The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers.
Sadia S.A. is a major Brazilian food producer. It is among the world’s leading producers of frozen foods, and is Brazil’s main exporter of meat-based products. As of 2006, Sadia has about 12 industrial plants in Brazil that together produce over 1.3 million tons of meat-based products raning from chicken, turkey, pork and beef, as well as pasta, margerines, desserts, and other products. The company manages to provide to over 70 thousand direct points of sale in Brazil and around 200 foreign clients in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadia
Syngenta is the largest agribusiness company in the world. In 2000 Syngenta was the worlds largest manufacturer of agrochemicals, the third largest owner of plant biotechnology patents and the third largest seed supplier. Syngenta has more than 20,000 employees in 20 countries worldwide and sales of over USD $6 billion.
Advanta Seeds is a joint venture of chemical/pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and seed company VanderHave. In the UK and EU, it has been involved in field trials for a range of GM crops, and faced scandal when its conventional seed stock was found to have substantial levels of GM contamination.
Advanta’s statement: Worldwide breeding, production, processing, conditioning, sales and distribution of seeds for major agricultural field-crops and amenity grasses.
Diageo plc (LSE: DGE, NYSE: DEO) is the largest multinational beer, wine and spirits company in the world. The Company produces and distributes a collection of branded premium spirits, beer and wine. It produces and distributes a range of premium brands, including Smirnoff vodka, Johnnie Walker Scotch whiskies, Captain Morgan rum, Baileys Original Irish Cream liqueur, JeB scotch whiskey, Tanqueray gin and Guinness stout.
Established in 1911, Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd. (Nissui) is a commercial fishing and marine product procurement operation. It's goal is to "Establish a global supply chain of marine products." The company is the second-largest of its kind in Japan and owns Gorton's, a US frozen seafood company.
Cargill is one of the world's agribusiness giants and one of the largest privately held companies based in the United States. It began as a grain trader and has expanded into many forms of food processing and other industries such as steel and coal. Amid soaring commodity prices, Cargill's profits have been growing at an astounding rate.
Cargill is not shy about using its size and power to affect public policy.
Dole Food Company, Inc. is the world's largest producer of fruits and vegetables such as bananas and pineapples, and also produces cut flowers and nuts. Dole has a history of operating plantations in the US and across the globe, often creating poor working conditions and unsafe environmental conditions such as pesticide use, soil erosion and deforestation.
Bunge Limited (formerly Bunge International and prior to that Bunge Y Born) is a Bermudan food conglomerate with its headquarters in White Plains, New York. As well as being a leading global soybean exporter it is also involved in food processing, grain trading, and fertilizer. It competes with Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland.
Founded in 1818 by Johann Peter Gotlieb Bunge in Amsterdam, it was relocated to Antwerp by Edouard Bounge in 1859.
