Cargill

When the Soviet Union entered the grain markets in the 1970s, demand surged to unprecedented levels, benefiting Cargill. In 1963, Cargill had already negotiated a $40 million wheat deal with the USSR, establishing a relationship that later involved a series of larger deals. When Whitney MacMillan, nephew of John Jr., took over the company from Kelm in 1976, revenue approached $30 billion. The US government put pressure on large grain exporters with allegations of manipulating the market, and Cargill was a major target, but it emerged without any major changes.

In 1978, Cargill purchased the large Leslie Salt refining company in Newark, California, from Schilling. In 1979, Cargill entered the meat-processing business with the purchase of beef processor MBPXL (later Excel). The division, which expanded into turkey, food service and food distribution businesses, is now known as Cargill Meat Solutions. In 1986, Cargill began operations in Venezuela through a partnership with the Possenti family's Mimesa C.A. to form Agroindustrial Mimesa in Maracaibo, dedicated to manufacturing flour and pasta. In 1993, the company responded to demands for an initial public offering with an employee stock ownership plan, using a 17% stake purchased from 72 Cargills and MacMillans for $730 million. The company's board of directors was reorganized to reduce the number of relatives to six, alongside six independents and five managers.

Ernest Micek took over as chief executive in August 1995. Cargill underwent turmoil in the following years; its financial unit lost hundreds of millions of dollars in 1998 when Russia defaulted on debt and developing countries began to have financial issues. The commodities and ingredients business, which accounted for 75% of Cargill's total revenue, was affected by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Revenues fell by double-digit percentages for two years in a row, from $55.7 billion in 1997 to $51.4 billion in 1998 and $45.7 billion in 1999, while net income fell from $814 million in 1997 to $468 million in 1998 and $220 million in 1999. By 1999, the company had $4 billion in debt. Following a downgrade of its previously strong bond credit rating, Micek announced he would step down a year early. In 1998, Warren Staley became chief executive, and the company sold assets such as its coffee and rubber businesses.

21st century

In 2002 Cargill acquired European-based starch manufacturer Cerestar from Montedison for $1.1 billion. Cargill Meat Solutions acquired Milwaukee Emmpak in 2003 and merged it with Taylor Packing Co. (purchased in 2001). In 2006, Cargill Meat purchased Fresno Meats. On June 1, 2007, Staley was succeeded as CEO by Gregory R. Page. Cargill's quarterly profits exceeded $1 billion for the first time during the quarter ending on February 29, 2008 ($1.03 billion).

In October 2011, the U.S. Justice Department announced that a biotech specialist at Cargill had pleaded guilty to stealing information from Cargill and Dow AgroSciences. Kexue Huang, a Chinese national, was discovered to be passing trade secrets back to China. In November 2011, Cargill completed the acquisition of Provimi, a global animal nutrition company for €1.5 billion ($2.1 billion US).

In December 2013 CEO and chairman Page was succeeded by Dave MacLennan. In December 2014, Cargill completed the commissioning of a $100 million cocoa plant in Indonesia. In 2015, Cargill wound down its Black River Asset Management division by shutting down hedge funds, folding funds into Cargill, as well as spinning off funds to create Proterra Investment Partners, Argentem Creek Partners and Garda Capital Partners.

In 2016, Cargill announced it would move its Protein Group headquarters from older buildings in downtown Wichita, Kansas, to a new, $60 million building in the nearby Old Town area, atop the site of the soon-to-be demolished historic building that formerly housed The Wichita Eagle. In 2017, Cargill sold its Geneva-based petroleum-trading business to Macquarie Bank as well as its North American power and gas trading business soon after.

In 2018, Cargill and Faccenda Foods established a joint venture, Avara Foods, to take over their UK fresh poultry businesses, employing 6,000 people. In February 2018, Cargill completed its purchase of Pro Pet, a pet food manufacturer. Pro Pet had three manufacturing facilities, one in Owatonna, Minnesota, one in Kansas City, Kansas, and one in St. Marys, Ohio. In November 2018, Cargill sold its 13 crop input locations in Ontario, Canada to La Coop Fédérée. Also 2018, Cargill made a $25 million investment in Puris, a supplier of pea protein used in Beyond Meat products. In 2019, Cargill invested an additional $75 million.

On June 3, 2020, Cargill announced it would no longer publish quarterly results, ending disclosures the company had provided since 1996. Cargill canceled its third-quarter earnings release in March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2021, Croda announced the sale of one of its divisions to Cargill for $1 billion. In 2022, Cargill saw record profits due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising food prices, during which the company has continued to pay the Russian government. In January 2023, Brian Sikes was appointed president and CEO.

