Cargill

Who owns Cargill?
Cargill is owned by the Cargill and MacMillan families, who together hold approximately 88 percent of the company. The remainder is held by employees and other private holders. It has been family-controlled since its 1865 founding.

Is Cargill publicly traded?
No. Cargill is the largest private company in the United States and has no stock listing. It has consistently stated its intention to remain privately held.

When was Cargill founded?
Cargill was founded in 1865 by William Wallace Cargill, who started with a grain storage business in Iowa at the end of the Civil War. It is headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

Who founded Cargill?
William Wallace Cargill founded the company in 1865. His descendants, through the Cargill and MacMillan families, still control approximately 88 percent of the business.

What is Cargill's market position?
Cargill is the largest US private company with $154 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue and roughly 155,000 employees. It is a global leader in agribusiness, commodity trading, and food ingredients, competing with ADM and Bunge as well as ingredient specialists.

What are Cargill's main businesses?
Cargill operates through three enterprises: Food (ingredients, cocoa, protein), Ag & Trading (commodity merchandising and logistics), and Specialized Portfolio (animal nutrition, salt). Its ingredients arm competes with Ingredion and Kerry in texture solutions.

William Wallace Cargill founded the company in 1865, at the end of the Civil War, with a grain storage business in Conover, Iowa. The operation expanded along railroad lines through the Midwest, building a network of grain elevators that formed the foundation of the business.

Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Cargill family, joined by the MacMillan family through marriage, built the company into a major grain trader and exporter. The business diversified through the 20th century into feed, seed, salt, and eventually meat processing, vegetable oils, cocoa, and food ingredients, becoming a vertically integrated agricultural powerhouse.

Cargill's growth was characterized by aggressive expansion into adjacent businesses, always as a private company, which allowed long-term investment and aggressive moves competitors constrained by quarterly reporting could not easily match. By the late 20th century it was the largest US private company and one of the world's biggest traders of food commodities.

Under successive family-influenced leadership, Cargill built major positions in food ingredients including starches, hydrocolloids, sweeteners, and texturizing solutions, the segment most relevant to the specialty ingredients market where it competes with Ingredion, Kerry Group, DSM-Firmenich, and Tate & Lyle. It also became a leading player in meat and poultry through its protein businesses.

Recent years brought a leadership transition, with Brian Sikes becoming CEO in 2023, and a strategic reorganization into three enterprises launched in August 2024. Fiscal 2025 closed at $154 billion in revenue, and in 2026 the company opened a major canola processing facility in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Cargill publishes annual impact and sustainability reporting covering deforestation-free supply chains, emissions reduction, regenerative agriculture, and water stewardship. It has committed to eliminating deforestation from key supply chains and invests in sustainable agriculture programs.

Its scale makes it a frequent focus of environmental scrutiny, particularly around soy and beef supply chains linked to deforestation in Brazil. The company has faced criticism and lawsuits over supply chain impacts but maintains extensive sustainability programs and reporting commitments.

Cargill's scale and role in commodity markets have generated sustained scrutiny. Environmental groups have criticized its supply chains' links to deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado, and the company has faced lawsuits and reports challenging its sustainability claims.

The company has also faced antitrust scrutiny around protein consolidation, labor and safety citations at processing plants, and periodic disputes over grain trading practices. As the largest private US company, its limited disclosure compared with public peers is itself a subject of commentary.

In 2017 it faced a significant E. coli recall linked to ground beef that resulted in dozens of illnesses. Food safety, environmental impact, and market power remain the principal areas of ongoing public and regulatory attention.