Archer Daniels Midland is named across several episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as a recipient of federal agricultural subsidies and as a beneficiary of government promotion of ethanol. In these discussions the company serves as a concrete example in a broader argument that farm programs transfer wealth to large corporate agribusiness rather than to small farmers. The excerpts do not describe the company’s business, size, ownership or history; it appears only as a name on the receiving end of federal money.
Subsidies as corporate welfare
In an episode on federal budget cuts, Bob Zadek’s guest Matt Welch, identified as editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, listed direct payouts to farmers among the spending he would eliminate. Welch said the country spends more than $20 billion a year on direct payouts to the world’s richest farmers, naming Monsanto, big agribusiness and Archer Daniels Midland, and argued that this money directly impoverishes third-world farmers A Libertarian Plan (2010). Welch framed the agricultural payments alongside other targets — getting the government out of the housing market, closing the Federal Communications Commission, repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, repealing unspent stimulus money and bringing troops home — as examples of cuts that would be politically difficult but pragmatically easy.
A later episode devoted to farm subsidies returned to the same charge. Zadek described the history of what he called corporate welfare as beginning modestly with Franklin Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, a program to pay farmers to take land out of production, which he said the Secretary of Agriculture in 1933 called temporary. Zadek said that 60 years later it had grown to $25 billion, and that it helps Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill and all the huge corporate growers Farming Subsidies (2011). His guest, Chris Edwards, argued that policymakers rarely have to defend these programs because they are passed by the Senate and House Agriculture Committees, whose members often own farms or come from rural communities; Edwards said politicians claim to stand up for the small farmer, but that three-quarters of all farm subsidies go to the 10% largest farms.
In the same episode Zadek used his own residence as an illustration. He said that residents of Sausalito, the Marin County community where he lives, received $717,000 in farm subsidies from 1995 to 2006, and asked how an upscale community could receive such payments. His answer was that the farm subsidy program is out of control, costs $25 billion a year, and benefits nobody except Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, while hurting everybody Farming Subsidies (2011).
Ethanol and the charge of cronyism
Archer Daniels Midland also appears in a discussion of ethanol. In an episode featuring Gary Johnson, Zadek raised what he called the corporate welfare of giving money to Archer Daniels Midland and other large corporations to promote the uneconomic use of corn for fuel, and asked Johnson for his view on the government’s role in ethanol and the environment Straight Talk with Gary Johnson (2011). Johnson said that ethanol, to his understanding, takes more energy to produce than it produces, that he would oppose cap-and-trade legislation, and that he would advocate cutting farm subsidies by 43% and ending ethanol subsidies. Johnson also linked subsidized corn to obesity, asking whether subsidizing corn and inventing many ways to consume it — including corn sweetener — was perhaps a leading cause of obesity in America. Zadek characterized the arrangement as the Nanny State writ large, in which government decides what people eat and what additives food contains, and said the five biggest subsidized crops each contribute to obesity.
The theme of cronyism as distinct from capitalism appears in an episode on the morality of capitalism. After a caller from San Francisco described what he called a bait-and-switch government of cronyism, nepotism and special favors, Zadek told him not to confuse capitalism with crony capitalism, calling the practices the caller listed a perversion of capitalism The Morality of Capitalism (2012). The guest, Tom G. Palmer, said that government-subsidized bailouts for big banks and billions for Archer Daniels Midland and giant agribusiness companies are certainly not free-market capitalism, but government interventionism that takes money from one person and gives it to another with the force of law. Palmer said free-market exchange involves no gun pointed at the participant, and that the best cure for cronyism is free markets — getting rid of the privileges, subsidies and bailouts, which he called despicable, shameful and fundamentally immoral.
Across episodes: the same charge, repeated
The excerpts show the same accusation argued in more than one episode without development. In October 2010 Matt Welch named Archer Daniels Midland among recipients of more than $20 billion in annual direct payouts A Libertarian Plan (2010); in January 2011 Zadek and Chris Edwards named it among beneficiaries of a $25 billion program and of $717,000 in subsidies to Sausalito residents Farming Subsidies (2011); in April 2011 Zadek raised ethanol subsidies to Archer Daniels Midland with Gary Johnson Straight Talk with Gary Johnson (2011); and in October 2012 Tom G. Palmer cited billions for the company as an example of interventionism rather than capitalism The Morality of Capitalism (2012). The figures and the framing recur, but the excerpts contain no new evidence, no response from the company, and no change in the argument between the earlier and later treatments.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state what Archer Daniels Midland does, where it is based, when it was founded, how large it is, or how much subsidy money it has actually received; the dollar figures given are program totals, not payments to the company. They do not name the specific statutes or programs through which the payments flow beyond the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, and they do not describe any litigation, lobbying or statement by the company. No guest or host in these excerpts defends the subsidies or disputes the characterization of the company as a beneficiary. The company’s own conduct and position are absent from the record entirely.