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Business Projects • Energy • Sustainable Finance & Economics

Cargill Announced 8,000 job cuts in 2024: An Insider Look At The Agricultural Giant

As a former Cargill Analytics Engineer who left just months before the company's 2024 layoffs impacting 8,000 employees, I've witnessed firsthand how this agricultural giant operates. From my humble beginnings as a finance trainee in Cargill's Netherlands office to building global data pipelines with teams spanning across 20 countries, I'll explain how Cargill transformed from its 1865 origins as a simple grain warehouse into a $177 billion powerhouse touching everything from your morning yogurt to the biofuels powering transportation. The recent announcement of 8,000 job cuts marks a significant shift for a company known for its stability and employee-first culture. To understand the full impact of these layoffs, we need to examine Cargill's complex business model—from food processing and renewable energy to sustainable fashion materials. In this personal account, I'll take you behind the scenes of America's largest private company, share insights from my five years inside its global operations, and analyze this high-level business decision through the lens of both the company's strengths and weaknesses. Drawing from my experience in both finance and data analytics, I'll break down how market forces, from U.S. droughts to falling commodity prices, led to this pivotal moment in Cargill's 150+ year history, offering key learnings about what makes this company both resilient and vulnerable to change.

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Cargill: The Hidden Giant Behind Global Food and Agriculture

There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Cargill, but the odds that you’ve never eaten their food or used their products are pretty slim. Cargill, a U.S.-based private company, was founded in 1865 by William Wallace Cargill and his younger brothers, Sam and Sylvester. The company operates on a massive scale, providing food, ingredients, agricultural services, and industrial products to meet global demand in over 70 countries. With more than 160,000 employees, Cargill plays a significant role in shaping the global food and industrial supply chains that underpin modern life and standards of living.

Having worked there myself until just two months before a major global layoff program was announced, I’ve seen firsthand how the company operates—and I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on its performance since leaving. Cargill’s reach and influence are undeniable, but so are the challenges it faces as it continues to navigate a complex and rapidly changing world.

From Grain Warehouse to Global Empire: Cargill’s 150+ Year Journey

Everything began when William Wallace left his home in Wisconsin and purchased a single grain warehouse in Iowa. The business model was straightforward: buy grain from farmers, store it, and sell it for processing and food production. At the time, the U.S. was experiencing rapid growth, with cities expanding and populations booming. The increasing demand for food drove the Wallace family to steadily grow their operations, investing in transportation companies, partnering with farmers, and building processing plants.

The Cargill we know today is the product of a company that mastered the art of organic growth—built on patience, perseverance, and strategic supply chain integrations. These moves allowed Cargill to become a dominant force in the food market as we see it now. Today, Cargill has an incredibly diverse portfolio of products, supported by advanced laboratories that help the company enter new markets, connect global supply chains, and serve customers worldwide.

Cargill doesn’t just process and transport grains like soy, sunflower, canola, wheat, and corn. It also produces feedstock, meat, and poultry for human consumption. In fact, the company’s operations are so diversified that many would be surprised by the sheer range of industries it touches. When I worked at Cargill, I didn’t have full visibility into the entire product portfolio, but I could see firsthand how this diversification positioned the company to weather economic challenges and stay resilient during downturns.

As someone who left the company two months before a major global layoff program, I feel a mix of admiration for Cargill’s scale and curiosity about its future. I want to share my perspective on the company’s business and performance, while being mindful of my position as a former employee. To maintain transparency and professionalism, I’ll stick to publicly available information and my own qualitative experiences from my time there.

Inside Cargill’s Diverse Product Portfolio: From Farm to Future

Cargill continues to invest heavily in R&D to expand its product portfolio and build multiple sales funnels worldwide. From my perspective, Cargill’s business strategy is incredibly strong because it manages to serve diverse markets with a customer-centric approach. They achieve this by creating sales funnels through local business development partners, fostering long-term relationships with clients, and truly taking the time to listen to their needs. Moreover, Cargill promotes a culture of trust across its employees, managers, and stakeholders—a foundation that strengthens their operations.

When I joined the Cargill BioIndustrial Team in The Netherlands, I was honestly amazed at the sheer range of products the company produces. Their portfolio reaches far and wide. For example, they serve the construction and infrastructure industries with additive products like Acme Mortar & Block Admixtures, which are used in concrete and cement to make roads more durable. At the same time, they cater to the energy sector by producing dielectric fluids derived from vegetable oils—key inputs for electric infrastructure projects that ensure safety and prevent overheating in transformers during electricity generation and transmission.

But that’s not all. Cargill’s products are likely part of your daily life without you even realizing it. Many of the goods in your home contain ingredients from Cargill: vegetable oils used for candle waxes, cosmetics, or specialty oil ingredients for printer ink. They even produce agricultural crop-protection ingredients, the foam in car seats, and those special ingredients that make your yogurt creamier. It’s fascinating to realize how integrated their products are into everyday life.

Their bioindustrial portfolio is diverse and highly technical—for people outside this field, some of the product names might sound overly complex. Yet, according to their website, their offerings include an impressive range of solutions:

Even though nobody talks about it, Cargill is the true master of diversification. Food demand is always strong, but even during times when prices drop and margins erode, they somehow manage to find new markets to serve. For example, Cargill is serving the fashion industry and it has partnered with clothing and shoe companies to provide materials like sealants, spandex, and vegan leather that replace fossil-based alternatives such as coal and crude oil.

