Каргилл: Әлемдік азық-түлік конгломератының тарихы мен қызметі

American based international food conglomerate

Some of Cargill's major businesses are trading, purchasing and distributing grain and other agricultural commodities, such as palm oil; trading in energy, steel and transport; raising livestock and production of feed; and producing food ingredients such as starch and glucose syrup, vegetable oils and fats for application in ultra processed foods and industrial use. Cargill also has a large financial services arm, which manages financial risks in the commodity markets for the company. In 2003, it split off a portion of its financial operations into Black River Asset Management, a hedge fund with about $10 billion of assets and liabilities. It previously owned two thirds of the shares of The Mosaic Company (sold off in 2011), a producer and marketer of concentrated phosphate and potash crop nutrients. Cargill reported gross revenues of $165 billion in 2022. It last reported net profit earnings in 2021, of just below $5 billion. Employing over 160,000 employees in 66 countries, it is responsible for 25% of all United States grain exports. The company also supplies about 22% of the US domestic meat market, importing more products from Argentina than any other company, and is the largest poultry producer in Thailand. All the eggs used in US McDonald's restaurants pass through Cargill's plants. It is the only US producer of Alberger process salt, which is used in the fast food and prepared food industries. Cargill remains a family owned business, as the descendants of the founder (from the Cargill and MacMillan families) own over 90% of it. In January 2023, Brian Sikes was appointed to serve as president and CEO. He is the 10th CEO in Cargill's 158 year history.

Cargill was founded in 1865 by William Wallace Cargill when he bought a grain flat house in Conover, Iowa. A year later William was joined by his brother Sam, forming W. W. Cargill and Brother. Together, they built grain flat houses and opened a lumberyard. In 1875, Cargill moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin, and their brother James joined the business. La Crosse was strategically located on the Mississippi near the junctions of the La Crosse River, Dubuque, and Southern Minnesota divisions of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. Sam Cargill left La Crosse in 1887 to manage the office in Minneapolis, an important emerging grain center. Three years later, the Minneapolis operation incorporated as Cargill Elevator Co.; some years after that the La Crosse operation incorporated as W. W. Cargill Company of La Crosse, Wisconsin. In 1898, John H. MacMillan Sr., and his brother, Daniel, began working for W. W. Cargill. MacMillan then married William Cargill's eldest daughter, Edna.

Upon Sam Cargill's death in 1903, William Cargill became the sole owner of the La Crosse office. John MacMillan was named general manager of Cargill Elevator Company and moved his family to Minneapolis. William Cargill died in 1909, creating a fiscal crisis for the company. MacMillan worked to resolve the credit issues and to force his brother in law William S. Cargill out of the company. The current owners are descended from John MacMillan's two sons, John H. MacMillan Jr., and Cargill MacMillan Sr., and his youngest brother in law, Austen S. Cargill I.

John MacMillan ran the company until his retirement in 1936. Under his leadership Cargill grew several fold, expanding out of the Midwest by opening its first East coast offices, in New York, in 1923. He was also the architect of the company's strategy of internationalism. He opened the company's first Canadian, European and Latin American offices in 1928, 1929, and 1930. He was also noted for his involvement in the controversial commercial rapprochement between the U. S. and the Soviet Union. Headquartered in Winnipeg,

One of the biggest criticisms of Cargill has been its perceived arrogance (see, for example, Brewster Kneen in the Ecologist and also Greg Muttitt in the same journal). The MacMillans' aggressive management style led to a decades long feud with the Chicago Board of Trade. It began in 1934 when the Board denied membership to Cargill. When the Soviet Union entered the grain markets in the 1970s, demand grew to unprecedented levels, and Cargill benefitted. 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. In 1979, Cargill entered the meat processing business with the purchase of beef processor MBPXL (later Excel). The division expanded into turkey, food service and food distribution businesses and is now known as Cargill Meat Solutions. In 1986 Cargill started operations in Venezuela through a partnership with the Possenti family's Mimesa C. A. to form Agroindustrial Mimesa in Maracaibo, dedicated to the manufacturing of flour and pasta. Expansion followed thereafter. Tensions arose with the company's private shareholders, as Cargill typically put 80% of earnings back into the business. By the early 1990s, members of the Cargill and MacMillan families became upset that their shares in the company were yielding mediocre dividends. Demands rose for an initial public offering to turn the company public. The company responded with an employee stock ownership plan, and in 1993 reportedly purchased 17% of the firm for $730 million from 72 Cargills and MacMillans. It used that stake to begin the employee stock plan. The company's board of directors was reorganized to reduce the number of relatives to six, alongside six independents and five managers. 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 was 75% of Cargill's total revenue, suffered from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. While expanding, the company also refocused its business by selling assets such as its coffee and rubber businesses. By 2002, Cargill had over $50 billion in annual sales, twice the amount of its closest rival, Archer Daniels Midland, and had 97,000 employees running more than 1,000 production sites in 59 countries. On June 1, 2007, CEO Staley was succeeded 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); the 86% rise was credited to global food shortages and the expanding biofuels industry that, in turn, caused a rise in demand for Cargill's core areas of agricultural commodities and technology. 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). On April 1, 2012, Cargill completed a purchase of a cat and dog food plant in Emporia, Kansas. It was previously owned by American Nutrition. In December 2013 CEO and chairman Page was succeeded by current CEO Dave MacLennan. In December 2014, Cargill finished commissioning a $100 million Indonesian cocoa plant. In 2015, Cargill wound down its Black River Asset Management division by shutting down four hedge funds, folding two agriculture and energy funds into Cargill, and spinning off three fund businesses to employees to create the hedge fund Proterra Investment Partners, emerging markets debt specialist Argentem Creek Partners and hedge fund Garda Capital Partners. In 2016, Cargill announced that it would move its Protein Group headquarters from older buildings in downtown Wichita, Kansas, and consolidate into a new building in Wichita's nearby Old Town area. The new $60 million building will be built on the site of the building that formerly housed The Wichita Eagle, following the old building's demolition. In 2016, Cargill completed the commissioning of a feed plant in Bathinda, Punjab, India, and manufactures dairy cattle feed under the Purina brand name. In 2018, Cargill and Faccenda Foods opened a joint venture to take over their U. K. fresh poultry businesses, Avara Foods, employing 6,000 people. In February 2018, Cargill completed the purchase of Pro Pet, a pet food manufacturing company. 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. In 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 April 8, 2020, Cargill closed its Hazleton, Pennsylvania meatpacking facility because "an unspecified number of Cargill employees at the plant [had] tested positive for COVID 19." The county had the "highest number of confirmed cases of COVID 19 in the area with 982", of which 849 were in Hazleton. On April 20, 2020, Cargill temporarily closed its High River, Alberta, plant because "the operation was linked to nearly 500 cases of COVID 19". All 2,100 employees were recommended for virus testing. This plant was responsible for about 36% of Canada's beef producing capacity. On May 6, the plant was connected with 1,560 cases of COVID 19. United Food and Commercial Workers Canada (UFCW) Union Local 401 has recommended the plant's closure since 38 cases were known. The public health authority of Quebec did not shut down a Cargill plant in Chambly south of Montreal on May 10, 2020. A total of 64 employees, about 13% of the workforce, had COVID 19. The workers are represented by the UFCW. The public health department for the Montérégie region had been working with Cargill since April 25 to deal with the outbreak. Cargill closed the plant on its own. On May 11, a CBC journalist wrote, "The Cargill plant in Alberta, where there have been about 1,000 reported cases [of human COVID 19], is now considered the largest single site outbreak in North America." Meanwhile, the Agriculture Union of CFIA's embedded inspectors at slaughterhouses said that management is "threatening disciplinary action against employees who refuse to be reassigned to work at COVID 19 infected meat plants", while Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland said, "those who feel unsafe won't be forced back to work." On June 3, 2020, Cargill announced that it would no longer publish quarterly results, stopping the disclosures that the company had provided since 1996. Cargill canceled its third quarter earnings release in March 2020 amid the COVID 19 pandemic. In 2022, Cargill saw record profits due to the war in Ukraine and rising food prices.

as of 2016, Cargill operates in 70 countries across six regions around the world.

Algeria, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Starting operations in 1987, Cargill now has a foods business unit called Cargill Foods India which processes, refines and markets a wide range of both indigenous and imported edible oils, fats and blends to the food industry including Sweekar, Nature Fresh, Gemini, Rath and Shakti brands of edible oil. In 2012 it launched Chakki Fresh Atta in India under the brand name "Sampoorna". Its customers are in the retail, food service sector and beverage industry. Apart from sugar and cotton, Cargill India is also one of India's largest originators and marketers of food and coarse grains. It has its own Trade and Structured Finance arm, which also operates the Cargill Capital and Financial Services India Private Limited. Its Cargill Energy, Transport and Metals BU is active across ocean freight, coal, iron ore and steel trading. It bought Sunflower Oil Brand From Wipro In December 2012. After the government of India, Cargill is India's second largest buyer of food grain. It has been buying grains and oilseeds in India since 1998. It also has the largest producer of potash, Mosaic.

