Agricultural Markets Instability ─ Revisiting the Recent Food Crises

Since the financial and food price crises of 2007, market volatility has been a topic of major concern to agricultural economists and policy professionals. This volume provides an overview of the key issues surrounding food prices volatility, focusing primarily on cereals and key commodities, and policy conclusions. It also presents the views of practitioners, business, NGOs and farmers' organizations. It has been developed from the work of the European-based ULYSSES project. The main issues addressed include:

• the direct and indirect causes of markets’ volatility increases since 2007
• which factors and drivers are volatility-increasing and which others are price level-increasing? Can these two distinctive effects be identified and measured, and be related to specific causes?
• the likelihood that the main commodities’ markets will experience new episodes of extreme volatility
• the extent to which increasing volatility affects agents in the value chain and what can be done to cope with it, both in the EU and in developing countries
• the actual impacts on the most vulnerable households in the EU and in selected developing countries
• which policies are more effective to avert and mitigate the effects of markets’ volatility at EU and international levels.

Alberto Garrido is Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain.

Bernhard Brummer is Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, University of Goettingen, Germany.

Robert M'Barek is an Agricultural Economist and leader of the Agricultural trade and market analysis" group at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Seville, Spain.

Miranda Meuwissen is Associate Professor of Business Economics, Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Cristian Morales-Opazo is an Economist, Agricultural Development Economic Division, at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy.