Archer Daniels Midland

Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), once self-titled “supermarket to the world,” is an Illinois-based agribusiness and the largest supplier of ethanol in the United States. With more than 230 factories and 27,000 employees in over 60 countries, ADM is also one of the world's largest food processors.

ADM operates an extensive agricultural sourcing, storage, processing, and transportation network. Each day, ADM converts 91,000 metric tons of oilseeds, 50,000 metric tons of corn, 27,000 metric tons of wheat, and approximately 15 percent of the world's cocoa crop into a wide variety of products. Corn alone becomes some two dozen products, including food and beverage ingredients (e.g., high-fructose corn syrup that may end up in soft drinks), animal feed ingredients (e.g., lysine, bulk vitamins), and industrial products.

Some highlights in ADM's history of expansion include its beginnings in 1902 as a linseed-crushing business under partners George A. Archer and John W. Daniels, the 1923 acquisition of Midland Linseed Products Company, continued takeovers of Midwest oilseed processors throughout the 1920s, expansion into flour milling and the discovery of how to produce lecithin from soybean oil in the 1930s, post-World War II growth into overseas locales, mass-marketing of textured soy protein in the 1960s, acquisition of Corn Sweeteners (high-fructose syrups and glutens) and Tabor (grains) in the 1970s, takeover of Colombian Peanut and the formation of a grain-marketing joint venture with GROWMARK in the 1980s, and the 1989 entry into the lysine market (an amino-acid feed additive primarily for livestock), as well as the realm of biotechnology. Shortly thereafter, ADM also became known as the biggest recipient of “corporate welfare” in the United States.

A federal investigation was launched in 1992 charging that ADM conspired with its supposed competitors to fix prices and allocate sales of lysine and citric acid. In 1995, the FBI joined the investigation, building its case on information provided by ADM executive [Page 43]Mark Whitacre. ADM pleaded guilty in 1996 to violating the Sherman Antitrust Act and paid $100 million in penalties, which was then a record for a U.S. antitrust case. Interestingly, Whitacre himself was later convicted of defrauding ADM of $9 million, so he lost his immunity and, along with two other ADM executives, was sentenced to prison in 1999. ADM's expansion hardly slowed during this period. In fact, ADM continued to benefit from federal and state subsidies for furthering corn-based ethanol production. The Government Accounting Office estimated subsidies to the ethanol industry at $11 billion for the years 1980–2000, and as the largest ethanol producer in the United States, ADM received the greatest portion of them.

ADM continues to venture into new, yet related, partnerships. For instance, in 2008, ADM entered a biofuels collaborative research program with Monsanto and Deere & Company. ADM currently owns or co-owns biodiesel production facilities in Brazil, Germany, India, Indonesia, and the United States (specifically, in Missouri and North Dakota). ADM also has partnered with multiple companies and other institutions to develop bio-based plasticizers and other crop-derived alternatives to petroleum-based plastics and chemicals.

In its mere century of existence, ADM has greatly influenced the very ways in which food and energy are produced.

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