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A commodity market is a market that trades in the primary economic sector rather than manufactured products, such as cocoa, fruit and sugar. Hard commodities are mined, such as gold and oil. Futures contracts are the oldest way of investing in commodities. Commodity markets can include physical trading and derivatives trading using spot prices, forwards, futures, and options on futures. Farmers have used a simple form of derivative trading in the commodities market for centuries for price risk management.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the agricultural policy of the European Commission. It implements a system of agricultural subsidies and other programmes. It was introduced in 1962 and has since then undergone several changes to reduce the EEC budget cost and consider rural development in its aims. It has however, been criticised on the grounds of its cost, its environmental, and humanitarian effects.
An agricultural subsidy is a government incentive paid to agribusinesses, agricultural organizations and farms to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities.
In finance, a futures contract is a standardized legal contract to buy or sell something at a predetermined price for delivery at a specified time in the future, between parties not yet known to each other. The asset transacted is usually a commodity or financial instrument. The predetermined price of the contract is known as the forward price or delivery price. The specified time in the future when delivery and payment occur is known as the delivery date. Because it derives its value from the value of the underlying asset, a futures contract is a derivative.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is a global derivatives marketplace based in Chicago and located at 20 S. Wacker Drive. The CME was founded in 1898 as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board, an agricultural commodities exchange. For most of its history, the exchange was in the then common form of a non-profit organization, owned by members of the exchange. The Merc demutualized in November 2000, went public in December 2002, and merged with the Chicago Board of Trade in July 2007 to become a designated contract market of the CME Group Inc., which operates both markets. The chairman and chief executive officer of CME Group is Terrence A. Duffy, Bryan Durkin is president. On August 18, 2008, shareholders approved a merger with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and COMEX. CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX are now markets owned by CME Group. After the merger, the value of the CME quadrupled in a two-year span, with a market cap of over $25 billion.
Artificial scarcity is scarcity of items despite the technology for production or the sufficient capacity for sharing. The most common causes are monopoly pricing structures, such as those enabled by laws that restrict competition or by high fixed costs in a particular marketplace. The inefficiency associated with artificial scarcity is formally known as a deadweight loss.
A price floor is a government- or group-imposed price control or limit on how low a price can be charged for a product, good, commodity, or service. It is one type of price support; other types include supply regulation and guarantee government purchase price. A price floor must be higher than the equilibrium price in order to be effective. The equilibrium price, commonly called the "market price", is the price where economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the (equilibrium) values of economic variables will not change, often described as the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal. Governments use price floors to keep certain prices from going too low.
In economics, a price support may be either a subsidy, a production quota, or a price floor, each with the intended effect of keeping the market price of a good higher than the competitive equilibrium level.
Government cheese is processed cheese provided to welfare beneficiaries, Food Stamp recipients, and the elderly receiving Social Security in the United States, as well as to food banks and churches. This processed cheese was used in military kitchens during World War II and has been used in schools since the 1950s.
The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is an international treaty of the World Trade Organization. It was negotiated during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and entered into force with the establishment of the WTO on 1 January 1995.
A buffer stock scheme is an attempt to use commodity storage for the purposes of stabilising prices in an entire economy or an individual (commodity) market. Specifically, commodities are bought when a surplus exists in the economy, stored, and are then sold from these stores when economic shortages in the economy occur.
A strategic reserve is the reserve of a commodity or items that is held back from normal use by governments, organisations, or businesses in pursuance of a particular strategy or to cope with unexpected events.
The agricultural policy of the United States is composed primarily of the periodically renewed federal U.S. farm bills. The Farm Bills have a rich history which initially sought to provide income and price support to US farmers and prevent them from adverse global as well as local supply and demand shocks. This implied an elaborate subsidy program which supports domestic production by either direct payments or through price support measures. The former incentivizes farmers to grow certain crops which are eligible for such payments through environmentally conscientious practices of farming. The latter protects farmers from vagaries of price fluctuations by ensuring a minimum price and fulfilling their shortfalls in revenue upon a fall in price. Lately, there are other measures through which the government encourages crop insurance and pays part of the premium for such insurance against various unanticipated outcomes in agriculture.
Butter-Powder Tilt is the price adjustment strategy in United States, which requires the USDA to support the farm price of milk at $9.90 per cwt. by standing ready to purchase surplus butter, cheese and nonfat dry milk when wholesale prices for these commodities fall below administratively set levels. The 2002 farm bill allows USDA to adjust the government purchase price of butter and nonfat dry milk twice annually in order to better manage its inventories of surplus milk products and minimize government costs. However, whenever the purchase price of one commodity is reduced by USDA, it must increase the purchase price of the other commodity so that the overall support price of milk remains at $9.90 per cwt. This price adjustment is referred to as the butter-powder tilt.
Marketing orders and agreements in United States agricultural policy allow producers to promote orderly marketing through collectively influencing the supply, demand, or price of a particular commodity. Research and promotion can be financed with pooled funds.
In United States agricultural policy, the make allowance is the margin between the government support price for milk and the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) purchase price for butter, nonfat dry milk, and cheese. This margin is administratively set to cover the costs of “making” milk into butter, nonfat dry milk, or cheese to reach the desired level of prices for milk in manufacturing uses.
Intervention stocks refers to stocks held by national intervention agencies in the EU as a result of intervention buying of commodities subject to market price support. Intervention stocks may be released onto internal markets if internal prices exceed intervention prices. Otherwise, they may be sold on the world market with the aid of export restitutions under the regulation of commodity-specific Management Committees.
The doctrine of parity was used to justify agricultural price controls in the United States beginning in the 1920s. It was the belief that farming should be as profitable as it was between 1909 and 1914, an era of high food prices and farm prosperity. The doctrine sought to restore the "terms of trade" enjoyed by farmers in those years. It was highly controversial, since critics argued it ignored changes in agricultural productivity and set an artificial standard.
The butter mountain is a supply surplus of butter produced in the European Union because of government interventionism that began in the 1970s. The size of the surplus changed significantly over time and mostly disappeared by 2017, which led to shortages. Other surpluses were described as beef mountains, milk lakes, wine lakes and grain mountains.
Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices affect producers and consumers of food. Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing and food distribution. Fluctuation in food prices is determined by a number of compounding factors. Geopolitical events, global demand, exchange rates, government policy, diseases and crop yield, energy costs, availability of natural resources for agriculture, food speculation, changes in the use of soil and weather events directly affect food prices. To a certain extent, adverse price trends can be counteracted by food politics.
References
This article incorporates public domain material from Jasper Womach. Report for Congress: Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition (PDF). Congressional Research Service.
