HSE University Professor Says Russia Needs BRICS Cooperation to Counter Global Grain Traders.
Russia has the capacity to double its grain exports, but achieving that goal will require building new market structures and curbing the dominance of global trading giants. The assessment came from Alexey Ivanov, director of the International BRICSC Competition Law and Policy Centre and professor at the Higher School of Economics (HSE University), during the 4th BRICS+ Digital Competition Forum in Rio de Janeiro.
“If the global grain market were more competitive and operated on more transparent principles, Russia could significantly expand its export volumes — by twofold or more,”
Ivanov said.
According to him, today’s global grain architecture is effectively controlled by major agricultural trading conglomerates—known collectively as the ABCD+ group — because governments have, in practice, delegated responsibility for global food security to private corporations.
As a result, Ivanov argued, these large traders can influence global grain pricing through market power. Price volatility hurts Russian exports, he noted, while global traders profit from market swings through speculative financial operations. Their advantage is reinforced by expansive logistics networks with access to key trade routes and control over major grain-handling hubs, as well as close coordination among one another.
Ivanov stressed that while Russian grain dealers have strengthened their positions domestically, this momentum has not translated to the international stage.
“Our wheat is shipped from major ports to trading intermediaries, and from there Russian businesses no longer control the product’s movement,”
he said.
To expand Russia’s global presence, he argued, the country’s agribusiness sector must adopt a new approach to the world market grounded in antitrust principles — something he believes would boost exports.
Ivanov emphasized that cooperation within BRICS is essential for countering global traders’ influence. Potential solutions, he said, include coordinated regulatory action by the bloc’s competition authorities and the creation of alternative market structures — such as a BRICS grain exchange.
“We need to combine the efforts of BRICS countries to push back against grain monopolies or fundamentally reformat the market. BRICS brings together both major exporters and major importers of grain, and all of us share an interest in revising the global market structure,”
Ivanov concluded.
His remarks draw on findings from the International BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre's report, “From Fields to Futures: Competition, Financialization and Digitalization in Global Grain Value Chains”, prepared in support of the BRICS Working Group for the Research of Competition Issues in Food Markets.
Source: TASS
