Cargill, Incorporated is a privately held, multinational corporation, and is based in the state of Minnesota in the United States. It was founded in 1865, and has grown into the country's second largest privately held corporation (in terms of revenue). Were it a publicly held company, it would rank in the top 20 companies in the Fortune 500. Cargill's business activities include purchasing, processing, and distributing grain and other agricultural commodities, and the manufacture and sale of livestock feed and ingredients for processed foods and pharmaceuticals. It also operates a large financial services arm, which manages financial risks in the commodity markets for the company. In 2003 it split out a portion of its financial operations into a hedge fund called Black River Asset Management, with about $10 billion of assets and liabilitiesblank">http://www.ukdata.com/company-listings/numbers/04866660.html. It owns 2/3 of the shares of _The Mosaic Company, one of the world's leading producers and marketers of concentrated phosphate and potash crop nutrients. Cargill also owns a Canadian division, Cargill Ltd..

Despite its size, the corporation is still a family owned business; descendants of the founders (from the Cargill and MacMillan families) own about 85% of the company. This means that most of its growth has been due to reinvestment of the company's own earnings, rather than public financing.

Greg Page is the chief executive officer of Cargill who succeeded Warren Staley in mid 2007.