Agricultural Finance - From Crops To Land, Water And Infrastructure

"Agricultural Finance is the only book which comprehensively deals with worldwide agriculture markets, spikes in agricultural commodity prices, trading strategies (CTAs and others), the agribusiness industry, the challenges of feeding the planet as well as the fascinating subjects of land, water, fertilizers, biofuels and ethanol. Given their importance to human life, cycles in agricultural commodity prices are very different from the likes of copper or crude oil.With over 15 chapters the book will feature topics such as agricultural insurance, energy, shipping and bunker prices, sustainability, ethanol, water, investments in land, fertilizers, soft commodities such as sugar, coffee ; rubber; agricultural policies, subsidies, econometrics and agricultural derivatives and farming risk-management.Contents will also include chapters on:1."Futures, options on Agricultural Commodities and Risk-Management in Farming and Agribusiness"2. Real Options in Land and Valuation of Physical Assets, Crushers and Storage Facilities 3. Structured Products and ETFs on Agricultural Commodities4. Trade Finance in an Era of Credit Shortage5. Securitization and Commodity- Linked Notes6 Grains (wheat, corn, soybeans)7 Softs: Coffee, Cocoa, Cotton8. Shipping as a Key component of Agricultural trade; the Major Routes and the Costs"--

HELYETTE GEMAN is Director of the Commodity Finance Centre at Birkbeck, University of London and Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University. She is a graduate of Ecole Normale Superieure in Mathematics, holds a Masters degree in Theoretical Physics and a PhD in Probability from the University Pierre et Marie Curie; and a PhD in Finance from the University Paris Sorbonne.

Professor Geman has published more than 130 papers in top international finance, insurance and energy economics Journals, became in 1993 a Member of Honour of the French Society of Actuaries for her work on Catastrophic risk; received in 1994 the first Prize of the Merrill Lynch awards for her research on Asian and complex options; was named in 2004 in the Hall of Fame of Energy Risk. She has been a scientific advisor to major financial institutions, energy and mining companies and commodity houses for the last 21 years, covering the spectrum of interest rates, crude oil and natural gas, metals and agricultural, including water, fertilizers and land.

Her book Insurance and Weather Derivatives was published in 1999 by RISK Publications; her book entitledCommodities and Commodity Derivatives: Energy, Metals and Agriculturals published by Wiley Finance in 2005 has become the reference in industry and Master programmes worldwide.

Prof Geman counts among her PhD students Nassim Taleb. She is presently on the Board of a green energy company and an active participant in a 'precision farming' project involving 12,500 farmers in East Africa.