Cargill

In 1865 W. W. Cargill left Janesville, Wisconsin, and bought his first grain flat house in Conover, Iowa; his brothers Sam and Sylvester later joined him.⁠[1]

In 1870 W. W. Cargill built his first elevator and set up headquarters in Albert Lea, Minnesota; in 1875 he moved his family and the headquarters to La Crosse, Wisconsin, a regional commercial hub.⁠[1]

A county history published in 1881 included a drawing of the W. W. Cargill & Bro. terminal elevator in La Crosse. By 1885 the company had 102 structures across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas.⁠[1]

In 1895 the Minneapolis operation led by Sam Cargill was incorporated as the Cargill Elevator Company. The same year W. W. Cargill’s daughter Edna married John H. MacMillan (Sr.), who began working for W. W. Cargill. Sam Cargill died in 1903, and MacMillan’s role in the company grew.⁠[1]

In 1905 W. W. Cargill bought Elevator T in Minneapolis from Spencer Grain Co. and turned it into a major Midwestern terminal elevator.⁠[1]

W. W. Cargill died in 1909 at age 64, and John MacMillan Sr. took over. After years of expansion into timberlands, bauxite mining, ranching, railroads and land development, MacMillan reassured creditors and dissolved much of the business outside grain trading.⁠[1]

From around 1910 MacMillan consolidated operations under the Cargill Elevator Company, focusing on grain trading and processing; Austen Cargill joined the company in 1913. During World War I high wheat prices helped the company recover and it posted record profits, while John MacMillan Jr. and Austen Cargill served in the armed forces.⁠[1]

In this period John MacMillan Sr. stated the company’s ethical principle: “There is one thing we have always been proud of and that is our word is as good as our bond.”⁠[1]

A financial crash in 1920 caused Cargill Elevator’s first annual loss. In 1922 the company opened a grain laboratory in Minneapolis, led by Julius Hendel, to grade grain more precisely; in 1923 Cargill Elevator acquired Taylor & Bournique, whose private wire system let employees send messages almost instantly.⁠[1]

In the 1920s the company leased elevators in Buffalo, New York, and Port McNicoll, Ontario; its Montreal office, operating as Cargill Grain Company, became its first office outside the United States. It also opened a small office in Genoa, Italy, and created its first export department.⁠[1]

In the 1930s the company merged various businesses and incorporated as Cargill, Incorporated, opening offices in Canada, the Netherlands and Argentina. In 1932 John H. MacMillan Sr. stepped down for health reasons and John MacMillan Jr. became president; he developed a combined tugboat-barge vessel to move crops on a mass scale.⁠[1]

During the Great Depression Cargill cut salaries by 20%, closed some offices, created a retirement program and set a plan to avoid foreclosing on independent elevator owners. In 1939 it began manufacturing Blue Square Feed in Lennox, South Dakota.⁠[1]

After Germany invaded Europe in 1940, Cargill closed its European and Argentinian offices. In 1942 the U.S. Navy selected Cargill to build ocean-going tankers and towboats for the Allied war effort; in 1943 the auxiliary oil and gas tanker USS Agawam was built at Port Cargill in Savage, Minnesota; in 1945 the shipbuilding division received the Army-Navy E Award for production excellence.⁠[1]

In 1945 Cargill acquired Nutrena Feed Mills, a pioneer in scientifically blended animal feeds. After the war it reopened South American offices, started a hybrid seed business in Argentina, opened elevators in Brazil and entered soybean and oilseed processing.⁠[1]

In the 1950s Cargill established trading offices in Europe, including Belgium in 1953; it also bought Kerr Gifford, a U.S. Pacific coast grain dealer, to explore Asian markets, and entered the salt business by barging salt up the Mississippi River.⁠[1]

In 1958 Cargill established a research center and farm in Elk River, Minnesota, focused on animal nutrition, and Nutrena used the company’s first electronic computer, an IBMIBMIBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is an American information technology company, renamed in 1924 from the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).Open the full entry 650, for feed formulation. That year the company donated to CARE’s Food Crusade instead of sending employee Christmas cards, beginning a long partnership with CARE.⁠[1]

In 1960 Erwin Kelm became the first non-family president in the company’s history. During the 1960s Cargill expanded into Spain, Germany, Turkey, China, Indonesia, Korea and Peru, and into corn wet milling, fish meal, salt mining and broiler-chicken production.⁠[1]

Cargill’s first annual report to stockholders, issued in 1964, showed annual revenue of nearly $2 billion and more than 5,000 employees.⁠[2]

In 1965 Cargill celebrated its 100th anniversary in Kansas City, Missouri; in 1966 it adopted a new “C” logo as its first global brand identity.⁠[1]

In 1974 Cargill’s Poultry Products Division acquired Ralston Purina’s Honeysuckle White, Riverside and Medallion brands. In 1977 Whitney MacMillan, W. W. Cargill’s great-grandson, succeeded Erwin Kelm as president; he was the last family member to serve as CEO. That year Cargill imported the first bulk shipment of Brazilian frozen concentrated orange juice into the United States.⁠[1]

