But as I have traveled around the country last year promoting my book of the history of the natural foods industry, Natural Prophets, I have told a very different story – one of growth, consolidation, and the nearly universal presence of Big Food ownership behind the scenes. Frequently I share the amazing infographic produced by Phil Howard of Michigan State, and I can hear audible gasps and “tsk tsks” from the crowd. “I had no idea!” they say. “That’s terrible!” “I can’t believe that Kellogg and General Mills own all those natural food companies!” And by and large, they do. Campbell Soup Co. owns Bolthouse Farms and Plum Organics. Nestle owns Sweet Leaf Tea and Tribe Mediterranean Foods. General Mills owns Immaculate Baking, Food Should Taste Good, Larabar, Muir Glen, and Cascadian Farm. Coca-Cola owns Odwalla, Honest Tea, Vitamin Water and a chunk of Green Mountain Coffee. Cargill, PepsiCo, Hershey, Perdue, M&M Mars – they have all gotten into the natural foods acquisition game. So much so, that after General Mills’ recent $820 million purchase of Annie’s, you can now count on just a few fingers the number of sizeable independent natural foods companies remaining in the marketplace. There’s Clif Bar, Bob’s Red Mill, Nature’s Path, and let’s see, Organic Valley…the list doesn’t go much beyond that. MORE: Five Reasons Not to Hate Yourself for Buying Organic at Walmart Two natural foods behemoths have emerged. Hain Celestial, with a market capitalization of over $5 billion, owns some two dozen once-independent natural foods brands, including Arrowhead Mills, Spectrum Organics, Westbrae, and a few legendary names they have all but mothballed, such as Walnut Acres. And WhiteWave, with its powerhouse Horizon, Silk, and recently acquired Earthbound Farm and So Delicious brands, is now one of the top 50 food companies in the US (although 20% is still owned by Big Food mainstay Dean Foods). It’s admittedly surprising, but is all of this consolidation necessarily a bad thing? Gary Hirshberg, longtime CEO of Stonyfield Farm and one of the most forceful, articulate representatives of the natural foods industry, makes an outstanding counterargument. Between 2001 and 2003, Hirshberg sold 85% of his company to the French food giant Groupe Danone. But in the process, he has also managed to pioneer a new entrepreneurial concept, in which the founder of the acquired company stays on and begins to inculcate some of the mission into the new parent company. Hirshberg later helped encourage Honest Tea to create a similar arrangement after its sale to Coca-Cola. “This idea of becoming part of the DNA of these larger companies is maybe infuriating or misunderstood by a lot of folks, but it’s the only solution,” he told me for my book. “For organic to [grow significantly], we need the kind of efficiencies and reach of these large companies.” Perhaps next time one of these big deals is announced, we should think of it not as selling out, but buying in.
