The Carpe Diem blog has a great graph of the profits of Big Oil v. the profits of Big Food. From '05 to '07, profits for Exxon Mobil are up 12% while profits for Monsanto are up 289% and for ADM up 107%.
So why are Congress and the press on Big Oil's back but not Big Food's?
Politics.
Focus groups hate Big Oil but have never heard of Big Food. There are more farm states than oil states, more farm states represented by Dems, Dems control Congress and can demagogue the issue. For Presidential candidates (except McC), the Iowa caucus rules out any attacks on Big Ag. and, therefore, Big Food. The environmentalists hate Big Oil. They run the Dem Party, which controls Congress and can demagogue the issue. Folks who don't do the grocery shopping have no idea how bad food inflation has been. But those who don't do the grocery shopping do buy gas every other day.
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I think you're over-simplifying a bit, while making a great point.
ReplyDeleteBecause of the commodity (ag) lobby, neither Dems or Repubs would DARE step on Monsanto's (the Holy Grail) toes. Want to know why? Monsanto makes Round Up. Why is that important? 91% of all corn and soybeans produced in the USA are "Round-Up Ready", meaning that you can spray round-up on them all summer long, and kill competitive weeds in the fields...and not hurt the corn or beans.
And real quick - nice dig on Dems. Do you really believe that Democrats do not understand the price of groceries? Is that because they are all on food stamps, or because they are all elitists? You are forgetting a huge number of pro-union (etc.) midwestern and also "old Democrat" southerners. Good people who have lost a lot of jobs in the last 7 years, and certainly understand the price of groceries. You have some great political ideas - I hate to see debates boiled down to such low, "black and white" denominators. Our country and our politics are much more complicated than that.