Agriculture committee  No, I haven't studied the food processing sector. The only other thing I know—and it's not very helpful—is that the extent of concentration varies a lot, depending on the food item. In something like soft drinks, the concentration is very high. In other areas, it's pretty low. It would vary a lot by food item.

Agriculture committee  Okay. I was going to say that I can't rule out structural problems of this type. However, I'm sure that, as far as the inflation premium went in 2022, if there was an effect it was a small one. I think the right tools for dealing with such issues are our competition policy tools.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. Thanks for inviting me to participate today. I understand that this committee is studying inflation in the food supply chain and that there is particular concern about possible overpricing and excess profits for large grocery retailers. I'm not an agricultural economist and have not previously studied pricing in the agribusiness sector, however, I have done research on overpricing, excess profits, collusion and other related issues.