Child labor

Cargill was a major buyer of cotton in Uzbekistan, despite the industry's prevalence of uncompensated workers and possible human rights abuses, and admissions by two representatives that the company is aware of child labor in the production of its crops. Their concerns have been public since 2005.

In December 2010, an international complaint in France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom was filed against Cargill for knowingly profiting from child labor in Uzbekistan. The complaint alleged that children were forced out of their schools to assist with cotton harvesting, for which their families saw no profits. Individual agreements were made with each of the filing countries, though by 2013 a follow-up evaluation showed that Cargill lessened its commitment after media coverage passed.

In September 2023, Cargill was fined the equivalent of $120,185 by a Brazilian court for its use of child labor in cocoa harvesting.

Union busting

In February 2018, several employees of Cargill's Dayton, Virginia plant held protests, including an organized strike outside of a Cargill plant in the city. Their grievances included poor health benefits, poor working conditions, and Cargill's alleged firing of employees who organized to form a union. The protests led to the arrests of nine people for trespassing on company property.

In August 2018, Cargill faced legal accusations in Turkey for allegedly firing fourteen union members without justifiable reason. Cargill denied the allegations, until the final rulings in late 2019 and early 2020 stated that at least eight of the former employees were fired only because of their ties to the union, while four of the remaining were also unfairly dismissed. Cargill was ordered to pay additional severance to each of these workers.

Wage-fixing

In 2024, Cargill paid $30 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging collusion with other beef producers to suppress wages at meatpacking plants. Alongside JBS Foods, Tyson, and National Beef, Cargill is considered to be one of the nation's largest meat processors, constituting over 85% of U.S. beef production. Law firm Hagens Berman claimed that "Cargill and other meat companies shared compensation data through third parties and 'secret meetings' over several years to hold wages and benefits at artificially low levels." Cargill denied the allegations in a company statement, attributing their settlement decision "to avoid[ing] larger litigation costs and distractions from the critical work our production teams do."

Worker safety during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, a single meat processing plant in High River, Canada, was linked to over 358 cases of infection. United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Union Local 401 president Thomas Hesse said, "It's a tragedy. We asked days and days ago for that plant to be closed temporarily for two weeks, send all of the workers home with pay to isolate. That was when we were aware of 38 cases. That was before they set up a dedicated testing facility in the area." Reports of employees being denied personal protective equipment also surfaced around the same period. As of May 3, 2020, 917 of the plant's 2,000 workers had tested positive, and the plant was linked to 1,501 total cases.

Land grabbing

The NGO Oxfam has documented an illustrative case of land grabbing. Between 2010 and 2012, Cargill brought large areas of land in Colombia under its control despite legal restrictions on acquiring state land. To accomplish this, Cargill established at least 36 mailbox companies, enabling it to exceed the legally prescribed maximum landholding size. With more than 50,000 hectares of land, Cargill acquired more than 30 times the legally permitted limit for a single owner.

Food contamination

In 1971, Cargill sold 63,000 tons of seed treated with a methylmercury-based fungicide that, when eaten, eventually caused at least 650 deaths. The fumigated seed grain was provided by Cargill at the specific request of Saddam Hussein and was never intended for direct human or animal consumption before planting.

Cargill's grain—which was dyed red and labeled with warnings in Spanish and English as well as a skull and crossbones design following a previous incident of mercury-treated seed being sold as food in Iraqi markets in 1960—was distributed too late for much of the 1971 planting season, causing many farmers to sell their excess product in the public markets at very low prices; this attracted many poor Iraqis who either could not understand the warnings or disregarded them, causing thousands of cases of mercury poisoning. The long latency period before developing symptoms and cattle's greater tolerance of mercury poisoning also contributed to the mistaken impression that the surplus seed grain was safe to eat.

In October 2007, Cargill announced the recall of nearly 850,000 frozen beef patties produced at its packing plant in Butler, Wisconsin that were suspected of being contaminated with E. coli. The beef was sold mainly at Walmart and Sam's Club stores.

In March 2009, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) temporarily suspended Cargill Australia's license to export meat to Japan and the US after E. coli was detected in Cargill's export containers from its Wagga Wagga plant. In late April 2009, AQIS lifted Cargill Australia's suspension on its export license.

In August 2011, the USDA and Cargill jointly announced a recall of 36 million pounds of ground turkey produced at Cargill's Springdale, Arkansas, plant due to salmonella concerns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the specific Salmonella strain identified was resistant to commonly prescribed antibiotics. One death and 76 illnesses from 26 states were reported.

In September 2011, Cargill announced a second, immediate and voluntary Class One recall of 185,000 pounds of 85% lean, fresh-ground turkey products because of possible contamination from Salmonella Heidelberg.

