Soaring food prices push more Cargill family members on to world’s richest 500 list

theguardian.com:

A “giant leap” in global food prices caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has helped three members of the super-rich Cargill family, who majority-own one of the world’s largest food companies, join the ranks of the world’s 500 richest people.

Siblings James Cargill, Austen Cargill and Marianne Liebmann – all great-grandchildren of William Wallace Cargill, who founded the Cargill company in 1865 – this week joined the Bloomberg Billionaires list of the richest 500 people alive. Each of them has an estimated $5.4bn (£4.1bn) fortune – up a fifth so far this year.

They join Cargill’s other great-grandchildren Pauline Keinath and Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer on the richest 500 list. They each have fortunes of about $8.06bn.

Their fortunes track those of the giant Cargill food company, which employs more than 155,000 staff in 70 countries, and is expected to report record profits this year, outstripping 2021’s record-breaking $5bn profit.

The United Nations this month warned that global food prices had soared to a record high because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization said its food price index rose by 12.6% in March compared with February, “making a giant leap to a new highest level since its inception in 1990”.

The UN said the war in Ukraine “spread shocks through markets for staple grains and vegetable oils”. The price of cereals, vegetable oils and meat have all reached all-times highs, the agency said.

The war has disrupted Black Sea exports of crucial commodities from a region that had been producing more than a quarter of the world’s wheat exports.

The invasion has helped push cereal prices up 17% over the past month, with the closure of ports throttling wheat and maize exports from