India on the brink of being Walmart-ized

"Walmart's entry into the market would destroy that entire system."

Once a Food Chain, Now a Corporate Supply Chain

Friday 3 February 2012
by: Kanya D'Almeida, Inter Press Service | Report

While Indian retailers are losing sleep over the possible entrance of multinationals like Walmart into the dense South Asian consumer market, very little thought has been given to the Indian small farmer, who stands to lose even more at the hands of the world's biggest commercial food retailer.

The commercial food market topped seven trillion dollars at the end of 2009, overtaking even the mammoth energy sector, according to a new report by the ETC prepared ahead of the June 2012 Rio+20 conference on sustainable development.

The top 10 retail food firms raked in combined annual sales worth 753 billion dollars, 25 percent of which went to the world's largest corporation: Walmart.

In 2009, 51 percent of Walmart's total revenue came directly from its food sales, making it the U.S.'s largest grocer.

However, with consumer markets in the U.S. and Western Europe shriveling fast, Walmart has been forced to look elsewhere for customers.

(More here. This is the second of a two-part series. The first part is here.)