Corporate Role in Food and Agriculture - Canadian Food Studies - Sustainable Development

Internal Code: MAS6218

Sustainable Development:

“Big Food” refers to the transnational food manufacturing corporations that dominate the production and marketing of highly processed foods and beverages, with the ten largest corporations comprised of Nestlé, Pepsico, Associated British Foods (ABF), Coca-Cola, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg, Mars, Mondelez International (previously Kraft Foods), and Unilever (Oxfam, 2013). The types of foods that make up the majority of the sales of these firms include snack foods, confectionary, sweetened milk and yoghurt products, ice cream, breakfast cereals, biscuits, sugar-sweetened beverages, and fruit juice. Global sales of packaged foods have grown by over 90 percent in the past decade, and now total over US$2.2 trillion (Anon, 2012). Nestlé, for example, achieved sales of just under US$100 billion in 2013 (Nestlé, 2014). According to some research groups, the ten largest food corporations control around one-quarter of global packaged food sales, with the top 100 corporations controlling three-quarters of the global market (ETC, 2008, 2011; Lang, Barling & Caraher, 2009). This level of corporate concentration is considerably lower than in other sectors of the food system, such as the grain trading sector (ETC, 2011). Nevertheless, these packaged food and beverage companies are some of the world’s largest food and agricultural corporations, and their market size enables them to exercise enormous power and influence over food producers, food consumers, and government policymakers (Winson, 2013). In terms of their influence over consumers, Big Food corporations are actively involved in transforming dietary patterns through the displacement of minimally processed foods with their more highly processed, packaged, and convenience foods (Monteiro & Cannon, 2012b). Having largely saturated the market for ready to eat and convenience foods in the North,