Full Description
The food industry is a notoriously complex economic sector that has not received the attention it deserves within legal scholarship. Production and distribution of food is complex because of its polycentric character (as it operates at the intersection of different public policies) and its dynamic evolution and transformation in the last few decades (from technological and governance perspectives). This volume introduces the global value chain approach as a useful way to analyse competition law and applies it to the operations of food chains and the challenges of their regulation. Together, the chapters not only provide a comprehensive mapping of a vast comparative field, but also shed light on the intricacies of the various policies and legal fields in operation. The book offers a conceptual and theoretical framework for competition authorities, companies and academics, and fills a massive gap in the competition policy literature dealing with global value chains and food.
Contents
1. Global food value chains: A conceptual guide; 2. Rents, power and governance in global value chains; 3. The financialization of land and agriculture: Mechanisms, implications and responses; 4. Agriculture, End to End; 5. New forms of financing the agricultural sector in Brazil: The experience of the soybean Chain; 6. Economic concentration and the food value chain: Legal and economic perspectives; 7. The state of American competition law with respect to the food chain; 8. The Brazilian food value chain and competition policy: An overview of CADE's role - Centrality and inadequacy; 9. Competition concerns in fertilizer import-dependent countries like India and China: Analysing the agrium-potashcorp merger; 10. Russian competition policy over value chains in agricultural and food sectors; 11. The Pioneer/Pannar merger, The maize seed value chain and globalisation; 12. Power in the food value chain: Theory & metrics; 13. Efficiency and fairness: Interdependent discourses in supermarket-supplier relations; 14. China's legal regulation of the abuse of market power by large retailers; 15. Superior bargaining power in Russian contract and competition law; 16. Regulating unfair trading practices in the EU food supply chain: Between market making and market correcting; 17. Food chain certification and the social pluralism of competition law; 18. Hunger games: Connecting the right to food and competition law; 19. Agribiotech patents in the food supply chain: A U.S. perspective; 20. Mergers and product innovation: Seeds and GM crops; 21. The global grain trade: From a ferrymen oligopoly to the sustainable bridge solution.
