Food & Agriculture Competition Roundtable

Roundtable Topics

Panel 1 – Squeezed From Both Ends: Seller Market Power, Powerful Buyers, and Protecting the Producer

This panel will unpack competitive issues at the top of the supply chain. Farmers, growers, and ranchers face growing challenges in selling their products to beef, poultry, and grain processors and integrators. These markets feature high levels of concentration, powerful buyers, and allegations of market power abuse by firms that act alone or together with rivals. At the same time, producers must cope with the effects of high concentration in input markets such as fertilizer, biotechnology, and seeds. Producers thus grapple with a variety of problems: higher risks without attendant rewards, narrowing price-cost margins that squeeze incomes, and declining viability of producer operations. This panel will frame these questions and problems from a number of different perspectives, explore major issues, and identify policy options for improving the competitive landscape for food and agricultural producers.

Panel 2 – The Consumer and Food Sovereignty: Rising Concentration and Its Effects on Food Prices, Choice, and Quality

This panel will take up competitive issues at the bottom of the supply chain. Consolidation continues to move forward in critical processing, manufacturing, and retail grocery markets. Higher levels of concentration that result from consolidation have material implications for wholesale and retail consumers. These effects range from higher prices, lower quality, and loss of variety and choice. Wholesale consumers see fewer options and less diversity in purchasing food supplies while at the retail level, brand proliferation has contributed to the illusion of competition in grocery markets. This panel will explore the myriad issues faced by consumers in light of growing concentration. These range from adverse price effects, to the important non-price effects of less competition, including slower innovation, lower food quality and safety, and less variety and sustainability. Panelists will explore these issues and suggest policy priorities for improving the competitive landscape in consumer markets.

Panel 3 – Food Supply Chains: Integration, Globalization, and What it Means for Competition and Stability

This panel will examine how consolidation and concentration has spurred fundamental changes in food and agricultural supply chains and the implications of those changes on competition and the diversity and stability of the food system. Food supply chains now have national and global dimensions. Vertical integration is on the rise in key areas such as agricultural biotechnology, cattle and pork supply, and food processing and manufacturing. Horizontal and vertical integration has myriad effects, including raising the bar on entry by smaller rivals while creating incentives for “reactive” consolidation by sellers and buyers to combat growing market power of large players. This panel will ask how these developments affect competition, entry, innovation, and pricing. Panelists will focus on the role and risks of large agribusinesses in shaping policy and suggest policy priorities for addressing this emerging set of issues.

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