Food Chain Consolidation Limiting Choices

Context: Consolidation in the food chain is what the Indian farmers are worried about.

Key Drivers of Global Food Chain Consolidation:

• Convergence of technology, trading and big retail: to exert a greater influence in drawing appropriate policies at the national and international level.
• United States policy of ‘get big or get out’: has set a global trend of consolidation across the entire food chain, i.e. land, seed or livestock.
  • Land consolidation: According to the 2020 Land Report, Bill and Melinda Gates are now America’s top farmland owners with 242,000 acres.
  • Consolidations in the seed industry: through merger and acquisition is strengthened through
    • Under the Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement, many countries now bringing in policies to restrict the use of traditional seeds.
    • Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policies are encouraging the privatization of genetic resources.
    • Genetic uniformity has led to concerns over destruction from monocultures.
  • In Pesticides: Three agrochemical companies (Bayer/Monsanto, ChemChina/Syngenta and DowDupont) have a 64% share of the global pesticides market.
    • The use of pesticides has grown after the introduction of GM seed varieties.

Issues with consolidation on the food chain:

• Restricts choices and competition: The concentration of ownership leads to concentration of wealth and power (creates an illusion of widening of choices!).
  • In the food value chain, this unwieldy concentration of power decides what to produce and what to eat. (leading to a spurt in obesity and lifestyle diseases)
  • E.g. The exponential growth in junk foods, leading to a spurt in obesity and lifestyle diseases.
• Income risk for the farmers: The true cost of cheap food is not only health and environmental destruction, but also in the resulting sufferings of farmers who are denied their rightful income.