Cargill plans to slash roughly 8,000 jobs globally

Multinational food corporation Cargill said on Tuesday it plans to cut roughly five per cent of its staff, or about 8,000 jobs.

In a statement provided to CBC News, Cargill said the company set a long-term strategy earlier this year to evolve and strengthen its portfolio, which has led to cutting its global workforce.

"To strengthen Cargill's impact, we must realign our talent and resources to align with our strategy. Unfortunately, that means reducing our global workforce by approximately five per cent," Cargill's statement said.

Cargill, a nearly 160-year-old company headquartered in Minnesota, employs more than 8,000 people across Canada, its website states. One of its most high-profile operations north of the border is the meat-processing plant near High River, Alta., which employs roughly 2,200 workers and processes about 4,700 head of cattle per day.

Most of the company's job cuts will occur this year, Cargill president and CEO Brian Sikes said in a memo that was reviewed and reported on by Reuters on Tuesday. The company will try to keep the impact of cuts to its operations and frontline teams to a minimum, the memo added. The company is not sharing specific layoff numbers by country or location.

"They will focus on streamlining our organizational structure by removing layers, expanding the scope and responsibilities of our managers, and reducing duplication of work," Sikes said in the memo.

More information about the company's restructuring will be shared in a meeting on Dec. 9, Sikes said.

The High River plant garnered headlines during a COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 that resulted in nearly 950 employees testing positive for the disease.

It appears the cuts won't affect Cargill's Alberta operations, said Thomas Hesse, president of UFCW Local 401, which represents nearly 2,500 Cargill workers at two plants, in High River and Calgary. Hesse said the union is investigating the situation and asking hard questions of the company.

"We don't believe any reductions are necessary. Not a shred of evidence has been provided to justify any workforce reductions," Hesse said in a statement on Tuesday. "Beef sales have skyrocketed, and no one should lose their job during an unprecedented affordability crisis."

Hesse said the United Food and Commercial Workers union is monitoring the situation closely, and he noted that Cargill workers have a contract that offers a variety of rules around workplace reduction that the company must follow.

The cuts come after Cargill's revenue dipped nearly 10 per cent in its most recent fiscal year. Its revenue dropped from $177 billion the previous year, to $160 billion in 2024. Prices on commodity crops that Cargill trades, such as wheat, corn and soybeans, have dropped to near four-year lows while crop processing margins have shrunk.

"It's quite a surprise," said Stuart Smyth, a professor in the department of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Saskatchewan, considering the number of job losses.

Drought conditions in several agricultural regions in North America and the declining number of cattle in Canada are some of the issues that could be impacting Cargill and could lead to job losses at other companies in the sector. The number of Canadian beef cows is the lowest since 1987.

"Certainly in the meat processing side of things, there could be some downsizing. If you're used to running [processing plants] at a higher level of capacity and we've got lower livestock herds, it would certainly make economic sense that if Cargill's downsizing, the others are going to follow a similar route."

Reuters is reporting that a memo it saw in August stated less than one third of Cargill's businesses met their earning goals in the last fiscal year. That month, Cargill said it would undergo structural changes after missing its internal goals, with plans to streamline operations into three units from five as part of its 2030 strategy.

Cargill's planned job cuts were first reported by Bloomberg News on Monday.