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45
2 The rise of big food and
agriculture: corporate
influence in the food system
Jennifer Clapp
Introduction
Corporate concentration has become a dominant feature of the modern
industrial food system. In nearly all stages of global food supply chains, from
farm inputs, through production, trade, processing and food retail, a common
pattern is that just a handful of firms tend to dominate the market. Scholars
from across a range of disciplines in the food studies literature have noted this
trend, raising important questions about the impact of corporate influence
on food system outcomes. For example, sociologists draw our attention to
the ways in which neoliberal economic policies have institutionalized market
relationships that privilege agribusiness as part of a “corporate food regime”
(McMichael, 2013). Political scientists have focused on the multiple ways in
which corporations can exercise power in the food system to shape policy and
governance (Clapp and Fuchs, 2009). Economists are concerned about whether
concentration undermines efficiency of markets in the sector (Maisashvili et
al., 2016; Hovhannisyan et al., 2019). Lawyers focus on the application and
limits of antitrust law in the food sector (Lianos et al., 2016). Nutritionists have
raised concerns about corporate engagement in setting nutritional standards
and the health claims they make about processed foods (Nestle, 2013; Scrinis,
2016). And political economists examine debates over a range of potential
consequences – economic, political, and environmental – of consolidation in
the sector (Howard, 2016; Bonny, 2017; Clapp, 2018).
Drawing on these various literatures, this chapter attempts to provide an inter-
disciplinary assessment of corporate consolidation in the sector. It outlines
the state of corporate concentration in the global food system and examines
some of the key drivers of this trend as well as its wider implications. It makes
the case that a combination of financial incentives, technological change, and
changes in the broader regulatory environment have been important factors
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46 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
in the trend toward increased concentration in the sector in recent decades. It
also outlines how concentration has lent enormous power to the firms at the
top to shape the parameters of markets as well as the broader policy and regu-
latory context. It shows that access to and exercise of power in these realms by
the largest agri-food firms has shaped food systems in ways that tend to serve
corporate interests and has important implications for broader food system
goals such as equity, participation, sustainability, and choice.
The State of Corporate Consolidation in the Agri-food
System
Growing corporate concentration in the agri-food system has followed pat-
terns of corporate consolidation in the broader economy in recent decades.
In this period, for example, some of the biggest corporate mergers have been
in the agri-food sector as witnessed by giant deals such as the combinations
of Kraft and Heinz, Dow and Dupont, and Anheuser Busch In-Bev and SAB
Miller, each of which formed firms worth over US$100 billion (Heinrich
Böll Foundation et al., 2017). Alongside these massive deals, a series of other
mergers and acquisitions have also occurred in recent decades such that today
agri-food supply chains are quite concentrated.
In the agricultural inputs sector, recent mergers resulted in a reduction in the
number of dominant players in the sector from six to just four giant firms
(IPES-Food, 2017; Bonny, 2017). In 2015, Dow and Dupont announced a
“merger of equals” bringing together significant market share for agrochemi-
cals and seeds into a new entity “Corteva”. Shortly after the Dow and Dupont
deal was announced, Syngenta, a major Swiss agrochemical producer, was
purchased by ChemChina, which was subsequently purchased by Sinochem,
to form China’s largest chemical company. In the wake of these two deals,
Bayer purchased Monsanto, bringing together the latter’s strength in biotech
seeds with the former’s strength in agrochemicals. Meanwhile, BASF, a chem-
ical company specializing in agrochemicals that was one of the original six
dominant companies in the sector, acquired seed technology assets that Bayer
was forced to sell to enable its purchase of Monsanto to be approved. With the
global commercial seed market worth around US$39 billion annually, and the
global pesticide industry worth around US$57 billion, a consolidation in the
market among the top firms has cemented their position as dominant players.
In 2018, as the Bayer acquisition of Monsanto was being finalized, approxi-
mately 60 percent of the global seed market was held by the top four firms (IHS
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47THE RISE OF BIG FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
Markit, 2019), while around 70 percent of the global agrochemical market was
controlled by those same four firms (Statista, 2020).
Consolidation has also occurred in other parts of the agricultural input sector.
For example, while the global fertilizer market – worth over US$150 billion – is
not as concentrated as that for seeds and chemicals, the sector is quite concen-
trated within countries. In 2016, for example, the first and fourth largest global
fertilizer companies – Canadian firms Agrium and Potash Corp – merged to
create a new fertilizer giant called Nutrien, which is now the largest fertilizer
company in the world. This single firm accounts for over 60 percent of North
America’s potash production, 25 percent of its phosphate production, and
22 percent of its ammonia production (Wiggerthale, 2021). Before this most
recent merger, the top four firms – Agrium, Yara, Mosaic and Potash Corp
– accounted for around one quarter of the global market (ETC Group, 2015).
