Recent Content Related to Corporate Concentration

Top 10 Agribusiness Giants

Submitted by Lucy Patterson on

Corporate concentration in food & Farming - 2026 Update
Our new research, co-published with GRAIN, provides a snapshot of the global food system, updating previous research to expose the state of concentration in six key agricultural sectors: commercial seeds, pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, farm machinery, animal pharmaceuticals and livestock genetics. 
 
The new figures confirm the intense corporate concentration of global agribusiness, leaving the food chain profoundly vulnerable to intensifying climate impacts and ripple effects of war on Iran.
 
Key findings:
    Related Issues: 
    Corporate Concentration
    Related Fora: 
    Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS
    Trade: UNCTAD, WTO

    Experts warn that Strait of Hormuz fertilizer and fuel blockage could lead to a global food crisis

    Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

    One third of synthetic fertilizers and one quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade pass through the Strait of Hormuz every day - two essential inputs for the industrial food chain.
    The escalating conflict in the Middle East is setting alarm bells ringing once again, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is already shaking global trade. Food production and prices could be next.

     

    According to experts from ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration), the commercial food model is so vulnerable that this blockage could drive up food prices, leading to a global food crisis. Researchers are therefore issuing an urgent call to strengthen local food systems based on food sovereignty and agroecology.

    Grain Traders, Greed and Oligopoly Power

    Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

    New research confirms that ag commodity traders sit at the pinnacle of the industrial food chain, influencing how, where and when a staggering volume of commercially traded food is grown, who grows it and under what conditions.

    The full report and a summary version can be downloaded below.

    Art: @andre_m_medina

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    Agricultural Commodity Traders are complex, highly diversified global firms that operate in all phases of industrial food production and trade, from origination and storage to processing, marketing, financing and investment, and risk management. 

    Related Issues: 
    Corporate Concentration
    Related Fora: 
    Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS

    Corporate Capture of the UN Summit of the Future

    Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

    A recipe for a dystopian digitalized tomorrow

    (New York, 20 September 2024) The looming environmental dangers of massive deployment of digitalization and unleashing AI are being effectively ignored by the UN Summit of the Future taking place in New York on 22-23 September 2024 [1]. Giant technology companies are using the summit to position themselves as the tech saviours who will solve the world crises, with final versions of the text concealing the stark impact of their activities on the planet’s environment.

    Growing carbon is not like growing watermelons: the seductive trap of carbon farming and digital tech

    Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

    Episode 4 of 'Who will control the food system?'
    Food Barons report cover art showing peasants resisting corporate digital giants
    Audio: 

    Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

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    In this fourth episode, Zahra Moloo talks to Camila Moreno, an independent researcher who works with social movements in Brazil and across Latin America on the social and environmental dimensions of biotechnology and agribusiness expansion.

    Disruptive digital food and ag techs invading indigenous territories in India

    Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

    Episode 3 of 'Who will control the food system?'
    Food Barons report cover art showing peasants resisting corporate digital giants
    Audio: 

    Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

    ---

    In East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India, an Adivasi farmer gave his personal data and information, including his telephone number, to a representative of the Indian government. In India, “adivasi” is a collective term used to refer to indigenous people.

    The “Immaculate Conception of Data” – and why it’s a problem

    Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

    Episode 2 of 'Who will control the food system?'
    Food Barons report cover art showing peasants resisting corporate digital giants
    Audio: 

    Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

    Big Tech jumping on the food band wagon

    Submitted by Ronnie Hall on

    Episode 1 of 'Who will control the food system?'
    Food Barons report cover art showing peasants resisting corporate digital giants
    Audio: 

    Industrial agriculture is not so much jumping on the “Food Systems Transformation” band wagon as trying to steal it!

    Don’t fall for the UN’s new Food Systems Coordination Hub hype about “Transforming Food Systems for Planetary Health”. The current corporate agenda, championed by this new “Hub” is firmly focused on hijacking the UN’s existing food systems spaces to force through yet another phase of Industrial Agriculture – promoting its technofixes as solutions to the very problems that it itself has caused, including in relation to climate change and biodiversity loss.

    Food Barons 2022

    Submitted by Rafael Ramos on

    Crisis Profiteering, Digitalization and Shifting Power
    Food Barons 2022 report - cover art
    Related Issues: 
    Seeds & Genetic Diversity
    Farmers' Rights & Food Sovereignty
    Corporate Concentration
    Related Fora: 
    Biodiversity: CBD, SBSTTA, IPBES
    Seed Treaty/ITPGRFA
    Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS

    As big oil states plan to promote energy-hungry agtech as a ’climate solution’ at COP26, it’s time to question their AIM

    Submitted by Laura Dunn on

    Banner challenging AIM for Climate on floor with La Via Campesina banners

    By ETC Group

    The USA and the United Arab Emirates both have vested interests in finding ways to justify continuing to extract and sell their vast supplies of oil. It is perhaps not coincidental then, that these two countries are planning a high-profile launch for what is likely to become a controversial climate and agtech initiative, “Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C)”, at UNFCCC’s COP26 in Glasgow in November.

