Cargill, America’s Largest Private Company, Faces Leaner Times
Cargill’s profit is waning as food prices drop. Family members may demand a change of strategy.
Cargill, America’s largest privately owned company, faces leaner times.
Photographer: Guillaume Souvant/AFP/Getty Images
Cargill Inc., the largest privately owned company in America, has enjoyed a biblical bonanza – but leaner times loom. As in the Pharaoh’s dream, the commodity trading giant has basked in seven years of fat profit thanks to the impact of pandemic, war, inflation and geopolitical chaos on food prices. But, as in the prophecy, it now confronts a famine.
What’s bad news for Cargill is typically good news for everyone else. Agricultural commodity traders do well when food inflation surges. Now, wholesale prices for wheat, corn and soybeans are falling, a boon for central banks like the Federal Reserve trying to sustain economic growth by lowering interest rates. For Cargill, it means earnings have slumped to the lowest in almost a decade.