It's equivalent to saying the oil producing companies only get x% of global car sales. Simply, ridiculous statement.
Please don't do that here. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your comment would be just fine without that bit (and the final bit).
Cars are not really made of oil, gasoline is. And this was probably not the best of examples. In most oil companies extraction/exploration (raw material) and refining (processed product) actually split the profits pretty evenly, all things considered. Marketing (gas stations) gets pretty much the breadcrumbs and relies for profit more on selling Coke and sandwiches than actual gas.
This is unlike most other cases where the raw materials are worth far less than the processed ones, and the bulk of the profit goes to the final manufacturer rather than the raw material exporter.
Seriously - the great increase in wheat prices brings it to 8 cents per pound in the US.
And my avocado whole wheat toast still costs $10-15 with taxes and tip.
> coffee growing countries only receive about 8% of the total coffee revenue
If we look at the price of, for example, white flour from the supermarket, it should be immediately obvious that grain farmers are receiving some tiny fraction of the total net value of all baked-goods / pasta / pizza / etc sold annually.
It’s not immediately obvious that this is bad or unfair.