The farm equipment sector is also characterized by high levels of concen-
tration. Just four firms – Deere & Co, CNH Industries, AGCO, and Kubota
– account for around 40 percent of the US$115 billion market (Mooney, 2018).
Many of the mergers and acquisitions in the farm equipment sector in recent
years have been the purchase of data software firms by traditional equipment
makers in their bid to develop “digital farming” platforms that tap into big data
via satellites direct to tractor cabs to improve farm decision-making and enable
more precise applications of fertilizers and pesticides on the farm. Deere & Co,
for example has acquired several technology and software firms in recent years
as it seeks to be a leader in digital agriculture (Cornish, 2017).
The commodity trading sector has long been highly concentrated, with the
dominance of the ABCD firms (Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill,
and Louis Dreyfus Commodities) in the grain trade. Because Cargill and
Dreyfus are privately owned firms, it is difficult to obtain reliable statistics
on the market share of these firms, although some estimates have indicated
that together these four firms control around 70 percent or more of the
global grain trade (Murphy et al., 2012). This level of concentration may be
weakening, however, as several Asian commodity trading firms, including
the Singapore-based Wilmar and the Chinese state trading firm COFCO, are
increasingly challenging the power of the ABCD firms, particularly in Asia
and in Latin American commodity trading (Clapp, 2015). Concentration is
also high in the trade of other food commodities. For example, three firms –
Cargill, ADM and Barry Callebaut – control 60 percent of the world’s cocoa
grinding business (Terazono, 2014). Just five firms control 75 percent of the
world’s banana trade, and seven firms control 85 percent of the world’s tea
trade (Fairtrade International, 2013).
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48 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
The food processing sector, often referred to as Big Food, is not as concen-
trated as the raw commodities trade, but the largest companies are globally rec-
ognized with known brands, giving them influence in the sector, particularly
with respect to setting trends. The top 10 food and beverage companies, for
example, account for around 40 percent of the sales of the top 100 firms in the
sector. Those same 10 firms are each bringing in over US$35 billion per year
in revenues (IPES-Food, 2017). Certain subsectors are especially concentrated,
as in the case of the meat sector, particularly at the national level. In the US,
for example, just four firms – Tyson, Cargill, Swift and Co., and National Beef
Packing Co – control 85 percent of the market for beef processing (USDA,
2020). Consolidation in the processed foods sector has continued at a fairly
steady pace in the past decade. As noted above, in 2015 Kraft and Heinz
combined to create a firm worth over US$100 billion (Fontanella-Khan et al.,
2015a), while the 2016 merger between Anheuser Busch InBev and SAB Miller
resulted in a firm worth over US$275 billion with a nearly one third share of
the global beer market (Fontanella Khan et al., 2015b). These are just some
of the largest of the recent mergers. Firms in the sector are constantly buying
smaller rivals and engaging in deals to buy or sell different units or specific
products.
The global grocery retail market, worth around US$7.5 trillion, is also con-
centrated. Globally, the top four retail firms are Walmart, Schwartz Group,
Kroger, and Aldi, while Costco, Carrefour, and Tesco are also major players.
At the international level, the top 10 grocery retailers accounted for nearly
30 percent of the global food retail market in 2014 (IPES-Food, 2017).
Concentration in the grocery retail sector is higher at the domestic level. In
the USA, for example, the top four grocery retailers account for around 40
percent of the market (IPES-Food, 2017). In Canada, the five largest grocery
chains command over 80 percent of the food retail market (CBAN, 2020). And
in Australia, just two firms – Coles Group and the Woolworths Group – each
control around 30 percent of the Aus$90 billion food retail market (Statista,
2021). Mergers and acquisitions are common in the food retail sector. In 2017,
Amazon, the world’s largest online retail corporation, acquired Wholefoods
in a deal that foreshadowed major changes in the retail market toward online
sales (Nicolaou et al., 2017). Other deals have been proposed, but have fallen
through – such as a proposed merger between Asda and Sainsburys in the
UK, and the attempt by Canada’s convenience store chain Couche-Tard to
purchase France’s Carrefour – due to concerns about excessive market concen-
tration (Eley and Massoudi, 2019; Abboud, 2021).
As this brief review shows, the growing dominance of the key firms is in
some cases a result of horizontal consolidation – where firms that normally
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49THE RISE OF BIG FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
compete with one another at the same stage of supply chains join up forces to
command a greater share of that market. But it is also in some cases a result
of vertical integration – where firms at different stages of supply chains merge
to control adjacent or related markets. Both types of consolidation matter for
food systems. In the case of the former, greater concentration of market shares
in fewer players can lead to uncompetitive outcomes that can affect prices
and consumer choice. In the case of the latter, firms can lock in consumers
and farmers by tying different products together in ways that increase market
shares for both.