During the 1970s the company created a formal statement of conduct and entered beef processing, evaporated salt, modern flour milling, steelmaking, cattle feedlots, cotton merchandising and malting.⁠[1]

In 1980 Cargill acquired Scholtz & Company in New York, entering coffee trading; in 1981 it acquired Ralli Bros. and Coney and related trading companies from Bowater Corp., becoming a leading international trader of cotton, rubber, wool and fiber; in 1986 it acquired Northeast Petroleum, a Massachusetts-based petroleum merchandising and distribution company.⁠[1]

In the 1980s the company formed its first business resource groups for female and Black employees, began a long relationship with Temple Grandin, joined The Nature Conservancy, issued its first Environmental Policy and created a Corporate Environmental Affairs Office.⁠[1]

In the 1990s Cargill reorganized around customers, innovation and performance, created seven Guiding Principles and committed 2% of pretax earnings to social and environmental priorities. Whitney MacMillan retired after 18 years as chairman and CEO and Ernest Micek was elected CEO; in 1999 Warren Staley became CEO and president.⁠[1]

In 1997 Cargill acquired Akzo Salt and became one of the world’s largest salt producers; in 1998 it completed a ship unloading facility and floating port outside Rozy, India.⁠[1]

Cargill acquired feed producer Agribrands International in 2001, starch and sweetener company Cerestar in 2002 and Peter’s Chocolate in 2003. In 2003 its earnings surpassed $1 billion for the first time and its global giving exceeded $22 million; it joined the Chicago Climate Exchange and set its first energy efficiency goal, and in 2005 began trading carbon credits through the exchange.⁠[1]

In 2004 Cargill teamed up with IMC Global to form the publicly traded phosphate fertilizer company Mosaic Co.⁠[2]

In 2007 Gregory Page became Cargill’s leader when Warren Staley retired. In 2008 Cargill introduced TRUVIA, a zero-calorie sweetener made from stevia, and launched the Rumba brand of fresh variety meats based on traditional Latin American recipes.⁠[1]

In 2010 Cargill acquired Unilever’s tomato products business in Brazil; that year smallholders at its PT Hindoli palm plantation became the first certified under the RSPO’s Smallholder Principles & Criteria.⁠[1]

In 2011 Cargill sold its 64 percent stake in Mosaic to shareholders.⁠[2]

After David MacLennan became CEO, he streamlined the company from nearly 100 business units to five global enterprises. In 2015 Cargill celebrated its 150th anniversary and acquired Provimi, EWOS, Diamond V and Pro-Pet to expand its animal nutrition business. During the 2010s it also launched the Ardent Mills flour joint venture with ConAgra and CHS and entered Saudi Arabia through a joint venture with Arasco.⁠[1]

In 2015 Cargill had more than $120 billion in annual revenue, $1.6 billion in net earnings and 153,000 employees in 67 countries.⁠[2]

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 Cargill created an Employee Disaster Relief Fund and supported communities, customers and farmers.⁠[1]

In 2021 Cargill acquired Croda’s bio-based industrial business in London and Aalst, a Singapore-based chocolate supplier, and formed a joint venture with Continental Grain that became Wayne-Sanderson Farms.⁠[1]

On November 21, 2022 Cargill announced that chief operating officer Brian Sikes would become president and chief executive officer effective January 1, 2023, the company’s 10th CEO, and that David MacLennan would become executive chair of the board. Sikes had then worked at Cargill for 31 years and held leadership roles in the United States, Canada and Europe; MacLennan joined Cargill in 1991, served as chief financial officer and chief operating officer, and had been chairman and CEO since 2013.⁠[3]

In the release MacLennan said “there is no better person than Brian to lead Cargill,” and Sikes said, “I am honored to succeed Dave as Cargill’s President and CEO.”⁠[3]

In 2023 Brian Sikes reorganized the company into three enterprises: Food, Ag & Trading, and Specialized Portfolio.⁠[1]

At the end of 2024 Cargill announced cuts of about 5% of its global workforce, roughly 8,000 people, as part of an adjustment that began in September 2024.⁠[4]

In fiscal 2025, which ended in May 2025, Cargill’s revenue was $154 billion, down 3.75% from $160 billion in the previous fiscal year. In the annual report Sikes highlighted the full acquisition of SJC Bioenergia in Brazil, completed in April 2025, saying it would help the company “atender à crescente demanda do mercado de biocombustíveis” (meet the growing demand of the biofuels market).⁠[4]

In 2025 Cargill announced a $90 million investment in its Fort Morgan, Colorado, beef plant, unveiled a transformed innovation center in Singapore, acquired Mig-Plus in Brazil to expand its animal nutrition business and announced plans to acquire Teys, an Australian beef provider.⁠[1]

Cargill describes itself as a family company; as of 2015 members of the Cargill and MacMillan families owned about 90 percent of the business, which had then ranked as America’s largest privately held company for 28 years.⁠[5][2]

Cargill’s website lists more than 155,000 employees, operations in 70 countries and deliveries to 125 markets; its business covers sourcing, making, storing and transporting food, ingredients, agricultural solutions and industrial products.⁠[5]

Cargill: Official website: https://www.cargill.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

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