Supermarketer to the World
Kahn, E. J. Jr.
SUPERMARKETER TO THE WORLD E.J. Kahn, Jr. Warner Books/320 pages/$24.95 reviewed by JOE QLIEENAN It is a truism in the publishing industry that a staggering number of books are nothing more than...
...This is a book that is supposed to be the story of Dwayne Andreas, chief executive officer of Archer Daniels Midland, but it quickly reveals itself to be a paean to Dwayne Andreas, whom the author views as a soybean-selling secular saint...
...trade fair scheduled to take place in Moscow shortly thereafter, because so many people would be disappointed...
...Boy, was I ever wrong...
...Andreas is the Decatur, Illinois version of New York, New York's Pete Petersen: neither a saint nor a Satan, but a schmoozer.hunger who just happens to be in the grain-processing business...
...government into subsidizing the development of alternative fuels such as ethanol—an industry his company dominates—and led the push to rid Third World nations of hunger through improved distribution networks and bold innovations in agricultural techniques...
...casionedness, their curious detachment from the world most of us live in, their ability to elicit from puzzled readers such comments as: "Gee, what made you decide to do a three-installment, 157-page article about eastern Kentucky dulcimer repairmen now...
...walks wheeler-and-dealer committed to no principle larger than next quarter's bottom line...
...What are we to make of a man who is friendly with both Pat Robertson and Mother Teresa, who has written checks to both Jesse Jackson and Jesse Helms, and who numbers F. Ross Johnson, the deposed RJR Nabisco CEO who has come to embody the worst "excesses" of the 1980s, among his friends...
...He is, in short, a very smart, very successful businessman, a man who has fused traditional business know-how with traditional low-profile corporate philanthropy to fashion a positive image for both himself and his company...
...Nor is Kahn any Joseph of Conrad...
...It is, in short, a book that has been crying out, "Don't write me...
...Don't write me...
...The true flavor of the book is captured in the kernels of wisdom from the Sultan of Soy that kick off each chapter: "I'm a strong believer that trade is the greatest promoter of peace and goodwill on earth...
...And then there's the tricky matter of the ecosystem...
...for years...
...Blithely whitewashing the assorted scandals and improprieties that have dogged Andreas throughout his career, Kahn depicts him as an authentic American hero, a genuine visionary committed to eradicating global The American Spectator January 1992 73...
...the job of the American businessman is to camouflage selfish entrepreneurial ventures as selfless gestures of vast personal philanthropy...
...Andreas is hardly to be condemned for such ingenious charades...
...Food knows no boundaries...
...In the course of his 54-year career at the New Yorker, proclaims the flyleaf to the book, E. J. Kahn, Jr...
...In the kingdom of the prolix, only the Atlantic can give the New Yorker a serious run for its money...
...Thus, when the Soviets gunned down airliner KAL 007 back in 1983, Andreas thought it would be a terrible idea to cancel a U.S...
...Aren't we all...
...has written more than twenty-five books on everything from combat to cookery...
...Ka/m, a creampuff generalist who is clearly in over his head when writing about an industrial colossus like ADM, doesn't see it that way...
...Warner Books/320 pages/$24.95 reviewed by JOE QLIEENAN It is a truism in the publishing industry that a staggering number of books are nothing more than magazine articles that have been padded out to book length...
...That's why these guys pay so much money to flacks...
...Among many other coups, Andreas has persuaded both Pepsi 72 The American Spectator January 1992 and Coca-Cola to switch from sugar to high-fructose in their products, headed a campaign for relaxed trade restrictions against the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, cajoled the U.S...
...But that doesn't make him a saint, and Kahn's naive attempt to beatify his subject—who cooperated on the project—comes off as a terrible embarrassment for both subject and writer...
...Judging from Supermarketer to the World, Kahn would have been better off writing two books, and taking the other fifty years off to learn something about business, the commodities markets, politics, or common sense...
...Andreas, via his creature, Senator Bob Dole, has long masqueraded as a committed environmentalist, thereby inducing the United States government to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to underwrite Archer Daniels Midland's ethanol industry, one of the great eco-boondoggles of our time...
...Kahn agrees...
...What are we to make of a man who gets into trouble because of a "quick, off-the-record" $25,000 contribution to Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign, and then in 1973 runs afoul of the Department of Justice's special prosecutor Archibald Cox for four apparently illegal $25,000 contributions to the Happy Warrior during Humphrey's 1968 campaign...
...Having alchemized many of his previous articles into books with such seductive titles as The Big Drink, The Merry Partners, Georgia: From Rabun Gap to Tybee Light, and Harvard: Through Change and Storm, Kahn has now repackaged his latest effort, a towering chronicle of mundus soybeanus, into Supermarketer to the World...
...Another trademark of New Yorker pieces is their overpowering sense of unocJoe Queenan is a frequent contributor to Barron's and other publications...
...Kahn seems to think Andreas was right...
...Andreas was highly critical of Jimmy Carter's decision to impose a trade embargo against the Soviets after their invasion of Afghanistan—one of Carter's few noteworthy actions...
...That works out to roughly one book every two years...
...A master of the flat, non-judgmental, golly-gee style that made the New Yorker famous, Kahn fills his book with long, uninformative sections describing Andreas's golf game, his homespun philosophy, his vacation home, his attempts to erect a statue in honor of Ronald Reagan in Decatur, Illinois, and other momentous matters...
...Exceptions to this rule are the daunting leviathans handcrafted by staffers of the New Yorker, articles so Asiatic in their sweep that they must then be edited down from their original 1.7 million words in order to fit neatly within the covers of a conventional 320-page book...
...During his 26-year tenure, ADM's revenues have skyrocketed to $8 billion, with the company's annual net income reaching $500 million in 1989...
...And so we come to the curious case of E. J. Kahn, Jr., a New Yorker staffer since the Depression who has written more than three million words, all but one or two of them unnecessary, for the magazine...
...I hate to have to come right out and say it, but this is the worst book about the grain-processing industry that I have ever read...
...What are we to make of a man who, though a lifelong bosom buddy of Hubert Humphrey, once contributed $157,000 to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign...
...At heart, I'm just a Mennonite-farm boy...
...Whereas ideologically committed individuals of both the left and the right would condemn Andreas's willingness to bend and fold when serious moral issues present themselves, Kahn views Andreas as the finest of Americans: the non-ideological, center-right pragmatist who is always ready to be reasonable...
...What we are to make of him is this: he is the very worst sort of Republican, the money-talks, B.S...
...Dwayne Andreas is, of course, the chief honcho at the largest grain-processing company in the world...
...For as long as anyone can remember, Andreas has been putting politicians on his payroll, with no regard for their political ideology, so long as they agree to carry the ball...
...But it is the job of responsible journalists to point out that a commodities czar with a $180-million fortune and friends all over Capitol Hill is no Joseph of Arimathea...
...and "Before I read that article, I thought I knew everything there was to know about our friend, the miraculous soybean...
...We are in the international age of agriculture...
Vol. 25 • January 1992 • No. 1
