Carlos Roa
WHEN I was an undergraduate studying at Georgetown University, I used to listen to Al Jazeera English’s (AJE) coverage of global events—the Arab Spring was still in full swing at the time, and AJE’s reporting was second to none. On a May afternoon in 2011, one particular segment on Kamahl Santamaria’s show, Counting the Cost, stood out. Kamahl introduced a company that I had never heard of before: Glencore.
The company is a commodity trader—a business that focuses on the buying and selling of physical commodities, like grain, oil, copper, and so on. Most would dismiss this as relatively inconsequential; buying and selling commodities is one of the oldest kinds of trade in the world. What made Glencore stand out, Kamahl emphasized, was that “when one company has this much influence, through its size, and some say even its practices, then there is a concern.” He laid out the numbers: at the time, Glencore controlled 3 percent of the world’s oil market, 50 percent of the global copper market, 60 percent of zinc, and 9 percent of the world’s grain. “Think about the effect that would have on food prices,” Kamahl cautions, “the absolute basics for so many people around the world.” If controlling the food supply of entire nations isn’t a significant form of power, then what is?
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