How to feed the world in 2050: Macroeconomic environment, commodity markets - A longer temr outlook

Dominique van der Mensbrugghe (), Israel Osorio Rodarte, Andrew Burns () and John Baffes ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The recent commodity boom was the longest and broadest of the post-World War II period. Although most prices have declined sharply since their mid-2008 peak, they are still considerably higher than 2003, the beginning of the boom. Apart from strong and sustained economic growth, the recent boom was fueled by numerous other factors including low past investment in extractive commodities, weak dollar, fiscal expansion in many countries, and, perhaps, investment fund activity. On the other hand, the diversion of some food commodities to the production of biofuels, adverse weather conditions, global stock declines to historical lows and government policies, including export bans and prohibitive taxes, accelerated the price increases that eventually led to the 2008 rally. This paper concludes that the increased link between energy and non-energy commodity prices, strong demand by developing countries - when the current economic downturn reverses course - and changing weather patterns will be the dominant forces that are likely to shape developments in commodity markets.

Keywords: commodity prices; long-term prospects; global economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C68 J11 O13 Q17 R13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19019/1/MPRA_paper_19019.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19061/1/MPRA_paper_19061.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:19019

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().