Forces Encouraging Consolidation in this Food System
What explains the trend toward corporate concentration in the food system,
especially heightened consolidation among some of the biggest agri-food
sector players in the past decade? Historically, consolidation and concentra-
tion in the agri-food sector has been the product of several different forces,
some relating to the broader economic context, and some specific to the sector
and subsector in which consolidation has been a feature. One can group these
forces into three main categories: financial incentives; technological change;
and the increasingly relaxed regulatory environment. All three of these types of
forces have been at play in the process of food system concentration, especially
in recent decades, although in some subsectors, some of these forces have been
more prominent than others, depending on the context and specifics of the
industry.
Financial Incentives
Financial factors are typically one of the forces leading to greater consolida-
tion in the global economy more generally, and they certainly matter in the
agri-food sector. Firms facing a decline in sales or a drop in profitability may
be targets of acquisitions by other firms with more resources that are seeking
to increase their market share or expand their product offerings by acquir-
ing rivals. Several firms facing economic hardship may seek to merge their
activities to reduce costs, which can be achieved through the elimination of
duplicating activities.
As the global economy has become more “financialized” in recent decades –
that is, the rise in importance of financial actors, institutions and motives in the
economy more broadly – these financial incentives have played an important
role in encouraging corporate consolidation, including in the agri-food sector
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50 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
(Burch and Lawrence, 2013; Clapp and Isakson, 2018). Financialization has
resulted in a higher prioritization of shareholder value in corporate decision
making, such that firms seek to maximize returns to investors over other goals
and functions of the firm. The reason for this prioritization is clear – unless
they do so, financial investors will move on to other companies in which to
invest, which could result in a negative spiral for the firm. Thus, there are
strong incentives for firms to ensure high profitability and the engagement in
mergers and acquisitions is one strategy to bolster returns.
Financial incentives appear to have played a strong role in the consolidation in
the agricultural input company mergers that took place after 2015. After 2013,
for example, agricultural input firms – including the Big Six seed and chemical
firms as well as the fertilizer firms – began to experience weak performance
compared to other firms on the S&P 500 stock market index. This was a change
from the high profits they earned during the global food crisis in the 2008 to
2012 period that was driven by higher and more volatile commodity prices,
which drove up demand for agricultural inputs as farmers globally sought to
increase production in the face of higher prices. The seed and chemical firms,
for example, benefited from increased demand in Latin America for their
products in the immediate wake of the food crisis. But after 2013, agricultural
commodity prices fell, weakening economic growth in the Latin American
agricultural economies, dampening profitability for the input companies as
farmers scaled back their demand for inputs (Clapp, 2018).
In this context, shareholders in the Big Six firms put pressure on manage-
ment of these firms to increase returns. In the case of the Dow and DuPont
merger, the first of the three big mergers to take place after 2015, “activist”
investors – that is, large investors who hold a significant stake in the firm and
can influence management decisions as a result – pushed for restructuring of
both Dow and DuPont. In this case, separate large hedge fund investors in each
firm made clear their desire for restructuring to improve the firms’ financial
performance. Nelson Peltz and his Trian hedge fund pushed on the DuPont
side, while Daniel Loeb’s Third Point hedge fund pushed on the Dow side. The
merger of Dow and DuPont occurred shortly after (Crooks, 2015).
Financial factors and the drive for shareholder value also loomed large in the
merger of Kraft and Heinz in 2015. To understand this merger, it is impor-
tant to go back to 2013, when billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire
Hathaway teamed up with private equity firm 3G Capital – backed by Jorge
Paulo Lemann, a billionaire investor from Brazil – to purchase Heinz, the
US-based processed food firm. Heinz had already been pushed by Nelson
Peltz to slash costs after he joined the board in 2006, to make up for flagging
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51THE RISE OF BIG FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
sales as consumers increasingly sought healthier food options. The deal made
Heinz a private company and resulted in a huge payout to shareholders. 3G
Capital, focused on cutting costs to improve profits, then orchestrated the
subsequent merger of Kraft and Heinz into a new publicly traded firm that
consistently ranks in the top ten food and beverage companies in the world.
As Warren Buffett noted upon the closing of the deal “This is my kind of
transaction, uniting two world-class organizations and delivering shareholder
value” (quoted in Fontanella Khan and Massoudi, 2015a). In 2017, Kraft
Heinz attempted to purchase Unilever for US$143 billion in what would have
been the second largest takeover in history, but the acquisition ultimately
fell through after Unilever’s chief executive pushed back (Massoudi and
Fontanella-Khan, 2017).
