Future-Proofing the Natural Products Industry: Why Conscious Business Is the Ultimate Hedge
Naturally Network’s May Industry Update
In an era defined by a "stacking of disruptions"—spanning the pandemic, inflation, geopolitical volatility, and shifting consumer expectations—the natural products industry is facing a permanent reset. At Naturally Network’s May Industry Update, Executive Director Katrina Tolentino and moderator Sherry Frey (NIQ) convened a panel of conscious leaders to discuss why conscious business is no longer a superficial marketing layer, but the core strategic operating model required for long-term corporate resilience.
The conversation featured insights from Megan Westgate (Founder & CEO, Non-GMO Project), Michael Ham (Co-Founder & President, Wild Orchard), and Michael Whelchel (Co-Founder & CEO, Big Path Capital). Together, they explored how moving from an extractive mindset to a generative, systems-thinking approach creates a durable competitive moat.
The Data: Conscious Business as a Permanent Value Driver
Sherry Frey, NIQ
To ground the conversation, Sherry shared long-term tracking data revealing that consumer behavior has undergone a foundational paradigm shift.
Volume Growth Outperformance: Since 2020, NIQ has tracked unit sales (volume) across multiple conscious attributes, including environmental sustainability, climate impact, animal welfare, social responsibility, and packaging. Despite minor pullbacks during peak inflationary periods, products carrying these conscious attributes consistently outperform total store trends in unit sales across the entire store.
The Rise of Identity-Driven Purchasing: Looking at a 15-year consumer spread, the number of highly cynical or skeptical buyers has steadily decreased. Concurrently, there has been a significant rise in the "Glamor Green" segment—consumers who use their purchases to express who they are and what they believe. Because identity-driven behavior is far more durable than fleeting, trend-driven behavior, embedding conscious values into a brand's business model creates an insulated market position.
The Corporate Trust Imperative: Consumer trust in media and government has eroded significantly. Consequently, buyers are auditing companies at an organizational level. Trust is no longer dictated solely by on-package product attributes; it is driven by corporate transparency, operational responsiveness, and how equitably people are treated along the entire supply chain.
"This isn’t a nice to have from a consumer standpoint, it’s really increasingly part of how they’re defining value... identity-driven behavior is much more durable than trend-driven behavior, and so again, this is where conscious business becomes so important that it's not just a marketing message, but it's really a business model." — Sherry Frey
The Biology of Consciousness & Restoring Human Functioning
Megan Westgate, Non-GMO Project
Megan Westgate challenged the industry to think of consciousness not as a rigid checklist of compliance boxes, but as an intentional practice of relationship with living systems.
The Nested Stakeholder Model: The Non-GMO Project views stakeholders through a framework of nested flows: starting with the brand, moving out to retailers, extending to shoppers, impacting the broader food system, and ultimately serving "the whole community of life on earth." This prevents a business from siloing its impact initiatives.
The Threat of Ultra-Processing: Megan highlighted an unprecedented global human health crisis driven by degraded food quality. Data confirms that diets high in ultra-processed foods degrade the food matrix, leading directly to cognitive decline, diminished mood, and metabolic dysfunction. Because humans operate as a critical keystone species whose decisions dictate the health of the rest of the planet, restoring metabolic health and cognitive clarity through unadulterated, non-ultra-processed food is a foundational requirement for future leadership.
Biometric Accountability: The historical landscape of 2007 allowed brands to market effectively using "a pretty picture and a nice story on a package." Today, with six out of ten American adults suffering from at least one chronic illness, combined with the rise of at-home testing and biometric wearables, consumers can see the immediate, physiological impact of what they consume. Brands are now strictly accountable to real metabolic nourishment.
Internal Governance & Nervous System Regulation: To build the internal capacity to manage severe complexity without collapsing under stress, leaders must take responsibility for their own biological regulation. Simple biological interventions—such as extending the length of an exhale relative to the inhale, or gently holding the vagus nerve area to stimulate a parasympathetic response—shift leaders out of a default survival state of fight-or-flight and into deep, strategic presence. Culturally, the Non-GMO Project eliminated traditional top-down executive decision-making, shifting to a cross-functional "core team" representing every level of the organization, supported by structured strategic thinking practices.
