Who Will Control Agricultural Inputs, 2013?

Putting the Cartel before the Horse... and Farm, Seeds, Soil, Peasants, etc.

Grupo ETC

22/06/2014

Opinión

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In this Communiqué, ETC Group identifies the major corporate players that control industrial farm inputs. Together with our companion poster, Who will feed us? The industrial food chain or the peasant food web?, ETC Group aims to de-construct the myths surrounding the effectiveness of the industrial food system.

Table of contents

Introduction: 3 Messages

Seeds

Commercial Seeds

Pesticides and Fertilizers

Animal pharma

Livestock Genetics

Aquaculture Genetics Industry

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

Introduction: 3 Messages

ETC Group has been monitoring the power and global reach of agro-industrial corporations for several decades – including the increasingly consolidated control of agricultural inputs for the industrial food chain: proprietary seeds and livestock genetics, chemical pesticides and fertilizers and animal pharmaceuticals.

Collectively, these inputs are the chemical and biological engines that drive industrial agriculture. This update documents the continuing concentration (surprise, surprise), but it also brings us to three conclusions important to both peasant producers and policymakers…

1. Cartels are commonplace. Regulators have lost sight of the well-accepted economic principle that the market is neither free nor healthy whenever 4 companies control more than 50% of sales in any commercial sector. In this report, we show that the 4 firms / 50% line in the sand has been substantially surpassed by all but the complex fertilizer sector. Four firms control 58.2% of seeds; 61.9% of agrochemicals; 24.3% of fertilizers; 53.4% of animal pharmaceuticals; and, in livestock genetics, 97% of poultry and two-thirds of swine and cattle research. More disturbingly, the oligopoly paradigm has moved beyond individual sectors to the entire food system: the same six multinationals control 75% of all private sector plant breeding research; 60% of the commercial seed market and 76% of global agrochemical sales.1 Some also have links to animal pharmaceuticals. This creates a vulnerability in the world food system that we have not seen since the founding of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. It’s time to dust off national competition / anti-combines policies and to consider international measures to defend global food security.

2. The “invisible hold” of the market is growing. For all the talk of the invisible hand of the free market, the market is evermore opaque and far from “free.” As the concentration grows, companies are more guarded with their information. Further, the investment companies that analyze markets have also become more concentrated and more proprietary (and their information is more expensive). As the “invisible hold” tightens, it is harder and harder for governments – and more so, peasants – to understand the level of food system control exercised by a handful of multinational enterprises. As a result, ETC’s data – in order to be accurate – is dependent upon 2011 figures. Be assured that corporate concentration in these sectors is not receding. Agribusiness must be legally obliged to provide full and timely data on sales and market share.

* Document in PDF

Communiqué No. 111, September 2013 - www.etcgroup.org

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/86693