    Hijacking food systems: technofix takeover at the FSS

    Submitted by Laura Dunn on

    The wrong kind of Food Systems Summit
    Communique cover showing artist's interpretation of digital agriculture

    Our latest communiqué looks at how the Food Systems Summit (FSS) planned for the fall of 2021 is not about changing food systems, but about spinning a story that props up and expands the industrial food chain at the expense of other food systems. The FSS’s proponents argue that the “food system” is broken, that population growth and climate change mean that we will not be able to feed everyone, and that only new technological developments can save us.

    Related Issues: 
    Farmers' Rights & Food Sovereignty
    International Governance
    Corporate Concentration
    Related Fora: 
    Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS

    ETC Podcast #2: The Next Agribusiness Takeover

    Submitted by Dru Oja Jay on

    Pat Mooney talks global corporate power moves

    In episode #2 of the ETC Podcast (recorded in January), founder Pat Mooney discusses ETC's communiqué, The Next Agribusiness Takeover: Multilateral Food Agencies and the moves powerful corporate actors are making to take over global food policy institutions.

    You can now subscribe to the ETC Podcast on Spotify and Google Play. 

    The Next Agribusiness Takeover: Multilateral Food Agencies

    Submitted by Dru Oja Jay on

    Stakeholders vs. Steak-eaters

    Between now and late 2021, the World Economic Forum, agri-food conglomerates, IT companies and philanthropists (led by the Gates Foundation) have teamed up to spearhead three separate initiatives which could converge and utterly transform the multilateral agricultural system.

    At stake is influence over four institutions with a combined annual budget of $11 billion and 5100 scientific/professional staff.

    Three Big Battles for Global Food Policy Looming

    Submitted by Dru Oja Jay on

    World Food Systems Summit is part of a three-pronged corporate food policy power grab
    February 12, 2020—A corporate alliance (consisting of Big Ag, the World Economic Forum, philanthro-capitalists and others) have spearheaded three separate initiatives (the Food Systems Summit, restructuring research institutions, acceleration of data collection) which threaten to converge and utterly transform the multilateral food and agriculture system. 
     

    Plate Tech-Tonics

    Submitted by Dru Oja Jay on

    Mapping Corporate Power in Big Food
    Intersecting oligopolies, big data, unprecedented control of seeds byagrochemical companies. Corporations and giant asset managementfirms are creating an earthquake in the food system, in order to establish control of machinery, livestock breeding, pharmaceuticals and other inputs to the global food system, while consolidation continues in processing and distribution as well.
     
    Related Issues: 
    Seeds & Genetic Diversity
    Farmers' Rights & Food Sovereignty
    Corporate Concentration
    Related Fora: 
    Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS

    Blocking the chain

    Submitted by Dru Oja Jay on

    Texto en español disponible!
     
    “Blocking the chain” critically assesses digital developments in the food and agricultural sector. It analyses the main actors in the digitalisation business and discusses the importance of digitalisation for small-scale farmers and workers along the industrial food chain worldwide.
     
    Related Issues: 
    Seeds & Genetic Diversity
    Farmers' Rights & Food Sovereignty
    Other technologies
    Corporate Concentration
    Related Fora: 
    Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS
    Sustainable Development: Rio+20, CSD

    Too Big to Feed: The Short Report

    Submitted by Trudi Zundel on

    Mega-mergers and the concentration of power in the agri-food sector

    What is corporate concentration, why does it matter for food security, and who are the biggest corporate players in each agrifood sector/"link" in the Industrial Food Chain? This accessible booklet (soon to be available in French and Spanish) answers these questions and more. 

    Related Issues: 
    Seeds & Genetic Diversity
    Farmers' Rights & Food Sovereignty
    Corporate Concentration
    Related Fora: 
    Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS

    NEWS RELEASE: Europe bows to Bayer-Monsanto... US may follow

    Submitted by Trudi Zundel on

    Civil society responds with call for a UN Treaty on Competition

    For immediate release: March 20, 2018

    Brussels – The European Union’s Competition Directorate appears ready to roll over and approve the controversial merger of Bayer AG (Germany) with Monsanto (USA) within the week. Across the Atlantic, the US Department of Justice is expected to welcome the EU decision and announce its own acquiescence shortly after. 

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