Agri-food sector financialization has also influenced patterns of corporate
ownership, which also appears to be contributing to consolidation and con-
centration in the sector. The agri-food sector has seen a rise in “common
ownership” – where large institutional shareholders, such as asset manage-
ment firms, hold significant shares across a range of firms within the same
sector. This type of ownership pattern has become prominent across a number
of industries in recent years, with the top asset management companies
BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, for example, collectively owning some
15 to 30 percent of most American companies (Schmalz, 2018). At least one
study of this type of ownership pattern has found that merger and acquisition
events are more likely to occur in commonly owned firms (Brooks et al., 2018).
Most of the large corporations that dominate agri-food supply chains have
a significant proportion of their shares owned by the five largest asset manage-
ment companies. The recent mergers in the seed and agrochemical sector, for
example, occurred in a context where over 30 percent of DuPont shares, over
20 percent of Monsanto and Dow shares, and over 15 percent of Bayer shares
were owned by the same five large asset management firms (Clapp, 2019).
Common ownership patterns are also prominent in the processed foods sector.
A further financial dimension of the recent mergers is simply low interest rates
that have been prevalent since the 2008 financial crisis. Most governments
sought to stimulate their economies in the wake of the financial crash by low-
ering interest rates in a bid to encourage borrowing as a means to kick-start
their economies. Over a decade of rates near zero has encouraged many
firms to engage in corporate tie-ups because it has been incredibly cheap for
them to borrow the funds to do so. Investment banks have also been active
in encouraging the financing of such deals which further increases their own
profitability (Turner, 2016). A number of mergers in the agri-food sector have
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52 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
been financed by debt in this way, including Bayer’s purchase of Monsanto,
which saw its debt increase by a factor of four as a result of the deal.
Technological Change and Complementarities
Consolidation in the agri-food sector has also been encouraged in some cases
by technological change and complementarities between different types of
firms or firms in the same sector but which specialize in different activities.
These types of mergers can be considered either “vertical” or “horizontal”
depending on the specifics of the case, but both types of mergers bring together
different functionalities in ways that can reinforce market dominance of the
resulting firms in new ways.
The recent mergers in the agricultural seed and chemical sector, for example,
were in part the latest iteration of consolidation based on technological change
and tighter product complementarity. Consolidation in the seed sector dates
back a century to the development of hybrid seed technologies. While hybrids
brought higher yields, they needed to be repurchased on a regular basis because
those higher yields would not be maintained over time if farmers saved and
reused seeds from previous harvests. This technological change encouraged
the rise of a private sector seed industry (Fernandez-Cornejo, 2004; Howard,
2016). Since that time, consolidation has continued apace in the sector, due to
the rise of new agricultural biotechnologies and the ways in which those new
technologies articulated seeds more closely with chemical herbicides. When
these new biotechnologies first emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, this tech-
nological change sparked a wave of consolidation in the sector that brought
agrochemical firms and seed firms together to form new agricultural input
companies (Fuglie et al., 2012).
The most recent round of consolidation in the agricultural seed and chemical
sector has resulted in a tightening of technological complementarity among
the dominant firms. Prior to the most recent mergers, some of the Big Six firms
were focused more on agrochemicals while others were more focused on seeds.
For example, DuPont had significant investment in the seed business since its
acquisition of seed company Pioneer in 1999, while Dow focused mainly on
agrochemicals. Similarly, Monsanto, although it started out as a major chemi-
cal firm that first commercialized the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup in
the 1970s, by the 2000s had become a major producer of genetically modified
seeds. Bayer, meanwhile, although it had developed some expertise in seeds
since the 1990s, was focused more on agrochemicals prior to its purchase of
Monsanto. The recent mergers have thus resulted in a more even distribution
of seed and chemical sales across the now four dominant firms (Clapp, 2018).
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53THE RISE OF BIG FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
These mergers were also, in part, an attempt by some of the large firms to
acquire rivals that had been acquiring other, smaller firms that had expertise
in digital technologies – the latest technological change that is reshaping the
agri-food system (Rotz et al., 2019). Monsanto, for example, had previously
purchased Climate Corp, a digital agriculture firm, that Bayer was interested
in acquiring to build up its own expertise in digital farming (Clapp and
Ruder, 2020). Within the new Bayer, the digital service is now called “Climate
Fieldview” and is the leading farm software program.
Other nodes in food systems have also teamed up with software firms,
including farm equipment firm Deere & Co., which recently acquired several
digital farming software firms (Cornish, 2017). The rationale behind these
acquisitions is that farm equipment firms are increasingly outfitting tractors
with satellite-connected equipment to enable big data to feed into on farm
decision-making. In this case, big data can inform settings on variable spray
equipment to refine the quantity of herbicides and pesticides that are used on
any particular field. Deere’s equipment now links directly with Bayer’s Climate
Fieldview software.
In the processed foods sector, technological change is also reshaping firms and
their markets. The development of newer plant-based meat and dairy prod-
ucts, for example, has drawn attention to some of the biggest market players.
