Who owns food companies

Edit Story. National View count:. Begin slideshow. View as one page. Contact Erik Dolan-Del Vecchio at erik bisnow. Sign up for more articles like this. You are subscribed to the Bisnow National E-Newsletter. To use comma to separate multiple addresses :. Email Story x. Also subscribe to Bisnow's National Newsletter. Login Register. Sign In. First Name:. Last Name:. This is only a snapshot however, with a total of companies spanning 23 countries and 57 industries making the cut.

You can find the full list here. Knowledge is a powerful tool that we can use to take control of where our money goes. Yes, most brands are owned by the big 10, but not all of them. Even then, some are better than others. As consumers of the 21st century we have the ability to educate ourselves on how companies operate and choose whether or not to buy their products based on whether they align with our values i.

It may seem hard sometimes to avoid big company brands, but small choices can make a big difference. Friend's Email Address. Your Name. The agriculture and food production industry employed more than one billion people as of last year, or a third of the global workforce. While the industry is substantial, a relatively small number of companies wield an enormous amount of influence.

In its report, "Behind the Brands," Oxfam International focused on 10 of the world's biggest and most influential food and beverage companies. These corporations are so powerful that their policies can have a major impact on the diets and working conditions of people worldwide, as well as on the environment.

Based on the report, these are the 10 companies that control the world's food. Just a handful of companies can dictate food choices, supplier terms and consumer variety," Jochnick said. These 10 companies are among the largest in the world by a number of measures.

All of them had revenues in the tens of billions of dollars in Additionally, these 10 companies directly employed more than 1. Nestle is the largest of these 10 companies. The Switzerland food giant alone employed roughly , people.

Many of these companies and their brands are extremely well known. One reason is that they often spend huge sums on advertising.

Nine of these 10 companies were among the largest media spenders in the world in With such scale, many of these companies' policies — including advertising, food ingredients, environmental impact, and labor practices — have an significant impact on millions of lives.

Often, these companies have been reluctant to address issues related to their environmental impact and the quality of life of workers in their supply chain. According to Jochnick, many of these companies are "unaware of the social and environmental impact that they are creating or facilitating. However, not all the companies are reluctant to address these problems. None of the 10 companies was better-rated by Oxfam than Nestle, which was closely followed by Unilever.

Still, even these companies had problems, according to Oxfam's report. In , Nestle discovered cases of children working in its cocoa supply chain, as well as instances of forced labor. A supplier of palm oil for Unilever was accused of illegal deforestation and forcible land grabs. A strong public profile, as well as consumer awareness, may lead these companies to address issues of concern.

Some companies have taken steps towards becoming better corporate citizens. General Mills and Kellogg, which have been among the 10 companies Oxfam studied, have implemented new policies to address important issues such as climate change. Both companies recently committed to disclosing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. We also added information on each company's revenue, net profit, total assets, and employee count from their most recent annual report. Data were translated from foreign currencies based on the exchange rate on the final date of each company's reporting period.