Agricultural Markets Instability

Since the financial and food price crises of 2007, market instability 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 drivers, long-term implications of volatility and its impacts on food chains and consumers.

The book explores which factors and drivers are volatility-increasing and which others are price level-increasing, and whether these two distinctive effects can be identified and measured. It considers the extent to which increasing instability affects agents in the value chain, as well as the actual impacts on the most vulnerable households in the EU and in selected developing countries. It also analyses which policies are more effective to avert and mitigate the effects of instability.

Developed from the work of the European-based ULYSSES project, the book synthesises the most recent literature on the topic and presents the views of practitioners, businesses, NGOs and farmers' organizations. It draws policy responses and recommendations for policy makers at both European and on international levels.

Alberto Garrido is Professor of Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics and a Researcher at the Research Centre for the Management of Agricultural and Environmental Risks (CEIGRAM), Technical University of Madrid, Spain.

Bernhard Bruemmer is a Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at Georg-August 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 (IPTS) in Seville, Spain.

Miranda P. M. Meuwissen is Associate Professor in the Business Economics group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Cristian Morales-Opazo is an Economist in the Agricultural Development Economics Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.