The Ghost at the Feast: How the Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard of Came to Dominate the World’s Food Chain

In most countries around the world the food on the table is likely to contain something produced, processed or traded by a certain American company few people have heard of. With its headquarters shrouded in private woodland in a suburb of Minneapolis in the American Mid-West, Cargill is the world’s largest private company – and one of the most secretive. Founded 150 years ago as a grain trader, the descendants of its two Scottish families still control most of the stock. Ten members are on the 2015 Forbes list of billionaires. Operating in over sixty countries, Cargill exercises an extraordinary influence on the global food chain. The company champions free trade and claims that its aim is to ‘nourish the world’. But there is a darker and more hidden world involving the use of child slave labour in Africa and Central Asia; driving forward early deforestation in Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia; and profiting from speculation while millions starve. For The Ghost at the Feast, journalist David Pallister has spent five years peeling away the layers of secrecy to reveal the truth behind this monolithic enterprise.