Policy Conflicts and Solutions Policymakers are realizing that the three big issues of climate change, sustainability and food security are conflicting. The Cairns Group is comprised of highly competitive agricultural exporting countries and so their frustration with the conflicts at the WTO is understandable. They want expanded market access and are proposing a plurilateral approach on agriculture to bypass the large number of protectionist members of the WTO. They have proposed three possible solutions:
a critical mass plurilateral agreement in agriculture; sectoral agreements that bring into play both market access and domestic support; and a comprehensive new global compact on subsidies, including agriculture, industri...
Commodity markets – being composed primarily of human beings – reflect the impatience and forever forward-looking nature of humans. In the present case, this means that while the September WASDE offered some much-needed and much-desired updates, markets are now focused on that etern...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported this morning that August’s rate of inflation was 0.4 percent, holding steady at 3.4 percent for the year. That matched analysts’ pre-report expectations and was even with July’s rate of 3.4 percent. For the year, food was up 2.7 pe...