So how bad is the economy? So bad that even Cargill, the Minnetonka-based agri-titan whose revenue and profit have been on a tear in recent years, reported earnings on Tuesday that, excluding its investment in a fertilizer company, were lower than a year ago.

Boosted by its two-thirds stake in Plymouth-based fertilizer giant Mosaic, Cargill's earnings of $1.19 billion for the quarter ended Nov. 30 were 25 percent higher than the previous year. Without the Mosaic stake, earnings would have been "moderately lower" in the quarter, a Cargill spokeswoman said. Earnings for the first half of the year were $2.68 billion, up 43 percent from the year earlier period, but would have been "just under" the same period a year ago if Mosaic weren't included.

Mosaic, created in a 2004 merger of Cargill's fertilizer business and IMC Global, announced earlier this month that it earned $959.8 million in its second quarter, more than double its year-ago earnings. The company warned, however, that slowing sales will require production cuts; this week it announced a layoff of 1,000 employees at its potash mining operations in Saskatchewan.

Privately held Cargill does not release quarterly revenue figures or results for each of its five business segments, but it said its industrial and origination/processing segments had significant earnings increases, while agriculture services, food ingredients/applications and risk management/financial all had lower earnings. Within those segments, energy, meat and some food ingredients showed steady to significantly higher returns.

"Cargill performed solidly in a period like no other," Greg Page, Cargill chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "The global financial system was under significant stress, energy and agricultural commodity prices fell sharply, and recessionary risks took hold in developed economies in a worsening global economic environment. Because of Cargill's focus on market fundamentals and risk management, we were able to work our way safely through exceedingly volatile conditions."

In the second quarter, Cargill added a joint-venture canola crush plant in France and a cocoa processing plant in Ghana to its holdings. Cargill employs 160,000 people in 67 countries.

Matt McKinney • 612-673-7329