Cargill, Incorporated

• Date founded: 1865
• Industry: Agricultural and food products; commodities trading; transportation
• Corporate Headquarters: Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Type: Private

Overview

Cargill, Incorporated is a US-based agricultural and food products corporation that operates in seventy countries worldwide. Cargill produces, distributes, and exports many common food staples, including sugar, wheat, corn, soybeans, chocolate, meat, and poultry. It also produces animal nutrition products and biofuels and provides commodities trading and transportation services. William Wallace Cargill founded the company near the end of the American Civil War, and the Cargill and MacMillan families have owned the company since the early twentieth century. In the 2020s, Cargill had more than 155,000 employees in seventy countries and was among the largest private companies in the United States, with revenues exceeding $165 billion.

History

William Wallace Cargill was born in New York in 1844 and moved to Wisconsin with his family in his early teens. In 1865, just as the Civil War was coming to an end, Cargill left Wisconsin to purchase a grain warehouse in Conover, Iowa. The warehouse was near the end of the McGregor & Western Railroad line, a strategic location on the newly established railway route. Two years later, he was joined by his younger brothers, Sam and Sylvester, and opened another grain warehouse and a lumber yard. As the nation’s railroads and agricultural businesses expanded through the Midwest, Cargill took advantage of these trends to grow his own business. He moved his company headquarters to La Crosse, Wisconsin, and in 1880, branched out into commodities such as coal, flour, lumber, animal feed, and seeds.

By 1885, the Cargill brothers controlled more than one hundred grain storage facilities across the Midwest, with a total storage capacity of more than 1.6 million bushels. At that time, William Cargill operated the W.W. Cargill Company out of Wisconsin, and Sam Cargill operated the Cargill Elevator Company in Minnesota. In 1895, William Cargill’s daughter Edna Clara married John H. MacMillan, co-owner of the D. D. McMillan & Sons grain company in Texas. MacMillan and his brother Daniel joined William Cargill’s company in 1898. After Sam Cargill died in 1903, John MacMillan took over the Minnesota operation. When William Cargill died in 1909, MacMillan took over leadership of the W.W. Cargill Company and consolidated both businesses under the Cargill Elevator Company name. The company’s various headquarters were also consolidated in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In 1923, the company acquired the Taylor & Bournique Company, an East Coast grain manufacturing business. Over the course of the next few years, the company expanded its operations overseas, with offices in Canada, the Netherlands, and Argentina. It was incorporated under the company name Cargill in 1930. After World War II (1939–1945), Cargill purchased the Kansas-based Nutrena Mills feed plant, more than doubling its animal feed business. Cargill also diversified into soybean meal and oilseed processing and started a hybrid seed business. In the 1950s, the company began expanding into European and Asian markets. Cargill continued to grow, and by the late 1980s, it had a business presence in forty-three countries and produced products ranging from grain, coffee, meat, chocolate, and eggs to rubber, salt, and steel.

In 1999, Cargill reorganized its corporate structures into more than one hundred individual businesses. Among those were Cargill Cotton, which had production facilities in the United States, Great Britain, India, Africa, China, and Australia; Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate, which produces products under the Wilbur, Peter’s, and Ambrosia brand names; and Truvia, a zero-calorie sweetener developed in cooperation with the Coca-Cola company. Cargill also owns Diamond Crystal Salt, the largest supplier of salt in the United States, and operates a fleet of more than seven hundred cargo ships as Cargill Ocean Transportation.

By 2003, Cargill employed almost 100,000 people, and its earnings surpassed $1 billion for the first time. The company continued to expand in the twenty-first century, acquiring numerous agricultural and food-producing businesses across the globe. The company also branched out into the fish feed business for commercial fish farms. In 2017, Cargill sold its US-based metals business to Japan’s Metal One Corporation. It also sold off its petroleum business to the Macquarie Group, an Australian banking and investments company, but purchased interest in Puris, a pea protein manufacturer.

In 2022, the company announced a partnership with Continental Grain, allowing the acquisition of Sanderson Farms. The company also purchased Croda, a performance technologies company, and made various investments to modernize its facilities. For the second year, the company achieved gender pay equality in 2022, with 46 percent of the executive team comprised of women.