Cargill also plays a critical role in meeting energy mandates, like those in the EU, which require countries to ensure that at least 14% of energy used in transport comes from renewable sources by 2030. This is where Cargill’s biofuel production and processing capabilities truly stand out. It’s a space where they have gained a competitive advantage and economies of scale.

Understanding Cargill’s 2024 Layoffs

Cargill has just announced a global layoff program impacting around 8,000 employees across various business areas, including inventory management, data and operations, supply chain, HR, and more.

After spending about 5 years at Cargill, I have understood that the reasons behind Cargill’s decisions are complex and multi-dimensional. They involve many factors, from trade flows to interconnected financial markets and the need to improve operational efficiency.

Take the U.S. droughts over the past year, for example, which significantly impacted Cargill’s beef operations. Reduced rainfall shrank grazing land, forcing ranchers to cut herd sizes and leading to a drop in beef supply across the value chain. Then there’s the pressure on crop production prices—soybeans, in particular. Prices fell drastically from 2022 levels of around $1,800 per bushel to $982 per bushel. This shift was largely due to strong harvests in both the U.S. and Brazil, which increased supply and pushed prices for soybeans, canola seeds, wheat, and even sunflower oil downwards. A notable example is the 34.5 million-ton increase in soybean supply, driven mainly by Brazil and U.S. production, which sent prices tumbling.

Falling crop prices took a big toll on Cargill’s crush margins. For those unfamiliar, crush margins are the profits made by processing raw seeds into by-products like oil and animal feed. Lower margins meant weaker financial performance, with revenue dropping from $177 billion in fiscal year 2023 to $160 billion in fiscal year 2024, which ended in May.

Adding to the challenge is the decline in biofuel prices since 2022. Ethanol prices plunged by 25%, while biodiesel fell by more than 35%. While these price drops might benefit consumers, they’ve hurt companies like Cargill, especially when commodity trading isn’t fully hedged. Oversupply in the market creates additional costs for storage, inventory perishability, transportation, and contract renegotiations—factors that directly squeeze profit margins.

But aside from market developments, I firmly believe that financial performance should be compared against a long-term trend to assess whether there is a real downturn or is it a market correction from disruptions that took place in 2020-22 period. My argument is that markets are going “back” into a new equilibrium because supply chains and businesses have adapted to the post-COVID era.

Contextualizing Cargill’s Long-Term Performance

Cargill has grown into a complex, interconnected business network where everything works together continuously. The company thrives on a strong, merit-based culture focused on measurable goals, growth, and learning. Personally, I’ve seen this firsthand. I started as a finance trainee in the Schiphol office in the Netherlands, reconciling financial trade positions. Over time, I moved into a global role as an Analytics Engineer, building data pipelines for a team that spanned over 20 countries and all Cargill businesses. Along the way, I’ve worked with supply chain experts, inventory and demand planners, financial directors, and chemical engineers. That diversity of people and expertise is what makes Cargill such a special place to work.

Now, let’s take a step back and look at the recent financial results in context. While it’s true the company missed internal earnings benchmarks compared to the record-breaking years of 2020-2022, it’s still performing much better than pre-COVID times. Growth is happening, and revenue generation remains strong. The record profits during COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war were driven by major market and supply chain disruptions, which led to unexpectedly high commodity prices. These were exceptional circumstances, not the norm. That’s why it’s important to be cautious during years of extraordinary growth. Those moments are great opportunities to reinvest in efficiency and scaling the business, but future forecasts need to normalize earnings by removing the impact of one-off geopolitical or market shocks on P&L models. This creates a more realistic picture of performance and helps manage expectations, avoiding drastic measures like large-scale job cuts.

For instance, if we compare Cargill’s 2018/2019 revenue of $114.7 billion to 2023’s $177 billion, can we really talk about a “decline” in performance? That’s an annual revenue growth rate of around 8.5%. The company is still performing strongly and has powerful tangible and intangible assets driving its success.

That said, there’s always room to improve. Cargill can do more to drive efficiency and foster innovation. There are opportunities to create better synergies across business units with shared processes, simplify distribution and sourcing strategies, and invest further in digitalization and modern data solutions. Sustainability also needs to play a bigger role, especially as more conscious consumers in developed markets demand it. Addressing this shift is urgent and essential.

At the same time, Cargill faces the challenge of serving developing economies across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, where strong population growth and a rising middle class are driving a shift from carbohydrate-heavy diets to more protein-based ones. This is a huge opportunity, but it comes with responsibility. Cargill has the chance to lead in shaping what sustainable food and supply chains look like today. This includes tackling issues like the EU deforestation-free supply chain laws, water scarcity, and protecting biodiversity in fragile ecosystems, particularly in South America. These challenges shouldn’t be seen as just “red tape” or added costs—they’re opportunities to define a better future.

I hope Cargill’s leaders see the potential here and choose to embrace these opportunities as we navigate what’s next.

Incredible Resilience Amongst Colleagues

My final point for this article is to highlight the resilience of my former Cargill colleagues around the world. These were the people moving freight, clearing customs, stocking inventory, analyzing financial performance, and driving new innovations every day. I had the privilege of working with brilliant, friendly, international colleagues who I truly appreciate and value. We spent countless hours together solving important problems like handling product disruptions, navigating budget conversations, analyzing product profitability, and bringing programming and data-driven decisions into our teams. We found ways to save our front-end colleagues tons of time, and I’m proud of the work we did.

To everyone affected by the layoffs, my message is this. Try to stay positive during this tough time. Embrace change, and take everything you’ve learned with you into your next chapter. Hold on to gratitude and remember everything you achieved during your time at Cargill.

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