[4] 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.

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.

During World War II, MacMillan Jr. continued to expand the company, which boomed as it stored and transported grain and built T1 tankers and Towboats ships for the United States Navy.

As the company grew, it developed a market intelligence network as it coordinated its commodities trading, processing, freight, shipping, and futures businesses.

[32] 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.

[62][63] 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.

[71] 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.

[74][77] Cargill also deals in animal feed, agriculture commodities, cotton, grain and oilseeds, metals, palm and sugar business in Pakistan.

[79] Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador,[80] Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

[86] In 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed suit against Cargill, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland in a US 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.

[87] 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.

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.

[89] 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.

[90] 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 grievances included poor health benefits, bad working conditions, and Cargill's allegedly firing employees who organized to create a union.

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.

The fumigated seed grain was provided by Cargill at the specific request of Saddam Hussein[98] and was never intended for direct human or animal consumption prior to planting.

[99] 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.

[100] 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.

[98] In October 2007, Cargill announced the recall of nearly 850,000 frozen beef patties produced at its packing plant in Butler, Wisconsin that were suspected of being contaminated with E.

"[103] 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.

[107] 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.

[111] On September 13, 2017, NGO Mighty Earth released a report[112] 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.

[116] 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.

[86] In 2005, the company settled with the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency over Clean Air Act violations, including a plan to invest over $60 million in capital improvements for clean air controls, after a joint federal and state effort that included Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota and Ohio.

[120] 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.