In 2022 and 2023, Cargill achieved record revenues of around $177 billion, but in 2024, the company's revenue dropped by more than 10 percent to around $160 billion. Though this was a decrease from previous years, Cargill's profits remained impressive. Interest expenses, depreciation, and the cost of restructuring were said to impact 2024 earnings. Additionally, the company's meat business ventures were struggling, and the cost of some crops, like soybeans and wheat, decreased as supply increased.

Impact

Through the 2010s and 2020s, Cargill, Incorporated remained primarily owned by the descendants of the Cargill and MacMillan families, with about twenty-five members of the two families controlling about 90 percent of the company. The Cargill-MacMillan family had a combined worth of about $65 billion in the 2020s. Cargill had offices and production facilities in seventy countries and employed a workforce of more than 155,000 people.

As the largest agricultural and food producer in the United States, Cargill’s products are commonplace on kitchen tables and in restaurants around the country. It has a large presence in the meatpacking industry; in the 2020s, the company was among North America's largest beef processors, producing around 11 billion pounds of beef and beef by-products annually at eight production facilities in Canada and the United States. Cargill uses 99 percent of the cow in its processing, creating handbags, baseballs, and automobile seats with the hides. Fast-food restaurant McDonald’s has partnered with Cargill as a supplier for several decades. However, McDonald's sued Cargill in 2024, alleging the company engaged in beef price fixing. The agricultural giant has supplied the restaurant with numerous products, such as beef patties for its hamburgers and liquid eggs for its Egg McMuffin sandwiches. Cargill also provides products for companies such as Crisco, Egg Beaters, and Shady Brook Farms. Its main brands include Circle T Beef, Valley Tradition, and Meadowland Farms.

Despite its corporate success, Cargill has faced criticism for its food safety and environmental record. In 2011, Cargill was forced to recall more than 36 million pounds of ground turkey after it had been linked to a salmonella outbreak that killed one person and sickened more than one hundred others. It was the largest poultry recall in US history. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggested that the problem may have been caused by inadequate cleanup procedures and the use of infected turkeys.

Environmental activists have also accused Cargill of contributing to deforestation in South America and Africa and not doing enough to combat climate change. The company has long maintained that its procedures and policies support environmental sustainability and attempt to protect natural resources. Cargill has signed agreements promising to halt purchases from farming operations that may lead to deforestation. In November 2017, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Cargill $10 million after evidence surfaced that the company hid markups of up to 90 percent, violating the Commodity Exchange Act. In 2019, the company announced that it would be donating $30 million toward finding a solution to ending Amazon deforestation in Brazil. However, the company also faced a child slavery lawsuit in Brazil in 2019 and was fined by the Brazilian government for their employment practices on cocoa farms.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company invested $14 million in the Cargill Employee Disaster Relief Fund, which supported employees in thirty-two countries who experienced financial hardships due to the disaster. Additionally, the company donated $40 million to Ukrainian relief efforts.

Bibliography

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Broehl, Wayne G. Cargill: From Commodities to Customers. Dartmouth College P, 2008.

“Cargill to Spend $30M for Ideas to End Brazil Deforestation.” Associated Press, 13 June 2019, www.apnews.com/0b71f46bfa314a3083ddb1ca16f53dc4. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.

“#1 Cargill.” Forbes, 2025, www.forbes.com/companies/cargill/?list=largest-private-companies. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.

“Our History.” Cargill, Incorporated, www.cargill.com/about/cargill-history. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.

"Our Stories." Cargill, www.cargill.com/news/cargill-stories. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.

“2023 Cargill Annual Report.” Cargill, www.cargill.com/about/doc/1432242761261/2023-cargill-annual-report.pdf. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.

"2024 Cargill Annual Report." Cargill, www.cargill.com/doc/1432263180474/2024-annual-report.pdf. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.

Zimmerman, Sarah. "Cargill Revenue Falls, Breaking Two-Year Record Earnings Streak." Agriculture Dive, 15 Aug. 2024, www.agriculturedive.com/news/cargill-revenue-drops-earnings-grain-commodity-prices/724353. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.