ANDREY KASHEVAROV: TRANSFORMATION OF THE FOOD INDUSTRY REQUIRES AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE

The international food markets is shifting, its structure is changing, inner changes often lead to a considerably higher market concentration

On 17 September 2019, the VI BRICS Competition Conference included a session about competition on BRICS food markets.

As pointed out by Andrey Kashevarov, it is expected that food demand will increase considerably all over the world by 2050. The necessary food production growth is impossible without several measures, including efficient public competition policy as breaching competition rules of food markets is crucial not only for performance of economies but also for national security of any state.

In his view, digitalization in the agrarian sector brings new technologies and solutions: accelerated selection with use of digital platforms and big data.

“These processes require an adequate response and BRICS Working Group on food products has become a platform for development consistent BRICS approaches to antimonopoly regulation of food markets in globalization”, emphasized Deputy Head of FAS.

Competition authorities collaborate in the form of joint studies and investigations of cross-border antimonopoly violations and merger consideration, and exchange experiences of BRICS countries in order to suppress antimonopoly practices on food markets.

According to Andrey Kashevarov, in view of the current market agenda, FAS finds it essential to discuss new approaches to control mergers on dynamically developing innovative markets and review antimonopoly regulation to strengthen the farmers’ bargaining power within BRICS. Other important items include countering the expanding practices of using intellectual property as a tool to monopolize particular segments of the food market, including patent protection and licensing agreements.

"In terms of competition, the environment on food markets is rather deteriorating – we observe concentration processes at all levels of global food chains”, explained Director of BRICS Antimonopoly Centre and the Institute of Law and Development, Higher School of Economics – Skolkovo, Alexei Ivanov. “In our report on food markets, presented at the last BRICS Competition Conference in Brazil in 2017 we focused primarily on the markets of seeds, agro-chemistry and digital farming. Now we are also watching carefully global markets of food trade. Historically, concentration in agro-trading is very high – several international companies dominate the market. Now these traders conclude agreements on developing digital platforms for global trading in the agro-sphere. It leads to even higher economic concentration and reinforcing their power. The antimonopoly impact is very limited due to the global nature of the process. The key jurisdictions like the USA and the EU do not pay much attention to such issues as they harm mostly consumers in developing countries, particularly, in Russia. In this context, cooperation between BRICS antimonopoly authorities to protect competition on global food markets is becoming especially important. Hopefully, BRICS antimonopoly authorities will be able to reach new horizons of collaboration also on global trading in the food sector”.