Who controls our food? Today, a substantial share of the global market for commercial seeds and pesticides is concentrated among a handful of groups, following the major mergers of the 2010s (Bayer-Monsanto, Dow-DuPont, ChemChina-Syngenta). To this is added a movement of land grabbing documented by the World Bank and research organisations, and a global grain trade structured around a few large trading houses. Concentration is a measurable economic fact; its consequences are a matter of debate.
Definition. Food sovereignty refers to the right of peoples to define their own agricultural and food systems. It is distinct from mere food security (having enough to eat) by adding the question of control: deciding how, by whom and under what rules food is produced. The central issue of this investigation is the concentration of that control among few actors.
The global food system is too vast to grasp at a single glance. But one can follow its control points: the bottlenecks where few actors decide for many. This investigation runs through four of them — the seed (the beginning of every harvest), the land (the support of all production), inputs and distribution (what links the field to the market), and patented life (the law that turns a plant into property).
The image that sums up this structure is that of an hourglass: a very broad base of producers and consumers, linked by a narrow waist where a few actors — seed firms, traders, retailers — concentrate market power. This investigation does not tell of a conspiracy, but of a concentration: an economic fact that the competition authorities themselves examined before authorising, under conditions, the major mergers of the 2010s. A golden rule guides the reading: economic concentration is a fact, its consequences are a debate. Above all, one must distinguish the health question of GMOs (broad scientific consensus on the safety of those authorised) from the economic question of the concentration of power over food, the real subject here.
Everything begins with a seed. Whoever controls the seed controls, upstream, the entire harvest. During the 2010s, the global seed and agrochemical sector underwent an unprecedented wave of mergers, which reconfigured the landscape into three major operations.
These operations were examined by the competition authorities. The European Commission authorised the Bayer-Monsanto merger in March 2018 under conditions, imposing asset divestments worth well over six billion euros — notably the sale of part of Bayer's seed and herbicide activities to BASF — precisely to preserve competition. The fact that regulators required such remedies is, in itself, the official recognition of a risk of excessive concentration.
The research organisation ETC Group, which has tracked this concentration for decades, documents that a few firms control a majority share of the global market for commercial seeds and pesticides: in its 2025 analysis, Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta and BASF together account for about 56% of the commercial seed market and 61% of the pesticide market. Precise figures vary according to sources and the scope retained, but the direction — strong and growing concentration — is convergent between ETC Group, academic analyses and the files of the competition authorities. Prudence requires speaking of a "substantial share" rather than a single percentage presented as definitive.
This concentration goes hand in hand with vertical integration: the same groups often sell the seed and the herbicide designed to go with it (for example seeds tolerant to a weedkiller marketed by the same firm). The farmer no longer buys a product, but a system — which tightens the control point still further.
To understand how a seed can be "controlled," one must enter into the law. Two regimes coexist. On the one hand, the patent on biotechnological inventions (a gene, a process, a trait): in the United States, the Diamond v. Chakrabarty ruling (Supreme Court, 1980) confirmed that a living organism modified by man could be patented, opening the way to patentability in the field of the living. On the other hand, the plant breeder's right (PBR), a specific regime for the protection of varieties.
The latter is governed by the UPOV convention (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants). Its revised 1991 version strengthened breeders' rights: extension of the duration of protection, restriction of certain practices of reusing farm-saved seed, and the notion of "essentially derived variety." Concretely, in countries applying UPOV 1991, the farmer's right to freely resow their own harvest of protected varieties has been restricted, and sometimes made subject to the payment of royalties.
One important nuance avoids caricature: the plant breeder's right traditionally includes a breeder's exemption (a third party may use a protected variety to create a new one) which, in theory, keeps innovation open, unlike the patent. To present everything as a total lock-down would be inaccurate. The tipping point is therefore not intellectual property in itself, but its concentration: a few groups holding the bulk of commercially decisive traits is not equivalent to a thousand breeders each holding a few rights.
Beyond the law, a biological reality reinforces dependence: the hybrid seed. An F1 hybrid seed results from the controlled crossing of two selected parent lines. It often displays superior vigour and uniformity (the phenomenon of heterosis). But its descendants (the F2 generation) do not faithfully reproduce the characteristics of the F1: the traits disperse in the following generation. The farmer who resows their own F1 seeds therefore obtains an irregular and generally less productive harvest.
The economic consequence is direct: to preserve performance, the farmer must buy back hybrid seeds at each cycle, rather than drawing from their harvest. It is an established agronomic fact, independent of any intention: hybridisation creates a purchase dependence through its very biology. Dependence on seeds thus results from the addition of three distinct levers.
