Starving the beast: How to avoid Archer Daniels Midland

Must one do business with ADM?

Posted by Tom Philpott at 3:12 PM on 22 Feb 2007

Responding to my latest critique of Archer Daniels Midland and its business practices, a reader writes in to ask, "If I want to stop supporting ADM when grocery shopping, is there a list somewhere of what products to avoid buying?"

That's a great question. The short answer is, the best way to stiff ADM is to avoid processed fare and stick to actual food: fresh produce, dried beans, grains, rice, etc. If you're a meat eater, you'll have to stick to free-range, grass-finished products. ADM is a huge supplier of livestock feed and distiller's grains, a byproduct from the ethanol process that will be finding its way more and more the livestock food chain as the price of corn rises.

Now, not everyone has the time or cash to avoid processed fare. For those folks, refusing to support ADM is extremely difficult -- perhaps impossible. To carry around the list my reader asks for, you might need an iPod, not a little fold-out sheet like people use for sustainable-seafood choices.

When ADM calls itself the "supermarket to the world," what it means is that it's the supermarket to the food industry.

By its own reckoning, the company supplies over 1,000 ingredients to the food makers. Moreover, ADM claims to be the "the world's #1 processor of vegetable oils, including soy, corn, canola, sunflower, palm, kernel and coconut."

Click around the above link, and you'll find several scary lists of stuff that's worth avoiding, including a veritable roster of xanthan gum products. Twelve varieties of xanthan gum -- now that's freedom of choice!

Tread especially carefully while negotiating the supermarket candy shelf. ADM not only dominates the market for high-fructose corn syrup, but it also claims status as "the world's premier cocoa and chocolate manufacturer," capable of supplying industrial candy makers with "cocoa beans [as well as] custom blends of cocoa powders, butters, liquors, and chocolates, and compound coatings."

The company has been accused of knowingly buying cheap cocoa beans from suppliers that exploit slave labor.

Watch out also for vitamin pills as well as "functional foods" such as "power bars."

Then there's those ubiquitous corn and soy derivatives, which pervade processed food like weevils in an open bag of flour. Here are lists of commonly used ingredients derived from corn and soy. It's a safe bet that ADM is a major supplier of all or most of them.

If all of that weren't overwhelming enough, you really sort of ... can't drive. ADM controls a quarter of the ethanol market, and the federal government keeps mandating that gasoline mixers use more and more of it.

It takes real effort and commitment to stiff ADM. Anyone who takes a path of least resistance with regard to food and transportation even occasionally ends up fattening ADM's bottom line.

So, if you can, dust off that bike, and those pots and pans, too. Your own health will flourish even as ADM's declines.

For story: Starving the beast: How to avoid Archer Daniels Midland
6 Comments | Post a Comment

vegetable oils

We Mediterranean types happily notice that olive oil is not included in ADM's catalogue of vegetable oils. And we shall continue importing from the EU, so long as that is practical.

But canola oil perhaps is practical too. Do you, dear Tom, have anything good to say about canola?

In general, congratulations!, this is sort of like a Federalist Paper leading up to a Constitution, regarding especially buying food in multi-product-genre stores.

Regarding seafood, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "little fold-out sheet": I would like to know more about people's experience with that. I have a couple of editions of it magneted to my refrigerator, but generally do not refer to them. (They are next to a picture of the late Pope John Paul II, in healthier days, holding on high a Book of the Gospels. But the juxtaposition is just a post-modern thing, there is no hegemonic patriarchal significance attached.) And that is fitting, seeing that we very rarely eat seafood -- an occasional can of sardines, an occasional order from a Chinese restaurant -- , and never buy it from a food store. So, I would be fascinated to know what kinds of conversations seafood customers have with seafood managers.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 4:56 AM on 23 Feb 2007

Anti-trust law enforcement

If we insisted on this, ADM, exxonmob, halliburton and the rest would be heartbroken. Their very special corporate "citizen" constitutional rights to do anything they want to with no consequences canceled.

But the bad news is that it would take a grassroots effort, and the badder news is that any reform or GHG global climate disaster fight will only proceed from the grassroots up too.

But we DO have the internet. At least part of it. Yikes.

They only have the US government, the banks, the federal reserve, the means of production, the media, the military, Diebold, computerized redistricting using the credit reporting agency's proprietary "secret" information on all of US.... Hehehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 8:38 AM on 23 Feb 2007

Avoiding ADM

If one simply buys locally, such as from truck farms and ranches, chances are you are avoiding AMD, CON-AGRA, and other global food-based suppliers. This is not always possible but please support your local growers, cheese shops, butchers, and so forth.

It costs more but some of us value quality over quantity. For those of you who don't know, most all factory tomatoes and oranges and similar fruits are picked as green and hard and can be, and then are gassed with ethylene for ripening and a pesticide. AMD is mostly known for its grain operations, and since our family gave up eating a lot of starchy foods, we feel much better.

A good point was raised about fish products. Again, what should be avoided are fish caught on "factory ships" so please support your local fisherman, especially the hook-and-line fishermen. We acually have a wholesaler that works with the small boats and will call us if a nice load of fresh snapper, bass, and tuna comes in.

And canned sardines, PULEEEEZZZ! Those fish are rounded up in huge seine nets and pumped onto a ship by the metric ton, something that would make AMD quite envious. /sammie

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 8:52 AM on 23 Feb 2007

line fishermen

Uh, yeah, because being pulled out of the water by a hook in the mouth is so much better than being pulled out in a net!

No, wait.

Minimizing eating these things--ADM products, fish, etc--is great. If we're going to indulge from time to time, we shouldn't kid ourselves that it's actually a good thing if we just do it right. I do bad stuff from time to time, and dammit, I enjoy it, but I don't pretend it's virtuous.

Thanks, Tom, for laying out the gigantic scale of the problem, and for giving us yet one more specific reason to to the right things. It's easy to feel anxious and guilty about eating prepared foods, not as easy to remember the specific reasons we shouldn't, and the specific things we need to do instead.

by willa at 12:49 PM on 23 Feb 2007

Putting your eggs in so many baskets

is an old but effective defense strategy.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 2:22 PM on 24 Feb 2007

ADM Rocks!

I'm really at a loss. What is with all you people bashing ADM? What did ADM ever do to any of you? Oh, I get it. This must be one of those anti-trade, anti-capitalism websites that would like to see every major American corporation shrivel up and die so that millions of people would be out of work and our economy would tank. I for one will buy certain products because I know that ADM ingredients are in them. Particularly those using ADM cocoa and ADM soy protein. And needless to say, I always gas up with ethanol. Not only does most of it come from ADM, but it's generally two cents less per gallon. As for the evil xanthan gum and your general assault on the bioproducts division, what gives? You know, what, go ahead and boycott ADM. And as soon as you figure out how to feed the entire planet from a road side stand, let me know.

by John at 2:19 PM on 27 Feb 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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