Danone, one of the world’s leading dairy firms, acquired White Wave Foods,
makers of Silk plant-based milks, in 2016. More recently, large meat firms, like
Tyson and Cargill have invested in plant-based alternative meat and cell-based
synthetic meat start-up firms, which, if successful, could expand their already
commanding market share in the protein sector (Terazono, 2020; see also
Chapter 8, this volume). Finally, Amazon’s acquisition of Wholefoods brought
together two firms with different expertise – online retail and food – as the
former was interested in developing an online grocery shopping business
(Kestenbaum, 2018).
A Changing Regulatory Environment
While not necessarily intentional on the part of states, regulatory change
has also had an impact on corporate concentration in the agri-food sector.
Government regulations regarding intellectual property rights and competi-
tion policy, for example, have shaped markets in ways that, at least in recent
decades, have encouraged corporate consolidation in the sector.
The adoption of plant-breeders rights in the 1960s and 1970s in the US as
well as international plant breeders’ rights via the Union for the Protection
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54 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) in the 1970s encouraged consolidation
in the industry as firms sought to invest more in research and development
(R&D) because they would be guaranteed profits on new varieties for a period
of 20‒25 years (Howard, 2016; Fernandez-Cornejo and Just, 2007). These new
regulations sparked the purchase of smaller, independent seed companies
by larger firms throughout the 1970s and 1980s (Fernandez-Cornejo, 2004).
When states began to pass legislation allowing for intellectual property rights
and in some cases patents on genetically engineered micro-organisms as well
as plant varieties derived from biotechnology in the 1980s and 1990s, firms
were further incentivized to ramp up R&D in the sector, sparking a further
wave of consolidation not just between seed companies, but also between seed
and agrochemical firms, as noted above. The consolidation in this instance
enabled these firms to pay for increasingly expensive R&D into agricultural
biotechnology, something that they were incentivized to do by the fact that
patent protection would enable them to recoup the higher costs to bring those
products to market. It was this wave of mergers that reduced a large field of
agricultural seed and chemical companies that operated in the 1970s and 1980s
to just six dominant firms by 2009 (Fuglie et al., 2011).
The tendencies toward concentration encouraged by technological change
and the shifts in the financial context could, in theory, be kept in check by
robust competition law and policy that would disallow mergers that were
likely to encourage anti-competitive behaviour. But at the same time that tech-
nological and financial changes were encouraging anti-competitive practices
and consolidation among firms, the political interpretation and application
of competition law shifted in important ways that effectively loosened the
controls on the very kinds of market concentration we are witnessing today
(Wu, 2018; Khan, 2017). This shift began to take place, first in the USA, and
then globally, over the course of the 1970s to 1990s, coinciding with the rise of
neoliberal economic policies that sought to reduce government intervention
and oversight of the market.
The result of this shift in the interpretation of competition law was that pro-
posed mergers and growing market control were reviewed not with an eye to
whether they stifled competition by reshaping market structures. Rather, they
were reviewed on the much narrower basis of whether they led to increased
consumer prices or led to market inefficiencies (Ergen and Kohl, 2019).
Interpreted through this more outcome-focused lens that zeroed-in on specific
price and efficiency metrics, mergers that previously would likely have been
prevented because they would have allowed dominant firms to amass signifi-
cant market share (for example through horizontal mergers that result in fewer
players controlling the bulk of the market), or to dominate in multiple areas
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55THE RISE OF BIG FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
along supply chains in ways that stifled competition and locked in customers
(as would be the case with vertical mergers), were deemed to be permissible
if they led to lower consumer prices or an increase in market efficiencies
(Kwoka, 2017). This more economistic and effects-based approach to evaluat-
ing mergers is reflected in the various overhauls of the US merger guidelines
since the 1980s, rules which were mirrored in other countries. In the following
decades, not surprisingly, there were fewer challenges to mergers, especially
vertical tie-ups (Khan, 2017).
Recent mergers in the agri-food sector have, as a result, faced relatively little
push-back from regulatory authorities. For example, the Kraft and Heinz
merger, which created one of the largest firms in North America, was easily
approved in the US and Canada. The statement on the merger from the Canada
Competition Bureau noted that its assessment found that the two firms had
enough different products that they were not undercutting competition, and
thus were unlikely to lead to price increases (Government of Canada, 2015).
Similarly, the combination of Agrium and Potash Corp, two Canadian-based
fertilizer giants, also went uncontested by competition authorities. Again, reg-
ulators deemed that their operations were sufficiently different – with Potash
Corp dominant on potash mining, and Agrium focusing on other fertilizer
ingredients as well as retail operations – that the combination was unlikely
to lead to higher prices. In both cases, the firms that were created are large,
powerful and dominate in key markets. Regulators did require some asset sales
in the mergers between Dow and DuPont and Bayer and Monsanto, although
these were different in different countries, depending on the local market
specifics. All three mega-mergers in the seeds and chemicals sector were even-
tually allowed to proceed even though they resulted in increased market share
for the remaining four dominant firms.
