The truth of it is, Cargill Incorporated is the largest privately owned company in America, so vast in its reach that it is “larger than the third, fourth and fifth companies combined”. The source material doesn’t pull any punches, referring to it pointedly as “one evil family owns all of the food that’s in your house”. That’s quite a statement, isn’t it? It certainly sets a tone for understanding how this entity is perceived.
Its story, as laid out in the source, begins over a century and a half ago, some 157 years back, with the acquisition of a simple grain storage warehouse. But here’s where it truly gets interesting, and perhaps, as the source suggests, a bit “scary.” The trajectory of its growth wasn’t just through business expansion, but also through familial ties. The founder, in what the source vividly calls a “Game of Thrones style” move, married off his daughter, Edna, to John McMillan, whose family happened to own even more grain warehouses. This merger, undoubtedly strategic, fundamentally reshaped their early dominance.
By the turn of the 20th century, Cargill’s control over the food industry was so extensive that, as the source claims, if farmers chose not to do business with them, they literally “couldn’t do business in the Midway West at all”. This wasn’t merely about selling a product; it was about controlling the very landscape of commerce for agricultural producers. The strategy, it seems, was to integrate themselves into every single step of the food supply chain to “make money at every step of the way”. This included everything from selling seeds and supplies to farmers, to storing grains, providing tools to mills, supplying ingredients to bakeries, and even curing salt to delis. It’s a comprehensive web, indeed.
Now, their financial maneuvers are where the narrative takes an even more critical turn. In 1924, they acquired Taylor and Bernick, a private wire system, which enabled rapid internal communication. This was a key piece, because it allowed them to engage in commodities trading at the Chicago Board of Trade with a significant informational advantage. Having so many business arms meant they possessed “the best information” which they could spread quickly, allowing them to adjust their investments based on price-affecting events at various locations. This practice, the source frankly states, “sounds like insider trading but it was legal”. And here’s the kicker: this very “kind of speculation had a hand in causing the Great Depression”. Furthermore, during that devastating economic period, Cargill actually profited by “stockpiling corn because they predicted the shortage”.
Such practices did not go unnoticed. The Chicago Board of Trade eventually banned them. Yet, Cargill, always “playing the long game,” responded by lobbying the Department of Agriculture to allow the grain industry to self-regulate. And, a more recent development of profound impact, legislation in 2000 effectively “took away the limited regulation over speculative Commodities that we had”. This deregulation, according to the source, paved the way for Cargill to open hedge funds, selling people investments in the very markets they themselves controlled.
The company’s expansion, the source tells us, continues to this day, notably with their recent merger with Sanderson Chicken, which is “the largest chicken producer in America”. The scale of their current control is quite striking: Cargill is identified as one of only four companies that collectively “control 85 percent of the world’s meat”. This means they effectively control both the supply and the prices of what we consume.
The source’s final, chilling, and certainly engaging pronouncement is that “the scariest part about this story is that it’s true”. It truly emphasizes the profound, and sometimes unsettling, influence that a single, privately-held entity can come to exert over fundamental aspects of daily life, such as our food supply and its cost. It’s a stark portrayal of concentrated corporate power in action.