Executive Intelligence Review


The Windsors' Global Food Cartel:
Instrument for Starvation

by Richard Freeman







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.


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



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


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.



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 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."


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.


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.



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



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.



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.


The control apparatus




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.




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



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 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'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.
