More on farm-retail price spreads during food price inflation

My previous blog post dealt with trends in the farm-retail price spread at the aggregate food basket level in EU Member States (both for food purchases for at home consumption and for food consumption away from home) based on a new FAOSTAT data series on the food value chain. A key conclusion was that farmers’ share of consumer spending on food tends to fall over time because of the increased quantity and quality of the marketing services added to farm raw materials as living standards rise. A falling farm share in every euro spent on food at retail or food service level is not necessarily an indicator that there is unequal bargaining power and thus an unfair distribution of value added along the food value chain, although neither does it rule out that possibility.… Read the rest