Global Food Value Chains and Competition Law

A comprehensive overview of the law required to regulate global food value chains and make them more accountable to society.

Ioannis Lianos (Edited by), Alexey Ivanov (Edited by), Dennis Davis (Edited by)

9781108429498, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 May 2022

400 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 4 cm, 1.08 kg

'To stress the importance of this collective book, I would like to use the words of President John F. Kennedy who, in his Remarks at the Opening Session of the World Food Congress (June 4, 1963), paraphrased the idea of another President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, who '… at the launching of the first World Food Congress, declared that freedom from want and freedom from fear go hand in hand, and that is true today'. The relevance of food and its value chains, not merely at a national level but at a global one, is in the public eyes and this relevance is increasing year by year. Therefore, it is thanks to practical and technical works, such as Global Food Value Chains and Competition Law, that we can clearly understand the actual and future trends of a sector that have the utmost importance on the life of each single living being.' Ettore Maria Lombardi, Professor of Private Law, University of Florence

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Intellectual property law [LNR], Competition law / Antitrust law [LNCH], Mergers & acquisitions law [LNCD1], International economic & trade law [LBBM], International economics [KCL], Food & society [JFCV]