I'm PepsiCo. That's according to our annual report on North America's top food and beverage companies, at 26%. These companies, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg's, Mars, Associated British Foods and Mondelez, each employ thousands of people and generate billions of dollars in revenue every year. Forget Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes: Kellogg's also owns brands that don't include grains, such as Eggo, Pringles and Cheez-It.
General Mills is best known for its cereals such as Cheerios and Chex, but it also owns brands such as Yoplait, Hamburger Helper, Haagen-Dazs and Betty Crocker. Better known for yogurts such as Activa, Yocrunch and Oikos, Danone also sells medical nutrition products and bottled water. Mars is best known for its chocolate brands, such as M%26M, but it also owns Uncle Ben's rice, Starburst and Orbit gum. Coca-Cola goes beyond soft drinks, with beverage brands such as Dasani, Fuze and Honest Tea.
Unilever's diverse list of brands includes Axe body spray, Lipton tea, Magnum ice cream and Hellmann's mayonnaise. The food industry is a complex global network of diverse companies that supplies most of the food consumed by the world's population. Nowadays, the food industry has become very diversified, and manufacturing ranges from small, traditional and family activities that require a lot of labor, to large, capital-intensive and highly mechanized industrial processes. Many food industries are almost completely dependent on local agriculture, products, or fishing.
Only subsistence farmers, those who survive on what they grow, and hunter-gatherers can be considered outside the purview of the modern food industry. The dominant companies in the food industry are sometimes referred to as Big Food, a term coined by writer Neil Hamilton. Most of the food produced for the food industry comes from staple crops that use conventional agricultural practices. Agriculture is the process of producing food, feed, fiber, and other desired products by growing certain plants and raising domestic animals (livestock).
On average, 83% of the food consumed by humans is produced through land-based agriculture. Other food sources include aquaculture and fishing. Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for the recovery of food, fuel, fiber and land. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology and soil science.
Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences. Today's agronomists are involved in many topics, such as food production, creating healthier foods, managing the environmental impact of agriculture, and extracting energy from plants. The food industry has a major influence on consumerism. Organizations, such as the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), have been criticized for accepting monetary donations from companies in the food industry, such as Coca-Cola.
These donations have been criticized for creating a conflict of interest and favoring interests such as financial gains. Since World War II, agriculture in the United States and the entire national food system have been characterized by models that focus on monetary profitability at the expense of social and environmental integrity. There are regulations to protect consumers and somehow balance this economic orientation with public interests in terms of quality, food safety, animal welfare, environmental protection and health. Food preparation is another area where the change in recent decades has been drastic.
Today, two sectors of the food industry are apparently competing for the retail food dollar. The grocery industry sells fresh and mostly raw products for consumers to use as ingredients in home cooking. The catering industry, on the other hand, offers prepared foods, either as finished products or as components partially prepared for final assembly. Restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries and mobile food trucks offer consumers the opportunity to buy food.
Modern food production is defined by sophisticated technologies. Agricultural machinery, originally driven by the tractor, has virtually eliminated human labor in many areas of production. Biotechnology is driving many changes, in areas as diverse as agrochemicals, plant genetics and food processing. Many other types of technology are also involved, to the point that it is difficult to find an area that does not have a direct impact on the food industry.
As in other fields, information technology is also a core force. Food processing includes the methods and techniques used to transform raw materials into food for human consumption. Food processing takes components that are cleaned, harvested, or slaughtered and dismembered and uses them to produce marketable food products. Food Engineering's annual report ranks the top 100 food and beverage companies in the world according to their annual sales.
As consumers move ever further away from food production, the role of product creation, advertising and advertising are becoming the main vehicles for food information. .
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