Why Corporate Consolidation in Food Systems Matters
Just because an agri-food firm is large does not necessarily mean that it will
pursue strategies that have a negative impact on food systems. However, when
specific markets are dominated by just a handful of firms, there are concerns
that those firms have access to different kinds of power that could be used
to advance their own interests at the expense of society more broadly. The
food system has often been likened to an hourglass, with many producers on
one end, and many consumers on the other end, and few corporations in the
chokepoint in the middle. When the chokepoint becomes more constrained,
the firms that dominate that space are able to gain more power to control how
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56 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
food items pass through the middle: how commodities are grown, at what
price they are bought and sold, how they are processed, and, ultimately, how
they are retailed. Large powerful firms in the sector have the capacity to shape
both the parameters of markets and the broader policy context in which they
operate.
Shaping Market Parameters
Most governments have competition policies that seek to ensure fair market
competition, which has implications for equity and innovation. Regulators
typically weigh the cost of market concentration against any efficiencies that
may arise from economies of scale and scope, as well as innovation. If proposed
mergers or other forms of concentration in markets result in corporate dom-
inance that will stifle competition and raise prices, then the effects are most
likely to be assessed as negative. But if they result in more efficient markets
resulting from economies of scale, even if there are fewer suppliers in the
market, then they might be viewed more positively by regulators.
Different metrics are used to calculate concentration and its likely impact on
markets, primarily the concentration ratio of the top four firms (CR4) and the
Herfindal Hirschman Index (HHI) (Howard, 2016). The CR4 measures the
market share of the top four firms within a given market. A CR4 rating under
40 percent is widely considered to be competitive; markets with a CR4 rating in
the 40‒60 percent range are considered to be moderately concentrated; while
markets with a CR4 over 60 percent are regarded as highly concentrated. The
HHI measures market concentration by adding the square of the market share
of each firm participating in the market for a particular product. As it is more
difficult to measure HHI because the market share of all firms must be known
in a given market, which is especially difficult to ascertain in a global context,
most analysts concerned with the market dominance of transnational firms in
the food sector focus on the CR4 even though it is less precise than the HHI.
The recent mergers in the agricultural seeds and chemical sector are a good
illustration of how consolidation can affect market concentration as measured
by the CR4. Before these mergers, the global CR4 in 2009 was 54 percent for
seeds and 53 percent for agrochemicals, figures that were already markedly
higher than the 1994 figures of 21 percent and 29 percent, respectively (Fuglie
et al., 2011). In other words, both sectors were already near the threshold of
what most economists consider as a highly concentrated market prior to the
most recent mergers. This latest round of mergers has now led to CR4 ratios of
around 70 percent for the global pesticides market and around 60 percent for
the global seed market (Statista, 2020; IHS Markit, 2019).
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57THE RISE OF BIG FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
Dominant firms in concentrated markets have more capacity to shape those
markets in ways that may be good for their own bottom line, but which may
impose costs on others. As noted above, a key concern is whether concentra-
tion can lead to higher prices. In some markets, such as seeds, most pricing
data is not publicly available, making assessment especially difficult. Some
studies, however, have found that concentration is associated with higher
prices for genetically modified seeds, especially where the market is particu-
larly concentrated (Shi et al., 2010; Torshizi and Clapp, 2021). If farmers are in
fact paying high prices for inputs due to concentration, these costs can affect
equity because they are either reflected in lower returns for farmers, or poten-
tially passed on to consumers in the form of higher food prices.
Concentrated firms can also shape the prices paid to suppliers, which can exac-
erbate inequities in the food system. When certain food trading, processing
and retail firms dominate markets, they can set the terms of purchase from
farmers, which can mean lower prices paid to farmers for their goods because
there are few other options available to them. This kind of power is prevalent in
markets for tropical commodities where large transnational buyers have bar-
gaining leverage over multiple small-scale producers in developing countries
(de Schutter, 2010). It is also evident in the meat sector in countries where the
industry is highly concentrated, as is the case in the US. Most chickens raised in
the US, for example, are grown under contract farming arrangements, where
farmers must follow strict procedures as stipulated by the large meat packing
firms. These farmers are not easily able to shop around for different buyers,
because the market is dominated by just a few firms in most regions (Kelloway
and Miller, 2019). Similar dynamics of buyer leverage occur in other parts of
the meatpacking as well as the dairy sectors in the US.
Labour conditions are also affected in subsectors of the food system where just
a few large firms dominate. Buyer power often pressures farmers and produc-
ers to cut costs where they can, which can lead to the use of child labour and
other forms of modern slavery like work conditions, including on plantations
and also for seasonal and migrant workers (LeBaron, 2020). Large food corpo-
rations also directly shape working conditions for other food system workers
in their bid to cut costs. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic shone a bright
light on working conditions and poor pay faced by meat packers and workers
in food production plants (Klassen and Murphy, 2020).
