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A.V. Krebs The Corporate Agribusiness Research Project
(reprinted from CARP's E-mail newsletter)
No other time of the year do we respect tradition as we do during each holiday season and the Corporate Agribusiness Research Project is no exception to that rule.
Tomorrow many of us will once again be sitting down with our families to celebrate Thanksgiving. We will all be looking forward with mouth-watering anticipation to the bounty that will be spread before us. But for most Americans the turkey is not likely to be from Uncle Ray's farm, nor the potatoes from Aunt Jean's recipe, not the dressing from Grandma's stove, nor the biscuits from Mom's oven, nor the dessert from Aunt Belle's kitchen.
No, more than likely for most Americans the turkey might well be from Butterball or maybe a ham from Cook Family Foods; someone might suggest that a few Singleton Butterfly Shrimp be put on the "BarB" before dinner, the grill already hot from the Just Light Charcoal Briquets underneath; we might also want some Jack Rabbit Long Grain Rice; maybe potatoes from Golden Valley Foods, and someone might note that the flour in the bread is from Peavey Grain.
We also might want to enjoy some of our favorite private label pasta from the local supermarket; tomatoes from Hunt's; perhaps a touch of Oriental from La Choy; the pudding from Swiss Miss, or the frozen dairy dessert from Healthy Choice, topped perhaps with some Reddi Whip; the salad oil from Wesson; the cheese from Miss Wisconsin; the canned beans from Van Camps; some spices from Armour Dairy, and the tomato or apple juice cocktail from Mott's.
While watching the traditional Thanksgiving Day football game on television we might want to dip into the popcorn bowl for some Orville Redenbacher's served in buttery Fleischmanns Margarine, putting another handful on one of our Budget Buy paper plates for future munching, or we might also want to "partake" of the barley malt in a bottle of Carlsberg Beer as we watch the game.
All in all it will be quite a day and quite a meal, a testimonial to the cornucopia of food that most of us now living in America have come to take for granted in the land of Freedom of Choice and the Home of the Private Entrepreneur.
But wait one minute here, let's take a little closer look at that meal. True, we saw a wide range of different products that composed this Thanksgiving Day feast we so heartily consumed. Yet, the reality of the matter is that all that food, all those products and all those brands came in fact from just ONE company --- ConAgra Inc. --- the nation's second largest food processor and manufacturer, where six cents out of every American food dollar is today spent.
Here is a company that operates "across the food chain" --- from seedling to supermarket --- in many different products where it totally dominates the market shares and where it reaps enormous profits at the expense of family farmers, workers and consumers.
"The fierce entrepreneurial spirit that's long been ConAgra's trademark is alive and well, and ConAgrans are working together to feed people better and increase shareholder value. We are a winning team, and we have a solid game plan for the next phase of our success," ConAgra Inc. Chief Executive Bruce Rohde has declared. "Our past success is remarkable. ConAgra has the best long-term earnings growth record among all major food companies in the world."
In its 2000 Annual Report the company explains that each of the company's 27 branded foods has annual retail sales exceeding $100 million and its Food Service branch is the nation’s largest provider of products for restaurants, fast-food outlets and other food service customers.
So, let's not forget that when we sit down to our modern day Thanksgiving Day dinners we are making an increasingly small handful of American and international corporate agribusinessmen exceedingly wealthy. We can be forgiven, therefore, if we begin our holiday meal with the prayer: "Bless us O Corporate America that these thy `Healthy Choice' foods which we are about to receive, through the bounty of corporate agribusiness and ConAgra Inc. Amen."
bon appetit !!!
Reprinted from:
The AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER
Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness From a Public Interest Perspective
http://www.ea1.com/CARP/
Issue # 97
November 22, 2000
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