ De Schutter said.”
While the four companies declined to respond to Harvey’s request for comment, De Schutter added that:
“Ultimately, we need to break up the monopolies that have a stranglehold on the food chain. A handful of companies control global seed and fertilizer markets, animal genetics, the global grain trade, and food retail. They are making huge profits at the cost of farmers, consumers, and the environment.”
Using a term coined by author Naomi Klein, U.K. climate scientist Bill McGuire declared in response to Harvey’s article: “Disaster capitalism at its worst.”
“As 345 million people suffer from acute food insecurity,” McGuire continued, “the four corporations that control virtually all grain trade stuff their pockets with cash, pop the champagne corks, and laugh all the way to the bank.”
Nick Dearden, director of the U.K.-based group Global Justice Now, similarly said that “food monopolies rake in bumper profits as speculation drives up food prices. We have enough food for everyone, but the financial markets dictate more and more people must go hungry to fill the coffers of the super wealthy.”
Record profits for grain firms amid food crisis
Record profits for grain firms amid food crisis
Record profits for grain firms amid food crisis
Record profits for grain firms amid food crisis
Record profits for grain firms amid food crisis
Record profits fhttps://t.co/CBWaTjKKrQ— Michael Galant (@michael_galant) August 23, 2022
“Workers wages aren’t causing our #CostOfLivingCrisis. Profiteering is. Want proof?” UNI Global Union tweeted, pointing to Harvey’s reporting, which detailed some of what’s fueling the current issues, including Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The U.K. group Plan B Earth took aim at government leaders:
“Bonanza for fossil fuel companies, while people can’t pay their bills. Soaring stocks for defense companies on the back of war. And while famine stalks East Africa and Afghanistan, food companies make record profits. None of us voted for this!”
As Common Dreams reported in June, Oxfam has spent the summer pushing for a windfall tax targeting major companies.
Harvey noted Tuesday that some campaigners and political figures have echoed that demand, including Natalie Bennett, a U.K. Green party peer, who said that:
“As a short-term measure there are strong arguments for a windfall tax on the food oligopoly — the handful of companies, with significant cross-ownership from hedge funds, that from seeds to supermarkets are major contributors to the inflation that’s driving the cost of living crisis to new heights.”
Cross-posted from Common Dreams.
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It’s called inflation. Buried deep in the Guardian article, turns out their profit margins increased by less than 1%. If revenues have increased 20%, expenses have increased by about 19%. If the buying power of the dollar has decreased by 20% (and that’s a very low estimate), then their real revenues, expenses, and profits have held fairly steady. But by using dollar amounts, and reporting half the story, the socialist crowd can stir up hysteria, deflect attention away from governments which caused and exacerbate the problem, while proposing that even more government meddling and control is the solution.
Aside from money printing exacerbating inflation, the problem is the supply, which governments and climate activists have also worked to constrict. If there’s not enough supply, then people are going to go hungry no matter what the price might be.
But that’s leftists for you, though. People are going hungry, so they’re going to fix the problem by constricting the supply further, burdening the supply chain more, increasing inflation and cost of living. Such geniuses they are. Who knew we could all survive by eating dollar bills. 🙄
More government meddling, taxes, regulations, etc. will do nothing but unnecessarily weaken the supply chain, draw money out of it, artificially increasing costs, prices, causing more inflation.This is the sort of reprobate activity that will lead to a loaf of bread costing a day’s wages, as the Bible says. Governments leeching more and more out of it, squeezing every ounce of blood out of it, to the point where the wage to retail price divide is that ridiculously insane.
All that said, I believe we probably are nearing the end times. It’s hard not to see everything trending exactly as prophesied.
But where those companies are concerned, looking at it objectively, big picture, it would appear to me that what’s happening is that they are capturing more of the market. The little guys are being destroyed. And of course the trade unions would not oppose. If unionized big corporations capture more of the market, so do they. They don’t want to independent little guys to succeed. They want 100% control and ownership of the labor market.
The ones who say the monopolies need to be broken up are on the right track, imo. Competition is key. But four companies don’t make a monopoly. The root cause is reprobate government stupidity. As Milton Friedman said, inflation is caused by governments.