For ten consecutive years, Japan has increased its meat consumption; consumption increased by 3.4 percent last year over the previous year to produce the highest level of growth in five years. Beef consumption, in particular, is expected to grow nearly 4 percent this year after two straight years of decline. Japan is already one of […]
Archive | Commodities
Limited Impact of Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) Under Current Funding Levels
Established in the 2008 Farm Bill and re-authorized in the 2014 Farm Bill, the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) aims to promote biomass production for bioenergy and bio-products by providing growers and bio-refineries with subsidies for biomass production. The total budget for the BCAP is limited to $125 million over 2014-2018 by the 2014 Farm […]
Coffee farmers face dangerously low profits, experts warn at 6th Consultative Forum on Coffee Sector Finance
By Federico Ceballos Sierra on August 18, 2017 in Agriculture, Commodities, Consumer, Economics, International
Coffee prices have always been a source of uncertainty for all the agents of the value chain, especially small coffee farmers that have seen their livelihoods worsened every time prices drop. The most recent Consultative Forum on Coffee Finance took the subject of price volatility and increasing production costs as its main focus, seeing how […]
Transforming a competitive market into an imperfect market by cooperative power
By German Mandrini on June 13, 2017 in Agriculture, Commodities, Consumer, Economics, Food and Nutrition
Introduction The US milk market is characterized by five links. Farmers, who produce the milk and sell it through cooperatives to huge dairy processors, who transform it into the different products, like packed fluid milk, cheese or yogurt. Then retailers sell those products to consumers. In this market we can find a combination of government policies […]
Reducing costs of meeting a cellulosic biofuel mandate with perennial energy crops: potential roles of energy crop insurance and establishment cost subsidies
By Ruiqing Miao and Madhu Khanna on May 8, 2017 in Agriculture, Commodities, Consumer, Economics, Energy
Cellulosic biofuel production in the United States has been growing since 2014 with establishment of a few commercial scale bio-refineries and increasing total production. According to the 2016 Renewable Fuel Standard Data of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), total production of cellulosic biofuels in the United States reached 192 million gallons in 2016.[1] EPA’s proposed 2017 […]
What is Driving the Decline in Ethanol Prices?
After briefly rallying in November 2014, the price of ethanol continued to fall through the beginning of 2015. With the collapse of oil prices continuing to dominate the news, it is tempting to assume that the decline in ethanol prices is being driven by the bearish news coming out of the crude oil market. However, […]
Reviewing USDA’s Revised Conservation Compliance Regulation
On Friday, April 24, 2015, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) published its regulation for attaching conservation compliance to the portion of premium covered by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), known as premium subsidy. Section 2611 of the 2014 Farm Bill (Agricultural Act of 2014) made Highly Erodible Land (HEL) and Wetlands conservation compliance provisions […]
How Does Changing Ethanol Capacity Affect Local Corn Basis?
Over the past decade, the United States has experienced a dramatic boom in ethanol production. The rapid expansion of ethanol was largely driven by the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS), first introduced in 2005, which mandates that 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel are produced per year by 2022, 15 billion gallons of which can come […]
Trading Off Fracked Natural Gas for Coal in China
By Sarah Grajdura and Mindy Mallory on February 13, 2015 in Commodities, Consumer, Economics, Energy
China’s enormous growth in the past few decades stimulated a high demand for energy that historically has been fueled by coal. However, obtaining natural gas from fracking shale formations is becoming an economical competitor to coal in China because of advances in technology and economic incentives provided by the Chinese government (Thomas, p.1). Between 1984 […]
Little Evidence that the National Food Authority can Influence the Price of Rice in the Philippines
Rice is the staple food in the Philippines. It accounts for 1/3 of the total food consumption (in terms of domestic utilization in metric tons) and is grown on about 4 million hectares of the total 13 million hectares of arable land (Glipo, Vibal and Cainglet, 2002). The Philippine government has made numerous attempts to […]