The Biggest Grain and Oilseed Traders

Published September 30, 2026 · Updated October 3, 2026 · 4 min read

A small group of trading houses buys much of the world's grain and oilseeds from farmers and country elevators, stores it, ships it across oceans and crushes soybeans and rapeseed into oil and meal. These are the ten largest by revenue in their latest financial year:

Group revenue in the latest reported financial year; 2024/25 is a financial year ending in 2025. For diversified groups such as Cargill, Wilmar and CHS it includes other businesses (meat, sugar, fuel). Olam Agri converted from Singapore dollars; Scoular is privately owned and publishes only an approximate figure. Sources: company annual results.

The ten companies in brief

Cargill

Founded in 1865 in Iowa and based in Minnesota, Cargill is the largest privately held company in the United States; the Cargill and MacMillan families own most of it. Besides trading and storing grain and oilseeds it crushes oilseeds, makes animal feed and food ingredients and is one of the largest US beef packers.

ADM

Archer Daniels Midland began in 1902 as a linseed-oil maker in Minneapolis and is now listed in New York with its head office in Chicago. It buys grain through a large network of US elevators and river terminals and turns soybeans and corn into oil, meal, sweeteners, ethanol and food ingredients. ADM also holds about a fifth of Wilmar.

Wilmar International

Founded in Singapore in 1991 and listed there, Wilmar is the world's largest processor and trader of palm oil and a major crusher of soybeans in China, where its subsidiary Yihai Kerry Arawana sells cooking oil, rice and flour under its own brands. It also mills sugar in Australia and Indonesia.

Bunge

Founded in Amsterdam in 1818, Bunge is today incorporated in Switzerland and run from St. Louis. It is the world's largest oilseed processor; with the takeover of the Canadian-Swiss grain handler Viterra in July 2025 it also became one of the largest grain traders.

Louis Dreyfus Company

Founded in Alsace in 1851 and based in Rotterdam, LDC is controlled by the Louis-Dreyfus family; Abu Dhabi's state holding ADQ bought 45% in 2021. Besides grains and oilseeds it is a major merchant of coffee, cotton, sugar, rice and orange juice.

COFCO International

The Geneva-based international arm of China's state-owned food group COFCO was built from the purchase of the Dutch trader Nidera and the agricultural business of Noble Group between 2014 and 2017. It buys large volumes of soybeans and corn in Brazil and Argentina, much of it for China.

CHS

CHS, based in Minnesota, is the largest farmer-owned cooperative in the United States, owned by farmers and local cooperatives. Besides grain marketing and export terminals it supplies fertilizer and crop protection and runs two oil refineries that sell fuel under the Cenex brand.

Olam Agri

Olam Agri, based in Singapore, is the grains, edible-oil, rice and cotton business split off from the Olam group, which started in 1989 as a cashew exporter in Nigeria. It is strongest in Africa, where it runs flour mills and rice distribution. Saudi Arabia's state-backed SALIC has owned 80% since 2025.

The Andersons

Founded in 1947 in Maumee, Ohio, and listed on Nasdaq, The Andersons runs grain elevators across the US Corn Belt and Canada, merchandises grain and produces ethanol. It also sells plant nutrients to farmers and golf courses.

Scoular

Founded in 1892 and based in Omaha, Nebraska, Scoular is owned by its employees. It trades grain, feed ingredients and food ingredients, handles more than a billion bushels a year and ships to some 80 countries.

How the business works

Traders earn on volume, logistics and processing rather than on the price level: they buy at one place and time, sell at another, and hedge the price risk on futures exchanges. Margins per tonne are thin, so size matters - silos, river barges, port terminals, ocean freight and crushing plants on several continents. That is also why their revenue falls when crop prices fall, as it did for most of them in 2024 and 2025, without that meaning they sold less grain.

Why so few companies

Scale lowers costs and spreads risk across harvests in the northern and southern hemispheres, and the business has consolidated for decades. The latest step: Bunge took over Viterra, itself built from Glencore's grain business, in July 2025, after about two years of review by competition authorities. COFCO International, controlled by China's state food group, grew through acquisitions to secure supplies for the world's largest importer.

What it means for farmers and prices

World prices form on exchanges and in a market with many buyers, so no single trader sets them. Size matters more locally: where a farmer has only one or two elevators or crushers within reach, their bids decide the local basis. More on the other links in the chain in The Biggest Companies in Agribusiness.