Record Profits For Grain Firms Amid Food Crisis Prompt Calls For Windfall Tax

[KhinaraDorsey]

There are growing calls for a windfall tax to be imposed on grain trading companies who profiteered amid soaring food prices around the world, following the Russian-Ukraine war.

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) has claimed that the world’s top four grain traders, which have dominated the global grain market for decades, have witnessed record or near-record profits or sales, reports The Guardian.

The group is forecasting that demand outstripping supply would remain until 2024, leading to higher sales and profits in the next two years and keeping the grains beyond the reach of the poor, the report added.

“The fact that global commodity giants are making record profits at a time when hunger is rising is clearly unjust, and is a terrible indictment of our food systems. What’s even worse, these companies could have done more to prevent the hunger crisis in the first place,” Olivier De Schutter, a co-chair of IPES-Food and UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, was quoted as saying.

The four trading companies that are said to have profiteered are— the Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus.

These companies, known collectively as ABCD, control an estimate of 70 to 90 per cent of the global grain trade, the UK-based news outlet said.

“Global grain markets are even more concentrated than energy markets and even less transparent, so there is a huge risk of profiteering,” De Schutte was quoted as saying.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/23/record-profits-grain-firms-food-crisis-calls-windfall-tax

 

[KhinaraDorsey]

We must look at the giants of the Grain industry and considering what they could have done differently to prevent the crisis, as well as what they could be doing today

[Aminu]

Record profits for grain firms amid food crisis

[Ebiowei]

It is a crisis