Something we can all lose when these kinds of firms get bought up is a diversity of voices. When you consider the lax regulatory environment it has been up to civil society and often small, mission-driven companies to raise awareness over issues like bovine growth hormone, GMO’s, animal welfare or the poverty of farmers in developing countries – and to do the very hard work of creating the first market niches for alternative products that addressed these problems. (Just as Seth made a market for organic bottled tea.)

The large corporations have consistently been either on the wrong side of these issues, or on the sidelines, or had to be embarrassed into taking action, often merely token.

So when I see Honest Tea get bought out I have to acknowledge, yes, they’ll buy & sell more organic tea – a good thing – BUT I’m also going to assume we’ll not hear Seth use his new vantage point to speak out against, say, the evils of GMO’s (as most of Coke’s corn syrup is probably derived from GMO corn).

Admittedly, it did not seem Seth was outspoken on controversial issues before (correct me if I’m wrong) but other green entrepreneurs, like Steve Demos were, and when Steve’s values clashed with his new corporate bosses at Dean he was effectively silenced.

Overall, I think these transactions have the effect of “quieting” the marketplace, and thereby overall slowing the pace of change. A conclusion that I admit cannot be quantified or tested.
By the way, back in 2000 Marjorie Kelly (author of “The Divine Right of Capital”) wrote a great article about all of this.

The only thing that I think has really changed since then is that both society and the marketplace have become more green, etc, which in turn has given folks like Gary Hirschberg, Seth and Tom Chappell a stronger position to negotiate from when selling. Still, even if that’s true, that amounts to only incremental change, and I think many of us in this line of work still think we can and should aim higher.

Note: we at Equal Exchange speak about this from personal experience. As a 100% Fair Trade, worker-owned co-operative specializing in organic food & beverages, with $29M in sales, we, too, are at that “awkward” stage for independent food companies, let progressive ones. But we’re convinced that there have to better options than selling out. If nothing else, farmer-owned co-operatives like Organic Valley ($250M and growing) suggest it can be done.