Though the companies won’t say, it has been estimated that Cargill and ADM together probably buy somewhere near a third of all the corn grown in America. These two companies now guide corn’s path at every step of the way: They provide the pesticide and fertilizer to the farmers; operate most of America’s grain elevators (Naylor’s member-owned cooperative is an exception); broker and ship most of the exports; perform the wet and dry milling; feed the livestock and then slaughter the corn-fattened animals; distill the ethanol; and manufacture the high-fructose corn syrup and the numberless other
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