An honest clarification is needed against a persistent legend: so-called "Terminator" seeds — genetically engineered to produce sterile seeds (so-called GURT technologies) — were patented and much discussed in the 1990s, but were never commercialised. A de facto moratorium was adopted within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Real dependence comes from hybrids and from the law, not from a commercialised genetic sterility. Confusing the two weakens the analysis instead of strengthening it.
The seed is sown in a soil. And control of arable land is a second major point of concentration, harder to measure, but documented. The phenomenon of land grabbing — the large-scale acquisition or lease of agricultural land, often in developing countries, by foreign investors or funds — accelerated after the food and financial crisis of 2007-2008. The organisation GRAIN published as early as 2008 the report Seized! which helped draw international attention to these transactions.
The World Bank devoted a reference report to this phenomenon in 2011, Rising Global Interest in Farmland, documenting a sharp rise in large-scale land transactions and stressing that many lacked transparency, the consent of local communities, or benefits for them. The finding therefore came from an institution hardly suspect of anti-market activism.
Precise measurement remains difficult. The Land Matrix initiative, a collaborative and independent database, records these transactions while itself signalling the methodological uncertainties (transactions announced but not realised, blurred scopes). The honest cartographer retains the trend — increased pressure on land — rather than a single figure presented as definitive. Land concentration acts as a multiplier: whoever controls vast surfaces also buys seeds and inputs in bulk, reinforcing the power of the concentrated suppliers upstream.
Between the field and the plate, other bottlenecks tighten the system. The pesticide market is, like that of seeds, highly concentrated: the same groups arising from the mergers of the 2010s (Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta/ChemChina, BASF) occupy a dominant place. The fertiliser market also displays marked geographical and industrial concentration: the production of nitrogen fertilisers depends on natural gas, and that of potash and phosphate is dominated by a small number of countries and companies. The fertiliser price crisis of 2021-2022, accentuated by the war in Ukraine, revealed this dependence, as documented by the FAO and several international organisations.
Downstream, the global grain trade is historically structured around a small group of large trading houses — often designated by the acronym "ABCD" (Archer-Daniels-Midland, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus) — which play a major role in the international grain trade, as analysed by Oxfam in its report Cereal Secrets. Here again, few actors intervene at a strategic point of passage. Retail distribution (the food superstore) is, in many countries, also concentrated among a few chains, which gives them considerable bargaining power against producers.
One cannot understand the current system without its founding moment, and it must be judged fairly. From the 1940s-1960s, a set of varietal selection programmes (high-yield wheat and rice), combined with irrigation, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, sharply increased yields in Asia and Latin America. The agronomist Norman Borlaug, a central figure of this effort, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970; it is estimated that his work helped avert massive famines in India and Pakistan. This is a major historical benefit, to be fully recognised.
But it also has documented, less favourable effects: heavy dependence on chemical inputs and water, exhaustion and salinisation of soils in certain regions, and a reduction of the diversity of cultivated varieties in favour of a few uniform cultivars. On agricultural biodiversity, the FAO published in 2019 the report The State of the World's Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture, which documents the erosion of the diversity of cultivated plants and warns about dependence on a restricted number of species. The lesson is not that it should have been done without, but that a productivity gain obtained through uniformisation creates a systemic fragility: resilience and efficiency are not the same virtue.
Here is the point where intellectual honesty is most demanding, because two very different questions are systematically conflated here. On the health front, there is a broad scientific consensus: foods derived from genetically modified crops authorised for marketing present no greater risk to human health than their conventional equivalents. This consensus has been formulated by numerous institutions, including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine of the United States (NASEM) in a synthesis report of 2016, and it aligns with the positions of the World Health Organization. To assert that these authorised GMOs would be intrinsically dangerous to health contradicts this consensus and amounts to disinformation.
On the economic front, however, commercial GMOs have accompanied and amplified the concentration and dependence described here: patented varieties, contracts prohibiting resowing, the seed-herbicide pairing. These market-power issues are real and documented — and they are entirely distinct from the question of food safety. An authorised GMO can be both without proven health danger and a vector of problematic economic concentration. Holding these two propositions together, without merging them, is precisely the act of lucidity that this investigation calls for.
Part of the debate is carried by explicitly activist voices. The Indian physicist and activist Vandana Shiva thus defends the concept of "seed sovereignty" and denounces what she calls a "biopiracy" of firms over the living. This is an activist position, influential and argued, but distinct from the documented economic findings; some of her factual claims (notably on precise causal links) have been contested in the scientific and journalistic debate. We present her as what she is — an engaged voice — and not as a source of established facts.
