We don’t begrudge Woertz moving up in the corporate world. What worries us is that no one seems to care about ADM’s control over the domestic ethanol market and what that control will mean. Chevron has about 1.5 million barrels of refining capacity in the U.S. That means the company, which is the second-largest integrated oil company in the U.S., controls about 7.5 percent of the domestic market for refined products. Of the big domestic refiners – ExxonMobil, Valero, and BP – none controls more than about 15 percent of the U.S. market. And though Congress and politicos love to bash the biggest oil companies in general, and the refiners in particular, the truth is that they compete for customers on one factor: price.

Now compare those big oil companies to ADM. In her new job, Woertz will head a company that controls a whopping 29 percent of the domestic ethanol market. According to Barron’s, no other player in that market controls more than 5 percent of the ethanol trade. That fact gives ADM a huge pricing advantage when it comes to selling its ethanol, and a quick glance at ADM’s history shows its willingness to control prices. In the late 1990s, ADM was caught manipulating the price of lysine and citric acid. To settle the dispute, the company agreed to pay a then-record criminal antitrust fine of $100 million. In 2004, the company paid $400 million to settle a civil suit alleging ADM had rigged prices on corn-based sweetener.