by Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

On my way back from the Black Holocaust Conference on December 14th in New York I stopped over in
Greensboro, NC and participated in an historical joint presentation by Mr. Al Wellington,
co-founder of MATAH and myself. Mr. Wellington was invited to come to the Spiritual
Connection and Enrichment Center to give a presentation on MATAH on this Wednesday evening. Min.
Willie Muhammad also gave me a few minutes to speak on the necessity of controlling our food supply from the
“land to the man”. Little did we know how well the two subjects and presentations would
fit together even though I had never met Mr. Wellington nor seen the MATAH concept presented.

Using Mr. Wellington’s projector I gave a PowerPoint presentation which described how
“better educated” Black people lost most of the 15 million acres of land that our less
“educated” ancestors had bought fresh up from slavery. I described how the USDA used tax
money to subsidize white farmers while denying Black farmers access to their fair share of those
subsidies which over time gave white farmers an increasing comparative advantage over their Black
competitors.

I also showed how the gap has widened over the last twenty years between what the farmer receives
for his products and what the consumer pays at the retail level. In 1980 the farmer received an
aggregate of about $81.7 billion of the consumers’ food bill of $182.7 billion. However, by 1998
the consumer was spending $465.8 billion on food while the farmer’s portion of that bill was only
$118.8 billion. In other words whereas the farmer received a little under one half of the consumer’s
total food expenditures in 1980, by 1998 he received less than one forth of the consumer’s food
bill.

Where’s the money? Who is getting the bulk of your food dollar? Answer, the processors,
distributors, restaurants and retail stores are getting the bulk of the consumer’s money while the
farmers, and particularly the Black farmers, get less than crumbs.

How do consumers spend their money? According to some 1999 data found in a book entitled
“Fast Food Nation”, Americans spend over $110 billion on fast foods. This is more than
they spend on new cars, higher education, personal computers, newspapers, records or movies.

Now enters Mr. Wellington who backs up my findings and adds a lot more. Mr. Wellington, the
co-founder of MATAH with our deceased warrior, Mr. Ken Bridges , started by pointing out that
African-Americans’ consumer spending makes up the margins of profitability that is making white
corporations wealthy. For instance, Mr. Wellington pointed out that Tide is the number one laundry
detergent in America and controls 54% of Black consumer spending for laundry detergents. He asks the
rhetorical question, “can Black people produce laundry detergent?”

But on further analysis Mr. Wellington realized that more money is made through distributing a
product than manufacturing it. And there is no need to produce a product if you can not distribute
it in the system. Naïve Black would-be millionaires dream of coming up with that one great product
and getting it in all the major stores and grasping a major “market share” of that type of
commodity. Mr. Wellington pointed out that there is but so much shelf space, for say, “laundry
detergent”, in any given retail store or supermarket. There is a little something called
“slotting allowances” where you have to pay these heavy, heavy fees just to get your
product in the distribution system.

Mr. Wellington then uses the example of a breakfast cereal entrepreneur who comes up with a line
of cereal with just four flavors. “To get 100 per cent distribution in each supermarket in the
country would cost you about $17 million just to get your product on the shelf”, he said. This
of course does not include advertising or promotional stuff that you need to get your product in the
minds of your potential market.

This led to the development of a business concept where Al Wellington and Ken Bridges got
together with George Johnson and Min. Louis Farrakhan in 1985 to establish “Power”. That
“Power” program and concept was a good one but they were not able to make a go of it at
that time. However, after the 1995 Million Man March, Al Wellington and Ken Bridges got back
together and formed a new direct marketing enterprise called “MATAH”. The name was
originated by Ken Bridges. The meaning of the name and how it was formulated can be seen in the
complete video presentation of Mr. Wellington and myself, called “MATAH: The staff of
Life”. After viewing this tape which also includes footage of Mr. Ken Bridges before his
assassination, we can only now begin to understand the great loss that we as a people have suffered
through Mr. Bridges’ death.

Basically, the MATAH concept centers around taking Black manufactured or grown products and
selling them directly to Black consumers. Mr. Wellington is shooting for capturing 10% of the Black
consumer market. He said that they now have 2,600 distributors nationwide. Ken Bridges had just
closed a $100 million deal with Dudley Products to import, manufacture and distribute a
revolutionary natural pain relief oil called “GNO” made from nutmeg grown in Grenada.

You have an opportunity to be a part of a planning summit designed to be held at Dudley’s
Conference Center outside of Greensboro, NC from February 7-9, 2003 as a part of the “5th
Annual Black Land Loss Summit” where our theme is “Controlling our destiny from the land
to the man.” The only way that we can save our remaining land base is to develop our own
distribution system for food, so that the land will become valuable for what it can produce instead
of what it can be sold for.

How are we as a people going to finance this and other new production/distribution systems?
Answer, “give me your fast-food money”. I don’t want your rent money. I don’t want
your car money. I don’t want your “grocery” money. Just give me your “fast-food
money”, $110 billion and we can build a new future for Blacks and Americans as a whole.
“Give me your fast-food money”, before it kills you. Please! (Read “Fast Food to
Hell” at www.MuhammadFarms.com.)

For more information go to www.MuhammadFarms.com or call us at (888)995-8119.