Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) - the self-proclaimed "Supermarket to the World" - processes enough food each day to feed over 130 million people. The company started as a single lone flax processing plant in Minneapolis. The plant eventually grew into nine mills and 334 presses, making it the world's largest linseed oil producer. Since its agrarian birth, ADM has created a lengthy list of food operations, including wheat milling, soybean processing, value-added products, transportation, corn sweeteners, ethanol and peanut processing, fermentation-based bioproducts, and nutraceuticals.

Corn, wheat, cocoa beans, milo, oats, barley, and peanuts

The company posits research and development as a central engine behind its success. Indeed, ADM has been the mastermind behind such vegemighty creations as fuel ethanol and textured vegetable oil (TVP). The company's move into the transportation industry in the 1960s was accompanied by a determination to move raw materials as cheaply and effectively as possible. Today, the company's transportation system is vast: 13,000 railcars, 2,250 barges, and 1200 trucks move a world's worth of food. From growing, to harvesting, to processing, to shipping - ADM certainly takes a holistic and integrated approach to food manufacturing. With over 200 domestic and overseas plants, ADM turns its 11 core grains and oilseeds into dozens of food, beverage, animal feed, and industrial products. The company distills and refines cocoa powder and chocolate from cocoa beans, flour from wheat, vegetable oil and lecithin from soybeans, and high fructose corn syrup and citric acid from corn. It is also the country's largest producer of ethanol.

Price-fixer

In 1995 the Federal Bureau of Investigations and an ADM employee-turned-spy named Mark Whitacre underwent a federal investigation involving price-fixing by ADM. The next year the company agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges of price-fixing on lysine (an amino acid derived from the hydrolysis of proteins) and citric acid. Ultimately, ADM paid $100 million in penalties - but the trouble didn't end there. In 1997 Kraft Foods, P&G, Quaker Oats, and Schrieber Foods sued ADM, seeking damages for its deliberate price-fixing stratagem. Perhaps the only revenge ADM achieved in the scandal involved Whitacre. In an unrelated 1997 legal case, the company traitor was sentenced to nine years in prison without parole on federal charges that he defrauded ADM of almost $10 million. July 1999 brought the Archer Daniels case to a close, adding two-and-a-half years to Whitacre's prison sentence and sending Michael D. Andreas and Terrance S. Wilson, ex-Archer Daniels execs, to prison for two years with hefty $350,000 fines. ADM apparently has trouble learning from its mistakes - in 2000 it was fined, along with two Japanese and two South Korean companies, $140 million for price fixing.

1998: the good

In September 1998, Worthington Foods, Inc. announced a definitive agreement to acquire the Harvest Burger(R) trademark and a line of products called Morningstar Farms (R) from ADM. Morningstar is the nation's number one brand of meat-alternative products. Harvest Burger includes Harvest Burger Original, a meatless patty, and several related products. The president of ADM's Protein Division reported: "This transaction strengthens a long-term supplier/manufacturer relationship that ADM and Worthington have enjoyed for many years. We believe this agreement results in a 'win-win' [situation] for both our companies and allows us both to focus on what we do best."

1998: the bad

In December 1998, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed penalties totaling $1.6 million against ADM for failing to protect workers against highly dangerous conditions. Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman announced, "ADM permitted workers to enter rail tank cars to paint them knowing they weren't wearing equipment necessary to get them out in an emergency. Because the paint was flammable and potentially explosive, the danger of an accident was high. It shouldn't take fatalities to make an employer pay attention to safety."

2000: Getting even better