In July 2012, the Vermont Department of Public Health reported that 10 people in the state had become ill from ground beef recalled by Cargill Beef. Hannaford Supermarkets alerted consumers that Cargill Beef was voluntarily recalling 29,339 pounds of ground beef that might contain salmonella.

Soy

In 2003, Cargill completed a port for processing soya in Santarém in the Amazon region of Brazil, dramatically increasing soya production in the area and, according to Greenpeace, speeding up deforestation of local rain forest. In February 2006, the federal courts in Brazil gave Cargill six months to complete an environmental assessment. Initially supported by job-seeking locals, the port faced public opposition as jobs failed to materialize. In July 2006, the federal prosecutor indicated they were close to shutting down the port.

Greenpeace took its campaign to major food retailers and quickly won agreement from McDonald's and UK retailers Asda, Waitrose, and Marks & Spencer to stop buying meat raised on Amazonian soya. These retailers have, in turn, put pressure on Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, André Maggi Group, and Dreyfus to prove their soya was not grown on recently deforested land in the Amazon. In July 2006, Cargill reportedly joined other soy businesses in Brazil in a two-year moratorium on purchasing soybeans from newly deforested land.

In 2019 the six largest agricultural commodity traders, ADM, Bunge, Cargill, LDC, COFCO Int. and Glencore Agri, committed themselves to monitoring their soy supply chains in Brazil's Cerrado.

Palm oil

Cargill sells large volumes of palm oil, which is found in many processed foods, cosmetics, and detergents. Most palm oil is obtained from plantations in Sumatra and Borneo, which have been heavily deforested to make way for them.

Cocoa

On September 13, 2017, NGO Mighty Earth released a report documenting findings that Cargill purchases cocoa grown illegally in national parks and other protected forests in the Ivory Coast.

The report accused Cargill of endangering the forest habitats of chimpanzees, elephants, and other wildlife populations by purchasing cocoa linked to deforestation. As a result of cocoa production, 7 of the 23 Ivorian protected areas have been almost entirely converted to cocoa. Cargill was notified of the findings of Mighty Earth's investigation and did not deny that the company sourced its cocoa from protected areas in the Ivory Coast.

Data released in April 2019 by Global Forest Watch, an online platform providing data and tools for monitoring forests, showed that rates of tropical primary forest loss increased dramatically in 2018 in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, primarily due to cocoa farming and gold mining. In 2018, Ghana had the highest rate of increase (60%) in the world compared to 2017, with Côte d'Ivoire (26%) in second place.

Air pollution

In 2005, the company settled with the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency over Clean Air Act violations, including a plan to invest over $60 million in capital improvements for clean air controls, after a joint federal and state effort that included Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Ohio.

In 2006, NatureWorks, a subsidiary in Nebraska, settled with the state over inadequate air pollution controls.

In 2015, Cargill settled with the EPA over Clean Air Act violations in a plant in Iowa.

Tax evasion

In 2011, a case of transfer mispricing came to light in Argentina involving the world's four largest grain traders: ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and LDC. Argentina's revenue and customs service began an investigation into the four companies when agricultural commodity prices spiked in 2008, but very little profit had been reported to the office. As a result of the investigation, it was alleged that the companies had submitted false sales declarations and routed profits through tax havens or to their headquarters. In some cases, they were said to have used dummy corporations to buy grain and to inflate costs in Argentina to reduce recorded profits there. According to Argentina's revenue and customs service, the outstanding taxes amounted to almost US$1 billion. The companies involved have denied the allegations. As of 2019, the Argentinian tax authorities have not replied to Swiss NGO Public Eye’s request as to the state of the case.

In its 2018 annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Bunge mentioned provisions that suggested the case was still ongoing.

The Argentine tax court ruled officially against Cargill in 2023, mandating the associated fine and interest.

Animal welfare

In 2015, Cargill announced it would phase out gestation crates for its sows by 2017, reportedly in response to pressure from clients and consumers.

In 2022, an inspection into a Dayton turkey factory revealed infractions against the Poultry Products Inspection Act, an act intended to minimize suffering to poultry animals. In contrast to the requirements of this act, Cargill allow turkeys to die from asphyxiation without first being stunned or slaughtered.

Antibiotic usage

In 2024, the USDA reported that Cargill was administering human-grade antibiotics to its cattle, despite labelling the beef products as "raised without antibiotics," a breach of truth-in-advertising/labeling standards. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism then reported that the antibiotics covertly given by Cargill to its cattle were human-use, meaning they would significantly contribute to human population antibiotic resistance, a source of human suffering prioritized by the UN.

Price fixing

In 2024, McDonald's Corporation sued JBS, National Beef, Cargill, and Tyson, along with their subsidiaries, for alleged price fixing. In 2026, both Cargill and Tyson settled, agreeing to pay $87.5 million.