Cargill started doing business in Pakistan in 1984. Cargill Pakistan Holdings was incorporated on January 25, 1990. Today, Cargill imports palm oil and palm oil products from Malaysia and Indonesia into Pakistan, selling them in the local market. It also buys raw cotton bales from producers in Pakistan and sells them to China, Thailand and Vietnam. Cargill also deals in animal feed, agriculture commodities, cotton, grain and oilseeds, metals, palm and sugar business in Pakistan. In January 2019, Cargill announced a $200 million investment to grow business in Pakistan.

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. In late 2022, Cargill confirmed that it would be able to export grain harvested in Ukraine despite the ongoing Russo Ukrainian War. But it reported that it no longer controlled two facilities used to crush sunflower seeds, and that total Ukrainian production would therefore be 60% to 70% of normal.

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Jordan and United Arab Emirates.

Cargill sells salt in the US under the Diamond Crystal brand.

As a private company, Cargill is not required to release the same amount of information as a publicly traded company and, as a business practice, keeps a relatively low profile. In 2019, the Swiss NGO Public Eye also criticized Cargill in various contexts in a report on agricultural commodity traders in Switzerland.

In 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed suit against Cargill, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland in federal court on behalf of children who said they were trafficked from Mali into Côte d'Ivoire and forced to work on cocoa bean plantations 12 to 14 hours a day with no pay, little food and sleep, and frequent physical abuse. Even more recent evidence stems from a 2019 TV program on French channel France 2 about cocoa illegally harvested from protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire. The report found child labor to be widespread on the plantations investigated: every third worker was a child. Instances of child trafficking from neighboring Burkina Faso were also reported. Cargill, which buys from the plantations under investigation, at first denied that it was buying cocoa from protected areas, but was forced to admit that its traceability system had not reached these areas, and therefore that it could not fully trace the origins of its cocoa. Swiss based food giant Nestlé is one of Cargill's biggest customers of cocoa sourced from Côte d'Ivoire, as later reported by Swiss TV channel RTS 1. In 2021, eight former child slaves from Mali named Cargill in a class action lawsuit, alleging that it aided and abetted their enslavement on cocoa plantations in Côte d'Ivoire. The suit accused Cargill, along with Nestlé, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Incorporated, Olam International, The Hershey Company, and Mondelez International, of knowingly engaging in forced labor, and sought damages for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Cargill was a major buyer of cotton in Uzbekistan, despite the industry prevalence of uncompensated workers and possible human rights abuses, and admissions by two representatives that the company is aware of the possible use of child labor in the production of its crops. Their concerns have been public since 2005, but no action has been taken on labor violations in Cargill's Uzbek operations. The company has not traded any Uzbek cotton in several years.

In February 2018, several employees of Cargill's Dayton, Virginia plant held protests. Their grievances included poor health benefits, bad working conditions, and Cargill's allegedly firing employees who organized to create a union. The protests led to nine people's arrest for trespassing on company property.

During the COVID 19 outbreak in 2020, a single meat processing plant in High River, Canada, was linked to over 358 cases 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.

The NGO Oxfam has documented an illustrative case of land grabbing. Between 2010 and 2012 Cargill brought huge areas of land in Colombia under its control despite legal restrictions on the acquisition of state land. To accomplish this, Cargill set up no fewer than 36 mailbox companies, which enabled it to exceed the legally prescribed maximum size of land ownership. With more than 50,000 hectares of land, Cargill thus acquired more than 30 times the land legally permitted for a single owner.

In 1971, Cargill sold 63,000 tons of seed treated with a methylmercury based fungicide that eventually caused a minimum of 650 deaths when it was eaten. 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 prior to 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 the surplus seed grain was safe to eat. 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 the recall of 36 million pounds of ground turkey produced at Cargill's Springdale, Arkansas, plant due to salmonella fears. The meat recalled was produced from February 20 to August 2. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the particular strain of salmonella found was resistant to commonly prescribed antibiotics. One death and 76 illnesses from 26 states were reported. Some 25 types of ground turkey produced under various brand names were affected, and all of the packages in question contained the code "Est. P 963." 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. The turkey was produced at the company's Springdale, Arkansas, facility on August 23, 24, 30 and 31.

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 (EA). Initially supported by job seeking locals, public opinion turned against the port as jobs have not appeared. 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 along with 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 the purchase of 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.

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.

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. 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.

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 prices for agricultural commodities spiked in 2008 but very little profit for the four companies had been reported to the office. As a result of the investigation, it was alleged that the companies had submitted false declarations of sales and routed profits through tax havens or their headquarters. In some cases they were said to have used dummy corporations to buy grain and inflated costs in Argentina to reduce the 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: "[A]s of December 31, 2018, Bunge's Argentine subsidiary had received income tax assessments relating to 2006 through 2009 of approximately 1,276 million Argentine pesos (approximately $34 million), plus applicable interest on the outstanding amount of approximately 4,246 million Argentine pesos (approximately $113 million])."