Cargill is a fairly interesting company and like all big and small grain companies, they hedge their inventory. Grain is a very low margin business and it is very important to protect both the company and the farmer from market volatility. This does tend to put these companies in the financial instruments business and they do tend to expand past agriculture.

disclaimer: worked for Cargill at one time and will not go into any depth other than to say the article is a bit information lite and the title is horrible, ill-informed dreck that I expect.