A/HRC/13/33 care should be taken to ensure that these past mistakes are not repeated. Participation, accountability and transparency are therefore essential in the management of these bodies. 33. Finally, States could use their public procurement systems to support smallholder farmers. The public sector is an extremely important consumer of goods and services, typically representing 10 to 15 per cent of national GDP, and up to 16 per cent in the European Union.37 Public authorities could exercise an important leverage on the practices of suppliers by including requirements linked to the payment of a fair price to the end producers, or to sourcing from smallholders in their purchasing practices. This tool could also serve to promote awareness amongst the broader public about the impact of consumer choices. It could encourage agribusinesses to develop their supply chains in a way that allows them to tender for public contracts, with an impact that would go beyond the specific supplies of the contracts for which they are selected. Of course, the introduction of criteria in public procurement schemes that seek to contribute to the right to food should be non-discriminatory and transparent and reliance upon non-objective criteria that third parties cannot apprehend should therefore be avoided. Nevertheless, there should be no obstacle to including technical specifications in food procurement schemes referring, for instance, to the need for a defined percentage of food being sourced from small farmers, or being bought in accordance with fair trade principles. The Brazilian Programme for the Purchase of Food from Family Agriculture (PAA) provides a good illustration of the potential of such tools. 2. Improving the bargaining power of smallholders: competition law and abusive practices 34. Where companies have a choice between sourcing from large producers or from small farmers, they generally prefer the larger producers, both because of the lower transaction costs involved, and because these producers have easier access to capital and thus to non-land farm assets, such as storage, greenhouses, or irrigation systems. Unless they organize themselves into cooperatives or unless they are otherwise supported in the acquisition of such assets, small farmers can only compensate for this disadvantage by their lower labour costs. The disturbing consequence is that small farmers pay a high fee for entry into the global supply chain; because of the structural obstacles they face, they can only compete by agreeing to low wages for those (often family members) working on the farm, and by being locked into a situation of high dependency on the buyer. These structural problems should be the target of State intervention in the area of competition policy. Unfair practices should be identified and prohibited. 35. States could seek to combat excessive concentration in the food chain, or abuses of dominant positions acquired by certain actors. However, competition law as it currently stands is not appropriately tailored to the circumstances that weaken the bargaining position of smallholders.38 First, although progress has been made over the past years, in many developing countries, competition law is weak or non-existent.39 Second, competition law 37 38 39 GE.09-17776 See: http://www.ustr.gov/trade-topics/government-procurement; and http://ec.europa.eu/internal_ market/publicprocurement/index_en.htm. See, e.g., R. Clarke and others, Buyer Power and Competition in European Food Retailing (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002); B. Hoekman and P. Mavroidis, “Economic development, competition policy and the WTO”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2917, 2002; L. Dodd and S. Asfaha, “Rebalancing the supply chain: buyer power, commodities and competition policy”, South Centre and Traidcraft, April 2008. For instance, a survey of African countries on the website of the Global Competition Forum reveals that out of 38 States, 20 are either only in the process of creating a competition law regime, or lacking such a regime completely. See: http://www.globalcompetitionforum.org/africa.htm, and Section T. 13