Behind the seed, the land, the inputs and the trade, a single political question arises: who decides what humanity eats, and under what rules? The notion of food sovereignty was formulated notably by the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina: it is the right of peoples to define their own agricultural and food systems. International law has partially recognised this issue: the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA, adopted in 2001 under the aegis of the FAO) explicitly recognises farmers' rights, including that of conserving, using, exchanging and selling farm-saved seed, within the framework of national legislation.
One also observes, in reaction, the rise of movements for the conservation of peasant seeds, of gene banks and of networks for exchanging royalty-free varieties. Their very existence is the empirical indication that the concentration described is not a technical inevitability, but a structure that collective choices can inflect. The honest reader's criterion is therefore not "is concentration good or bad?" but "is this control point contestable?": is there real competition, a law that protects the autonomy of producers, a preserved diversity, transparency of transactions? Where these counterweights are missing, concentration becomes a power without counter-power.
The full investigation of the L'Appel de l'Éveil collection unrolls each of these control points with its sources, its authority decisions and its certainty markers. To follow the entire chain — from the seed to the trade — and to learn to distinguish the documented fact from the activist position, the ebook constitutes the step-by-step guide to this hidden geography behind the plate.
How many companies control the world's seeds? Following the mergers of the 2010s, a handful of groups (notably Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta/ChemChina, BASF) concentrate a substantial share of the global market for commercial seeds and pesticides — ETC Group's 2025 analysis puts the top four at around 56% of commercial seeds and 61% of pesticides. Exact figures vary according to sources and scopes; the trend towards strong concentration is, however, convergent.
Are authorised GMOs dangerous to health? A broad scientific consensus (NASEM 2016, WHO) concludes that foods derived from GMOs authorised for marketing present no greater health risk than their conventional equivalents. The real issue with GMOs is economic (concentration, patents, dependence), not health-related; the two must be carefully distinguished.
Do "Terminator" seeds really exist? No, not on the market. Genetic use restriction technologies (GURT, so-called "Terminator"), designed to produce sterile seeds, were patented and discussed in the 1990s but were never commercialised, a de facto moratorium having been adopted within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Real dependence comes from F1 hybrids and property rights, not from a genetic sterility.
What is land grabbing? It is the large-scale acquisition or lease of agricultural land, often in developing countries, by foreign investors or funds. The phenomenon accelerated after 2007-2008 and was documented by GRAIN, the World Bank (2011 report) and the Land Matrix initiative, the latter itself signalling significant measurement uncertainties.
What is the difference between food security and food sovereignty? Food security is having enough to eat. Food sovereignty adds the question of control: the right of peoples to decide how, by whom and under what rules their food is produced. It is this dimension of power — and its concentration — that is at the heart of the investigation.
Does this investigation denounce a conspiracy? No. It describes a measurable economic concentration, examined by the competition authorities themselves, which imposed conditions on the major mergers. Concentration results from choices (authorised mergers, laws on the ownership of the living, land policies) — and what results from choices can be redirected by other choices.
Following the mergers of the 2010s, a handful of groups (notably Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta/ChemChina, BASF) concentrate a substantial share of the global market for commercial seeds and pesticides — ETC Group's 2025 analysis puts the top four at around 56% of commercial seeds and 61% of pesticides. Exact figures vary according to sources and scopes; the trend towards strong concentration is, however, convergent.
A broad scientific consensus (NASEM 2016, WHO) concludes that foods derived from GMOs authorised for marketing present no greater health risk than their conventional equivalents. The real issue with GMOs is economic (concentration, patents, dependence), not health-related; the two must be carefully distinguished.
No, not on the market. Genetic use restriction technologies (GURT, so-called "Terminator"), designed to produce sterile seeds, were patented and discussed in the 1990s but were never commercialised, a de facto moratorium having been adopted within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Real dependence comes from F1 hybrids and property rights, not from a genetic sterility.
It is the large-scale acquisition or lease of agricultural land, often in developing countries, by foreign investors or funds. The phenomenon accelerated after 2007-2008 and was documented by GRAIN, the World Bank (2011 report) and the Land Matrix initiative, the latter itself signalling significant measurement uncertainties.
Food security is having enough to eat. Food sovereignty adds the question of control: the right of peoples to decide how, by whom and under what rules their food is produced. It is this dimension of power — and its concentration — that is at the heart of the investigation.
No. It describes a measurable economic concentration, examined by the competition authorities themselves, which imposed conditions on the major mergers. Concentration results from choices (authorised mergers, laws on the ownership of the living, land policies) — and what results from choices can be redirected by other choices.
Dossier : Big Pharma & souveraineté alimentaire
MINI11: Le Monopole Alimentaire Mondial
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