Corporate power additionally shapes the food system in terms of the products
made available to both farmers and consumers. On the farmer side, corpo-
rate concentration in the agricultural input sector has narrowed innovation
pathways such that agricultural biotechnology and associated herbicides have
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58 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
become the dominant technologies for key crops such as maize and soy. As
a result, the glyphosate-based herbicides have become widely applied globally,
and while the risks of this chemical in terms of weed resistance and possible
health effects are becoming more apparent, the input companies have not
invested in alternative weed control technologies because doing so was less
profitable than relying on glyphosate (Clapp, 2021).
The problem of concentration also affects consumer choice because it is the
large firms that determine what ends up on grocery store shelves. While it
may appear that there are endless varieties of products available for purchase,
many of these products are similar due to the fact that different brands are
often owned by the same food processing conglomerates, and it is primarily
the packaging that is different (Kelloway and Miller, 2019). Firms often market
foods based on nutritional or health claims (Scrinis, 2016), also appearing to
give choice. But while there may be many differentiated types of breakfast
cereal on grocery store shelves, for example, just three firms – Kellogg, General
Mills and Post Holdings – command 79 percent of the breakfast cereal market
in the USA (Hyslop, 2017). Similarly, the large food retailers typically own
multiple grocery chains within concentrated domestic markets, giving the false
appearance of choice to consumers.
Shaping Policy and Governance
The dominance of large, concentrated firms across multiple subsectors of the
food system tends to lend those actors power to shape policy and governance
that matters for their own business survival, and which also has broader impli-
cations for equity and representation within food systems (Clapp and Fuchs,
2009; McKeon, 2015). There are multiple ways in which powerful firms in the
food system can influence policy, including both direct and indirect means.
When fewer firms dominate in a market, they are more able to coordinate their
lobbying activities, and face less competition with other firms to gain access to
government policymakers (Khan and Vaheesan, 2017). Lobbying by large cor-
porate players is widespread across the entire agri-food sector; both direct lob-
bying by consultants hired directly by the firms themselves, as well as lobbying
through industry associations in which the firms are members (Clapp, 2020).
The sums firms spend to shape policy this way can be huge. For example, in
2019, the year US regulators reviewed whether to register glyphosate-based
herbicides, Bayer AG – which specializes in seeds designed to work with
glyphosate after its purchase of Monsanto – spent US$9 million lobbying the
US government (US Senate, 2021). According to disclosure forms submitted
by the firm, the leading topics on which it lobbied policymakers included
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59THE RISE OF BIG FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
pesticide registration, GM labelling, and biotech innovation. The other firms
that dominate the input sector – Corteva, BASF, ChemChina – also each spent
between US$1.3 million and US$1.6 million lobbying that year (ibid.).
Actors promoting the specific interests of agri-food firms often end up working
as government regulators through what is termed the “revolving door” between
business and government. There are numerous cases where governments have
appointed former corporate employees and lobbyists into regulatory positions,
who then often cycle back into business. An example of this is Barbara Gallini,
a former lobbyist for the UK Food and Drink Federation – that represents
firms such as Coca-Cola, Kellogg, and Unilever – who was appointed in 2016
as Head of Communications and External Relations at the European Food
Safety Authority (Clapp, 2020). Large agri-food firms also give liberally to
election campaigns to support candidates who will be sympathetic to their
interests (Center for Responsive Politics, 2021). It is hard to know for sure the
extent to which such lobby campaigns, the revolving door, and political spon-
sorship result in the outcomes firms are aiming for, but one can say that the
practice privileges the voice of industry while doing little to open up space for
more open and democratic participation in the design of food systems.
Corporate actors can also influence food system governance through their
involvement in multi-stakeholder supply chain standards-setting initiatives.
While governments have long set standards for food safety, corporate actors
are increasingly establishing voluntary private standards – sometimes also
involving other stakeholders such as NGOs – that govern other aspects of food
supply chains, including environmental and labour standards. For example,
the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is an initiative dominated
by large corporate players involved in palm oil trade, including the ABCD
grain trading firms (Grabs and Carodenuto, 2021). Other commodity focused
certification initiatives include the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS),
Bonsucro (sugar) and the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (e.g. Buckley
et al., 2019; Fortin and Richardson, 2013).
