Change of competition regime and regional innovative capacities: Evidence from dairy restructuring in France

Abstract

International audienceThe aim of this article is to analyze how market actors, and farmers in particular, mobilize collective coordination capacities to face global changes – market price or sectorial policies – within different regional contexts. A multi-scale conceptual framework is proposed to analyze market functioning and transformation over time and space. We extend Commons and Fligstein’s work on market institutions to define the notion of competition regime as a combination of four market institutions that legitimizes competition strategies. We also mobilize Ostrom’s work on common property rights regimes to show that a competition regime relies on the creation and management of two systems of common-pool resources, namely innovation capacity and reputation-building. This paper then shows the relevance of this framework through the case study of the current restructuring of dairy supply chains in mountainous areas in France. It shows that market liberalization strongly destabilizes the regional competition regimes that were based on the appropriation of social rights inherent to the national public policies. In the hybrid and specific competition regimes, existing territorial coordination devices are not directly threatened and can support the development of new cooperative strategies. In all cases, with the development of a contractual economy, farmers are incited to develop or to strengthen coordination devices to become effective market participants. Through the development of large territorial producers’ organizations capable of managing milk supply in volume and quality, they would be able to take part in the management of the supply chains. To do so, the present paper suggests that farmers’ organizations need material and immaterial investments and assistance from regional public players to build new local collective capacities. The competition regime framework is an asset for the design of such public supports in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, taking the regional specificity of the markets’ institutions and collective capacities into account

Internal and contextual drivers of dairy restructuring: evidence from French mountainous areas and post‐quota prospects

“…Therefore, the mountainous dairy areas that are either involved in supply chains with limited value‐added (where farms have been unable to invest) or have limited milk density or suckling‐cow alternatives, appear to be particularly exposed and threatened by the end of the quota system. This result is in line with qualitative investigations (Dervillé and Allaire, ).…”

“…In the case of PDO products, specific quality‐related skills and organization have been shown to influence the market's structure and profitability (Bontemps et al., ). A tradeoff likely exists between competition for land or quotas (Storm et al., ) and cooperation in the production of specific resources (quality products, environmental services, and bargaining power) (Dervillé and Allaire, ).…”

Logistics Best Practices for Regional Food Systems: A Review

“…Retailers and food hubs often prefer to pick up products at common aggregation points to address the challenge of managing too many vendors [156]. Therefore, multiple producers selling to the same food hub or retailer should consider forming collective aggregation points at one of their farms, which can enable a more consistent volume and frequency of supply, require fewer transactions for the retailer/food hub, and reduce transportation costs [4,9,51,147,154,156,199,200].…”

Quelles conditions d’accès au marché des éleveurs après les quotas laitiers ?

“…Les normes professionnelles encadrant les modèles d'entreprise et la structure de marché en constituent un autre. Ces règles définissant les conditions d'accès au marché peuvent se différencier dans le temps et dans l'espace, se traduisant par une différenciation des conditions d'accès au marché des éleveurs (Dervillé et Allaire, 2014).…”

“…Le pays a ainsi fait le choix de quotas non marchands, liés au foncier et gérés au niveau du département par les pouvoirs publics et la profession agricole (Kroll et Trouvé 2010 ;Trouvé et al, 2016). Cette décision a assuré un ancrage territorial de la production et a permis le développement d'exploitations familiales de taille moyenne sur tout le territoire, en mettant un frein au mouvement de concentration de la production laitière dans le Grand Ouest français (Chatellier et al, 2013 ;Chatellier et al, 2015 ;Perrot et al, 2008 ;Dervillé et Allaire, 2014). Par ailleurs, le Centre national interprofessionnel de l'économie laitière (CNIEL) est créé en 1973, réunissant les représentants des éleveurs, les coopératives laitières et les transformateurs privés.…”