All in all, this study reveals differences in the strategic positioning of private food firms and agricultural cooperatives and highlights the leading role of some generic strategies to improve organizational performance. These findings are vital for policy-makers, as both globalization and concentration within the retail sector cause tremendous power imbalance between different parts of the food chain. Currently, a handful of retailers are the trading partners of some 13.4 million farmers and 310,000 food-industry enterprises across Europe, putting producers and small food firms in an unfavorable competitive situation (COGECA, 2010).