Gary Hirshberg - Chairman, President and CE-Yo, Stonyfield Farm

Gary Hirshberg, the husband of Meg Hirshberg and the father of three teenage yogurt-eaters, is Chairman, President and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world's leading organic yogurt producer, based in Londonderry, New Hampshire.

He is also the author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World, published in January 2008 by Hyperion Books (NY), which outlines how consumers and businesses can be forces for positive and tangible change.

For the past 25 years, Gary has overseen Stonyfield Farm's phenomenal growth, from its infancy as a 7-cow organic farming school in 1983 to its current $260 million in annual sales. Stonyfield has enjoyed a compounded annual growth rate of 27.4% for more than eighteen years, by consistently producing a great-tasting product and using innovative marketing techniques that blend the company's social, environmental, and financial missions.

In 2001, Stonyfield Farm entered into a partnership with Groupe Danone, and in 2005, Gary was named Managing Director of Stonyfield Europe, a joint venture between the two firms with brands in Ireland, the UK and France with more in development.

Gary joined Stonyfield Farm a few months after its start in 1983. Initially he also directed the Rural Education Center, the small organic farming school from which Stonyfield was spawned. Previously, in addition to serving as a Trustee of the farming school Gary had served as Executive Director of The New Alchemy Institute – a research and education center dedicated to organic farming, aquaculture and renewable energy.

A New Hampshire native, Gary was one of the first graduates of Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, has received six honorary doctorates and won numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership. He serves on several corporate and non-profit boards including Honest Tea, Sambazon, Peak Organic Brewing Company, Dannon Company, and Climate Counts. He is also the Chairman and co-founder of O'Naturals, a chain of natural fast food restaurants. In his spare time, he also serves as the President of the Express Soccer Club and he coaches a girls' under-15 premier travel soccer team, which keeps him humble and certain that he still has much to learn.

Blog Entries by Gary Hirshberg

UK Study Misleads Public by Ignoring Documented Health and Environmental Benefits of Organic Food

23 Comments | Posted July 31, 2009 | 08:47 AM (EST)


As Stonyfield Farm President and CE-Yo, I believe that a new study dismissing the health benefits of organics does in fact mislead an increasingly savvy public by ignoring documented health and environmental benefits of organic.

The supreme irony is that this study is getting an enormous amount of media attention...

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The Real Problem With Our Food System: A Response to Makenna Goodman

24 Comments | Posted May 14, 2009 | 11:32 AM (EST)


Nothing delights me more than talking about organic to a wide audience, but in your piece, Organic vs Conventional: Have you been robbed?, you are taking aim at the wrong target. Much like the person who frets over which china to use while the house is on fire, you...

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Do we really want to give Big Coal a Blank Check with Our Money?

Posted March 13, 2009 | 03:37 PM (EST)


We are at a crossroads in New Hampshire, where we must decide whether to invest hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars to keep an aging coal plant running to meet basic environmental safeguards, or to begin investing in clean, renewable energy sources. Today our State Legislature begins debate on...

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Finally, A Debate With Some Good Taste

Posted September 11, 2008 | 12:19 PM (EST)


In the middle of yet another hotly-contested Presidential election, we here at Stonyfield Farm thought it might be nice to add a little humor and fun to the campaign, and hold an election of our own.

Of course, some might argue that this election, where you, the American voter, gets...

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Why I Wrote My Book

Posted March 10, 2008 | 10:55 AM (EST)


While sweating through my workout at a local gym recently, something caught my eye. There, outside in the parking lot, stood a varied collection of compact cars. It struck me that just a year ago, I'd glanced out the same window at rows crammed with big SUVs. Ours is a...

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How to Recycle Less and Do More

Posted January 28, 2008 | 11:18 AM (EST)


I'm convinced that smart, hardworking people can profit from practicing what many people call the R's of effective waste management. The R's aren't new, but the order of priority is much more important than people realize. Specifically:

- Reduce or redesign (or both) by using less material and...

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The Problem With Waste

Posted January 16, 2008 | 11:37 AM (EST)


As an entrepreneur focused on infusing business with a clear environmental mission, my strategies at Stonyfield Farm for reducing or eliminating waste did not spring fully formed from my subconscious. It's been a long evolution for me, as I'm sure it is for many. My goal is to shorten your...

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No Such Place As Away

Posted January 11, 2008 | 02:52 PM (EST)


My grandfather was the hardworking son of an Eastern European immigrant, the sort of entrepreneur who built America's industrial base in the middle of the last century. He and my father owned and ran a shoe factory in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, called the Pittsfield Shoe Corporation, and it was located...

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I Don't Know What Tomorrow Holds, But I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

Posted September 26, 2007 | 08:56 AM (EST)


Over 30 years ago, as a college student, I studied the causes of climate change and advancing alpine treelines. Despite attempts by many activists to sound the alarm about global warming over the past three decades, we have not acted because we have lacked a critical renewable resource: will power....

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