The Faba co-operative, owned by Finnish livestock farming entrepreneurs; Proagria; and the Agricultural Data Processing Centre Suomen Maatalouden Laskentakeskus Oy), co-owned by them, have provided the FCCA with a commitment to create the type of interfaces in their breeding and production monitoring registers that will enable businesses operating in the commercial software market to access these registers.
In Finland, thoroughbred animals of a certain breed are entered in a pedigree maintained by an officially approved community engaged in breeding operations. The pedigree for cattle is maintained by the Faba co-operative, while the pedigree for sheep is maintained by ProAgria. The pedigree communities also maintain breeding and production monitoring registers closely related to pedigree maintenance.
The Finnish Agricultural Data Processing Centre provides farms with ERP software that can be used both to send information to the breeding and production monitoring registers and retrieve information from these registers. Until now, the Agricultural Data Processing Centre was the only party with the ability to use the information in these registers.
The commitment decision provides an effective solution to the competition problem
In June 2014, the FCCA stated as its preliminary opinion that Faba, ProAgria and the Agricultural Data Processing Centre have abused their commanding market position by preventing other companies from accessing their breeding and production monitoring registers. Efficient market competition requires access to these registers.
The parties have now committed to creating interfaces in their breeding and production monitoring registers. In the future, the markets will be able to engender competition as other companies will also be able to provide farms with software services.
The commitments of the parties and the FCCA decision based on these commitments enables a faster solution to the competition problem than that provided by a Market Court process.