America's biggest private company started as an Iowa grain shed in 1865
Cargill trades grain, raises livestock, makes starch and syrups, and supplies about 22 percent of the US domestic meat market, yet it keeps a low profile. Founded in Iowa in 1865 and still more than 90 percent owned by the founder's family circle, it was the largest privately held company in America as of 2023.
William Wallace Cargill opened for business in Conover, Iowa, in 1865; his brother Sam joined a year later and the pair built grain storage houses and a lumberyard. The firm moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1875 and set up in Minneapolis, a rising grain hub, in the late 1880s. When William died in 1909 his debts nearly sank the company. It issued 2.25 million dollars in gold notes backed by its stock, and record wartime grain prices let it clear everything by 1915, two years early. His son-in-law John MacMillan steered the recovery and eventually edged a Cargill heir out.
MacMillan built the company outward, opening offices in New York in 1923 and in Canada, Europe and Latin America between 1928 and 1930. Cargill clashed with the Chicago Board of Trade: refused membership in 1934 until Washington intervened, it was accused of trying to corner the corn market after the 1936 crop failure and suspended in 1938, and it declined to rejoin when allowed back. In 1960 Erwin Kelm became the first chief executive from outside the family and pushed into milling, starch and syrup; by 1972 sales hit 5 billion dollars and Cargill was the world's largest agricultural trader. A 40 million dollar wheat deal with the Soviet Union in 1963 set up far bigger sales in the 1970s.
It entered meatpacking in 1979 and later poultry, pet food and animal nutrition. The Asian and Russian financial crises hit hard: revenue slid from 55.7 billion dollars in 1997 to 45.7 billion in 1999. Since June 2020 it no longer publishes quarterly results.
Critics have been harsh. A 2019 report by the campaign group Mighty Earth, chaired by former congressman Henry Waxman, labelled it the worst company in the world, and a 2005 lawsuit accused Cargill, Nestlé and Archer Daniels Midland over trafficked child labour on Ivorian cocoa farms. Other accusations cover deforestation, pollution, union busting and price fixing.
Source: Cargill
