THE FINNISH FOOD-INDUSTRY FACING EUROPEAN INTEGRATION - STRATEGIES AND POLICIES

Agricultural and food policies have been stable in Finland for some ye ars. Neither agriculture nor the food industry have needed to redefine strategies, but as EU accession changes the policy environment, strat egies must also change. Strategies for the food industry are defined t hrough a taxonomy of competitive advantage based on cross-sectional fi rm-level data. Six clusters emerged. The largest firms seem to follow either a differentiation strategy competing with a wide product range or a distributor-oriented push strategy competing with fewer products. Closer integration of the Finnish food chain will be essential in the EU single market.