Food Security and Competition Issues in Food Supply Chain in Transitional Economies. Case for Four Food Categories in Uzbekistan.

Almost everywhere in the world, despite the lower agricultural commodity prices, consumer food prices have been increasing in recent years. Notwithstanding a global recession and the largest grain harvest on record in 2008, food prices have been heading up again. Between now and 2050 the world’s population will rise by a third, but demand for agricultural goods will rise by 70% and demand for meat will double. In the first ten months of 2009, food prices increased by 9.8%, prompting fears of a resumption of the surge that began in 2007, the first of the two years of crisis. And as some experts claim in their early findings: in many places, the supply of inputs is unhealthily monopolized. The food supply chain is the issue not only for low income countries, but for affluent states as well. At their meeting in L’Aquila in July 2009, the Group of Eight (G8) called agriculture and food security as "the core of the international agenda". Moreover, the EU has been conducting own investigation of food supply chain to identify the major causes of price stickiness in the consumer food prices. Therefore, the current situation in the food markets, once again has brought up the issue of food security as in developed countries so in developing poor countries, for which food expenditures make up large share of population’s income. For a country such as Uzbekistan, where large share of income is spent on foods and approximately 60% of population resides in rural areas and directly (or indirectly) depends on the agricultural sector, providing fair competition and level playing field is of great importance. Hence, it was essential to analyze emerging trends, assess the efficiency, transparency and level playing field in the food supply chain, and to identify bottlenecks or artificial barriers that impede the development of efficient and competitive supply chains.