The agribusiness goliaths of today will grow ever-bigger and intertwine to direct each step of the food chain from seed to the grocery shelf, the activist National Farmers Union said.

Three clusters already were apparent, it said -- Conagra, Cargill/Monsanto and Novartis AG/Archer Daniels Midland .

"The trend to a privately centralised food system puts our food security in great jeopardy," NFU president Leland Swenson said, in urging a moratorium on large-scale mergers in the agricultural sector.

NFU unveiled its study, written by a University of Missouri professor, at a House Agriculture Committee hearing on concentration in farming. There is concern in farm country that mergers give too much power to big firms and make it harder for farmers to get a fair price for their cropsand livestock."They (farmers) are going to find themselves having to go out and be contract growers," Swenson said, which would mean following orders on what to grow and when.

At the same time, the report said, the food "clusters" "are in a position to decide which people in the world will eat" by owning a sizable part of the food supply and wanting to profit from it.

According to the report, four or five "clusters" will develop with numbers limited by access to biotechnology rights. The "clusters" would form through joint ventures, partnerships, acquisitions, contracts and side agreements.It used the existence of such links, even if they involved comparatively small operations, in sketching the clusters.

Cargill Inc, the world's largest grain exporter, and Monsanto Co, a bio-tech leader, were grouped based on a joint venture set in 1998 on seed marketing."There are a host of major players in the food system which are not included in our three food chain clusters," the report said.

"Most likely, someof them will join together to form new food chain clusters, while others may join the clusters we have identified."

For example, it said, seed companies Pioneer and Mycogen could anchor new clusters, or Bunge, one of the world's leading grain traders, could align itself with a meat processor like Tyson Foods.

Conagra was listed as a food cluster by itself because it is the No 2 food processor as well as a leader in meat packing and grain milling. ADM, a miller and processor that bills itself as "supermarket to the world," and Novartis, a seed and pesticide giant, were cited as a "cluster" because of a joint venture to develop specialty corn hybrids for food and feed uses.A Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank economist, Mark Drabenstott, said the nation was seeing the development of "supply chains" that linked farmers with processors to produce lower-cost, higher-value foods. Unlike the NFU, he said farmers and consumers could benefit, farmers by getting paid more for specialising their output and consumersby getting desirable foods.