The separation of powers principle and antitrust both relate to power and, notably, deal with the concentration of power. However, they are usually conceptualized, analyzed, and promoted separately. Separation of powers primarily refers to branches of government or to the main functions of the state and, in this respect, to public or state power or powers, while the economic power of private or, to a lesser extent, public firms is at the core of antitrust. Though appealing, this distinction is not clear-cut. These powers interact with one another. The concentration of politico-economic power in one or a few hands also raises fundamental issues in a democracy. Currently, and in the future, special attention must be given to the fact that a few digital platforms contribute to the digital infrastructure of democracy.

Food, more than any other commodity, is surrounded by a vibrant debate concerning competing modes of production, ranging from the preferability of industrial farming as against small-scale farming, to genetically modified production as against organic production and to global production as against local production. The resulting demand for food with specific material and immaterial attributes has contributed to the rise of certification schemes along the value chain. Beyond being mere information intermediaries, such certification schemes can best be understood as ‘polycentric’ governance tools that give voice to non-economic rationalities in governing global production. Put this way, certification e.g. for sustainable food production holds a mirror up to competition law theory. In dealing with such private governance initiatives, competition law finds a pertinent terrain to conceptualize and implement its own ‘polycentric’ objective of constitutionalizing markets. In particular, competition law can and should formulate guidelines to meaningfully distinguish between different private governance initiatives to critically engage with the known flaws in the incentive structure of certification.

This Chapter introduces the theme of the book, presents the value chain approach that is followed, and explores the challenges of regulating competition in a changing environment regarding food value chains from a technological, economic and ecological perspectives.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, David Beasley, the Head of the World Food Programme, in his address to the Security Council of the United Nations (henceforth, the ‘UN’) stated that the world had to “act fast” to avoid “multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months”. While the UN feared that severe global food shortages would strike many parts of the world, prices for corn, wheat and soybeans have not increased in response to the spike in demand caused by the onset of the pandemic. Instead, the most active corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade (henceforth, the ‘CBOT’), which is the world’s most important commodity exchange, have fallen by 16% since the start of 2020, while wheat has fallen by nearly 6% and soybeans by nearly 5%. Farmers are the ones who are losing profits. For instance, in the US, 8% more farmers filed for bankruptcy in 2020, than in the first half of 2019, and this number has been steadily increasing for the past 5 years. Across Africa, millions of farmers are facing economic devastation as the crop prices offered to them continue to fall and, in some cases, amount to less than the farmers’ production costs. In Eurasia, particularly in Russia and Ukraine, farmers have been seriously impacted by the pandemic as well. This issue of farmers being subject to profit losses has been witnessed across the world, but there is no systemic change to their desperate economic situations on the horizon.

Chapter 7 focuses on the situation in the US, exploring American competition policy with respect to the agriculture and the food system. Public enforcement is split among the Federal Trade Commission, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the Department of Agriculture. This split creates additional discontinuities in enforcement actions. This Chapter finds that antitrust enforcement has been weak and inconsistent in the United States with respect to anticompetitive conduct and market structure affecting farmers. Buyer power issues have been largely, but not entirely, ignored. The Department of Agriculture has failed to use its authority to protect farmers. Despite the apparent promise of the Obama administration in its early months in office, the trend for the last three plus decades has been an overall failure to protect the long-term interests of producers and consumers in a workably competitive agriculture-food system.

Chapter 10 assesses the intervention of competition policy in the process of value chain restructuring. Russia provides a good example for explaining the possibilities and weaknesses of competition policy as a regulatory instrument in the food value chain because both the restructuring of the food sector and the development of the Russian competition law and regulatory system have been developing simultaneously since the beginning of the 21st century. The chapter focuses on the enforcement of competition law as well as industry-specific regulation centred on the retail trade. During the last quarter of the 20th century, the Russian food processing industry became highly concentrated due to numerous mergers and acquisitions. Concurrently, large retail chains emerged. Large participants at both stages of value chain have sought to gain influence in governance of the value chain. Governance in the chain at the same time presumes the redistribution of value towards the governing party. Redistribution therefore becomes an important policy issue. The history of Russian competition enforcement in the food retail chain illustrates the limitations of traditional enforcement tools to effectively correct the distributional distortions within the food value chain, and, therefore, highlights the necessity to look for alternative policy instruments.