Company Overview

Cargill got its start in 1865 as a grain elevator in Conover, Iowa, and today is the nation’s fourth-largest food company. The company trades in grain, cotton, sugar, and petroleum and is involved in other financial trading, shipping, and futures brokering. It is also engaged in feed and fertilizer production, steelmaking, and meatpacking, and other industrial operations. Cargill has a number of strategic partnerships and operates in 63 countries. It offers job opportunities in five key organizational segments: agriculture services, food ingredients and applications, industrial, origination and processing, and risk management and financial. In 2003 Cargill announced an initiative to focus more attention on using renewable resources to develop its specialty chemicals, polymers, and other industrial products. In 2004 the company began focusing on its core agribusinesses by selling four steel mills. In a joint effort with Monsanto, the company introduced a low-linolenic soybean, which produces a soybean oil that helps reduce trans fats in food products. Cargill announced at the beginning of 2005 that it plans to acquire Citrico, a global pectin business. And in 2006 it purchased a Chinese xanthan gum operation; and launched a new soy protein product. Also in 2006, in recognition of the cost of health care, Cargill established a health care plan for grain farmers.