"Life is fundamentally regenerative, and so when we take actions and make plans and do business in alignment with the first principle of living systems, and in a way that supports life, then things become truly unstoppable and at the highest level of integrity." — Megan Westgate
Regenerative Metaphors: Farming the Business Like the Land
Michael Ham, Wild Orchard
Michael Ham connected the dots between human health and ecological stewardship, advocating for corporate systems that actively generate value rather than extracting it.
Rejecting Cuttings for Seeds: When establishing their tea farms 25 to 30 years ago, Wild Orchard's farmers made the unconventional, highly labor-intensive choice to plant tea trees by seed rather than standard cuttings. While cuttings grow roots sideways and offer fast commercial yields, seeds require 6 to 8 years before harvest but drive a deep vertical taproot that pulls up immense nourishment and builds structural resilience. Michael uses this as a direct metaphor for business management: rejecting rapid shortcuts to build deep-rooted, long-term organizational value.
Ecosystem Defenses Against Pests: In a healthy, biodiverse agricultural ecology utilizing practices like cover cropping, the natural vibrancy of the system is actively detected by pests, who choose to stay away. Pests instinctively target weak, chemical-dependent industrial systems. Translated to corporate operations, future-proof companies apply this exact systems thinking—treating employee well-being, supplier health, environmental stewardship, and financial performance as interconnected, mutually reinforcing assets rather than competing priorities.
Auditable Accountability: To prevent values from remaining purely aspirational, Wild Orchard secured Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) for its tea in 2022—a notoriously difficult milestone in the tea category. Additionally, they committed to the "Purpose Pledge" framework (conceived out of the Dr. Bronner’s lineage), anchoring the company to 10 distinct, publicly auditable metrics spanning governance, living wages, no-waste operations, and employer well-being.
"Conscious business, for me, simply means building systems that create value rather than extract it... Future-proof companies will apply systems thinking where employee wellbeing, environmental stewardship, supplier health, consumer health, and financial performance are interconnected rather than competing priorities." — Michael Ham
Boardroom Alignment & Capital Markets
Michael Whelchel, Big Path Capital
Michael Whelchel brought an investment banking lens to the panel, clarifying that long-term corporate future-proofing is entirely dependent on securing values-aligned capital partners.
The Value of an Impact-Aligned Board (Vital Farms): To illustrate true multi-stakeholder governance, Michael shared an example from Big Path Capital’s historical work with Vital Farms prior to their IPO. Due to explosive growth, the company committed to expanding its network of small contract farmers six months ahead of real consumer market demand, resulting in an oversupply of eggs. Rather than forcing the small farmers to absorb the financial hit—the default choice under traditional shareholder primacy—the impact-aligned board took just five minutes to approve paying the farmers not to produce. This decision entirely wiped out the company's EBITDA for that fiscal year, but it preserved the integrity of a vital supply chain stakeholder.
Internalizing Externalities: The regulatory environment is evolving rapidly, with Europe leading the way in legally forcing corporations to internalize their environmental externalities, such as carbon footprints and pollution. Conscious brands that are already voluntarily managing these factors are mitigating massive future regulatory liabilities and capital risks.
The Carbon Impact of Cash Assets: A highly practical, frequently overlooked operational lever for conscious brands is their banking relationship. Data from the non-profit organization Topo Finance reveals that keeping cash in traditional mega-banks can generate a larger corporate carbon footprint than a company's entire physical operations, supply chain, and travel combined. For example, depositing $50,000 into a conventional bank can carry a carbon footprint equivalent to 10 cross-country flights. Moving corporate cash to certified values-based financial institutions (such as Climate First Bank, Beneficial State Bank, Sunrise Banks, or Self-Help Credit Union) represents an immediate, high-leverage environmental intervention.
"A conscious company realizes that there's this broader set of stakeholders that need to be thought about, and that that should receive value, should receive standing, should receive a voice at the table... Consumer trust is a compounding asset and a competitive moat; through consistent behavior that's values-aligned, it’s extremely hard to replicate." — Michael Whelchel
