Vertical integration in the Czech agriculture – focus on dairy and meat sectors

In this paper we provide an overview of the two most important sectors in the Czech agriculture: the dairy farming and the meat production. Since the focus of our paper in on the vertical integration, we provide this overview along the whole production vertical line. We start with the suppliers for the farmers and continue through the farm production, distribution and milk and meat processing and storage facilities. The final links in the production vertical structure are wholesale and retail consumers. In both of the considered vertical lines we concentrate on the key analytical parameters which are price transmission elasticities and we provide an overview of their values obtained in the Czech agricultural economic research. Since the question of competition and strategic relations inside the vertical supply-demand structure is an important topic in industrial organization theory and policy, we also pay attention to major cases of alleged fair competition violations in the Czech meat and diary industry.