Food retail companies also often require standards to be met for certain prod-
ucts, such as seafood. Walmart and Tesco, for example, have requirements
in place for the seafood they sell to be certified by some sort of sustainability
standards, such as those of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). While
such standards initiatives seek to assure consumers that the products they
purchase are sustainable, some analysts have pointed out that the traders and
retailers that require such certifications often download the cost of compliance
onto small-scale producers (Fuchs and Kalfagianni, 2010) while others have
noted how these initiatives suffer from structural flaws that make them weak in
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60 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
practice (LeBaron, 2020). Critics, for example, argue that palm oil governance
schemes have done little to reduce deforestation, biodiversity loss, and carbon
emissions in the largest palm oil producing regions (Dauvergne, 2018).
A less direct way that corporate giants shape food systems policy and govern-
ance is via their “discursive power”: that is, their attempts to shape discourses
and narratives about their products and their corporate image more broadly.
Discursive strategies are often pursued through public relations campaigns
carried out through everyday advertising, strategic placement of opinion arti-
cles in newspapers and magazines, and the use of websites and social media to
get their message out. Corteva, for example, recently sponsored a series of doc-
umentaries, entitled “Follow the Food”, on the future of agriculture that puts
the kinds of high-tech products in which the firm specializes in a positive light
(BBC, 2021). Large corporations also influence public discourse by sponsoring
scientific studies that relate to food products or production inputs in a bid to
direct the kinds of the research questions that get asked, often in ways that are
more flattering to the firms’ products (Nestle, 2013). This kind of corporate
engagement in academic research projects raises concerns about conflicts of
interest, which are not always divulged in resulting publications (Fabbri et al.,
2018; Rowe et al., 2009).
Finally, dominant agri-food firms can influence policy and governance simply
because they are large and dominant – meaning that governments often hold
back on imposing regulations for fear that those firms might take flight and
relocate to other jurisdictions and take their investment and jobs with them
– either within countries or between countries. This capacity to threaten
flight gives large firms a kind of “structural power” to influence the regulatory
context (Fuchs, 2007; Clapp and Fuchs, 2009). A recent example of the attempt
to wield this kind of influence, which is often difficult to document, occurred
when the CEOs of Bayer and Monsanto met privately with Donald Trump
just before he took office to promise the creation of 3000 new jobs in the US if
their proposed merger would be approved (Sink and Parker, 2017). Although
this was not a direct threat to leave if the merger was not approved, it was clear
that there was a “carrot” of new jobs being dangled in front of the incoming
administration as a reward for approving the merger.
Conclusion
This chapter has provided a sketch of the trend toward corporate concentra-
tion in the dominant industrial food system, which has affected all stages of
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61THE RISE OF BIG FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
global supply chains from agricultural inputs through commodity trade, food
processing, and food retail, albeit to varying degrees. This trend toward more
concentrated markets has become more pronounced in recent decades, to the
extent that in some subsectors, such as seeds and agrochemicals, just a handful
of firms dominate the market. Several interacting forces have contributed to
growing consolidation in the sector. Financial factors have been prominent
and have become more pronounced in recent decades with the rise of the
financialization of the global economy, which has had an especially profound
influence on the food system. Technological change has also played a role in
firms joining up in the sector, especially with the rise of agricultural biotech-
nology and digital transformation of the global economy. And the broader
regulatory context has also been important, especially its role in establishing
intellectual property rights for innovators of agricultural biotechnology as
well as changes in the interpretation and application of antitrust laws that
have become increasingly focused on narrow price and efficiency metrics over
broader questions of market structure and corporate influence.
The firms that tower over the agri-food system have been key players in
a reconfiguration of the global industrial food system toward globalized
agri-food supply chains that articulate with one another in ways that reinforce
the power of those firms. As they have become more concentrated, firms that
dominate in the sector have increasingly been able to exercise different kinds
of power to shape the parameters of markets as well as the broader regulatory
context. This means that they have the capacity to influence not only prices in
the sector – both the prices at which they sell their products as well as the prices
at which they buy from food producers – but also working conditions and
compensation for food system workers as well as consumer choice. They also
have the capacity to influence regulatory decisions via lobbying, the revolving
door, industry standards-setting, and the shaping of public discourse about
the products which they sell. All of these ways in which corporate actors shape
food systems matter because they affect broader goals society has set for food
systems, including equity, sustainability, health, and democratic participation
and governance.
The future agenda for research on corporate concentration in the food system
is enormous. This chapter could only provide an outline of the many ways in
which corporations become more concentrated and the mechanisms by which
they can influence food system outcomes. Detailed work is needed at each of
the points along supply chains where these forces are playing out. As the trend
toward concentration continues, it is important to continue to track ongoing
consolidation both within and between subsectors within the food system as
well as the ways in which food system consolidation interfaces with financiali-
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62 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR FOOD SYSTEMS
zation, technological change, and the broader regulatory context. Finally, there
is a need for detailed studies – both disciplinary and interdisciplinary – linking
these processes to outcomes in the food system, using a variety of methods that
can give both a qualitative and quantitative picture of the broader implications
of these processes which can inform policymaking going forward.
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