Germany’s food power
German corporations control almost every link in the global food chain. They promote an agro-industrial production model with devastating impacts on humans, animals and the environment. But protests are growing.
BERLIN/BRUSSELS (own report) – A broad alliance of small-scale farmers, environmental initiatives and consumer protection groups are uniting under the slogan “Wir haben es satt” (We've had enough). They mobilised for a demonstration in Berlin last Saturday. Their protests are directed in part against the conditions in the global food industry, where German corporations play a dominant role in almost all areas. From the production of seeds and pesticides to veterinary medicines and food retailing, we find Germany-based companies nearly everywhere in the top ten largest players worldwide. Almost all food-related industries are run by oligopolies. They squeeze farmers’ margins and degrade them to the role of “price takers”. More and more farmers find themselves unable to compete and cope with worsening conditions. In Germany, as elsewhere, small-scale farms are going out of business. Their numbers are shrinking year on year by around 2,600. What is more, the agro-industrial production model is fuelling environmental damage and climate change. A change of direction is systematically blocked by the influential big agro lobby. Worse still, we are now confronted with a rollback of existing rules and protections. The EU is preparing to undermine a slew of directives on health and environmental protection by introducing “simplification packages”.
Strong presence
German companies are almost always found among the Top Ten in every sector of the food industry – from agricultural inputs for farms to supermarket retailers. Only in the sectors of fertilisers and agricultural commodity trading are they not found among industry leaders. This is one of the findings of research conducted by two non-governmental organisations, the ETC Group and Grain.[1] Bayer leads the rankings in the commercial seeds sector, with a global market share of almost 25 per cent. BASF follows in fourth place, and KWS in sixth. In pesticides, the Leverkusen-based Bayer corporation comes second, BASF third and FMC sixth. Bayer also has a commanding position in digital agriculture with its FieldView platform, a tool that collates data from drones, sensors and satellite images to provide information on weather, soil conditions, plant diseases and harmful insects. Bayer offers farmers tailor-made solutions, preferably from its own product range. The tool is now used in 24 countries on a total of 120 million hectares. As for the farm machinery sector, much of the heavy technical equipment like tractors also often comes from Germany: the Claas Group comes fifth in the world ranking.
Factory farming
The industrial-scale global business of poultry fattening and livestock breeding is dominated by the EW Group from Visbek in Lower Saxony, alongside the US corporation Tyson Food and the Dutch company Hendrix Genetics. As for the veterinary medicine sector, Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the leading trio. German companies are also huge players at the end of the food supply chain. Both Lidl and Aldi are powerful food retailers, found among the Top Ten largest supermarket chains worldwide.
Extreme concentration
In all these big food sectors, a handful of corporations dominate the scene – with serious consequences. “Concentration gives corporations more power to dictate prices and lobby policymakers. They can use this power to disrupt scientific research, block regulations that protect people’s health and the environment, and undermine democratic participation in the shaping of food systems,” concludes the ETC Group: “Concentration increases their ability to crush alternatives and ensure the expansion of a model of agriculture that is immensely profitable for them while being hugely destructive for people and the planet.”[2]
Parkinson’s disease and pesticides
Not only does this highly concentrated big food model account for around 30 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, it also contributes to air pollution and the poisoning of rivers and lakes. It is a system that, in particular, makes people ill. For instance, the link between Parkinson's Disease and exposure to pesticides has been officially recognised. “Parkinson Syndrome caused by Pesticides” is now established as an occupational disease affecting farmers in Germany. The country’s Social Insurance for Agriculture, Forestry and Horticulture (SVLFG) has already registered 550 such cases, while the number of unreported cases is likely to be considerably higher. For the current year, the SVLFG estimates treatment costs will total 63 million euros in this field alone.
Brussels bows to Big Agro
Despite all the problems, politicians are bowing to pressure from the powerful agriculture lobby. The European Union has just initiated a series of policy measures designed to water down – or, in official parlance, “simplify” – health and environmental regulations. The measures include the relaxation of pesticide regulations, the softening of rules to mitigate the risks of new genetic engineering techniques, the weakening of requirements for protecting water bodies, wetlands and moors, and the exclusion of cattle farms from the EU directive on industrial emissions.
Grow or go
The oligopolistic structures threaten the livelihoods of farmers. As the weakest link in the food supply chain, they become “price takers”: they have to accept the prices dictated by food processing businesses and major retail chains. Many farmers are capitulating to these economic forces and giving up. Every year, around 2,600 mostly small-scale farms disappear in Germany. They are subject to the imperative of “grow or go”. The acute situation facing farmers has recently prompted the German Monopolies Commission to take another look. It devoted a special report to competition in the food supply chain. As an advisory body it identified an urgent need for action: “From the Monopolies Commission’s point of view, these changes in the market and power dynamics within the food supply chain require more effective control against abuse of power.”[3] The report also noted a lack of consistent enforcement of rules that already exist on paper.
‘We've had enough of the agro-industry’
“Stop food retailers from dictating prices!” is one of the central demands of an alliance of representatives from small-scale agriculture, environmental initiatives and consumer protection associations. Gaining momentum, the movement has called a demonstration in Berlin this coming Saturday with the slogan “We've had enough!”.[4] It is also active in opposing legislative efforts to dismantle climate, environment and animal welfare standards and in advocating mandatory labelling of genetically modified food products. In a press release prior to the demonstration, the Coalition against BAYER Hazards (or Coordination gegen Bayer-Gefahren; CBG) explicitly addressed the issue of the oligopolistic structures that have taken hold of most links in the food supply chain. “Almost all areas of the agricultural economy are dominated by a few corporations – with fatal consequences for humans, animals and the environment,” declares the CBG: “This is what we must protest against on the 17th.”
[1] Top 10 Agribusiness Giants. etcgroup.org.
[2] Top 10 agribusiness giants: Corporate concentration in food & farming in 2025. etcgroup.org.
[3] Sondergutachten 84: Wettbewerb in der Lebensmittel-Lieferkette. monopolkommission.de 21.11.2025.
[4] Aufruf zur 16. „Wir haben es satt!“-Demo am 17.01.2026. wir-haben-es-satt.de.
[5] Gegen die Macht von Big Agro. cbgnetwork.org 13.01.2026.
