The Cornucopia Institute provides a link to Dr. Phil Howard’s webpage, which has all kinds of awesome graphics to illustrate concentration in the organic food sector. This one shows acquisitions by several major food corporations (sorry the images are small–there’s a link after each one that takes you to a bigger version, or you can easily see all of them at Dr. Howard’s website). For all but the third image, the color scheme is yellow = multinational processor, green = organic brand, blue = investment firms, and red = organic versions of mainstream brands.

who_owns_071

Click for a larger version.

Creation of private-label organic lines for particular retailers:

organicplabeljul072

Larger version.

Concentration of organic labels:

retail

Larger version. Dr. Howard has also created an  animated version of consolidation in the organic food sector, which I highly recommend, unless you are easily made dizzy.

Major independent organic processors:

organicindjan082

Larger version.

NEW! John found some updated information at Phil Howard’s site. Introductions of new organic brands:

organict30intjan08

Acquisitions, as of June 2009:

organict30j091

For an article providing more detail and more graphics see: Howard, Philip H. 2009. “Consolidation in the North American Organic Food Processing Sector, 1997 to 2007.” International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture 16(1), 13-30. [online at
http://www.ijsaf.org/archive/16/1/howard.pdf]