How can agricultural commodity producers appropriate a greater share of value chain incomes?

This book argues that the viability of many observed market and non-market interventions in agricultural products worldwide depends considerably on the underlying behaviour of the relevant commodity markets. Many of these policies have had distortive impacts, resulting in much discussion and controversy in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of trade negotiations. Despite the long history of studies of commodity market behaviour, a number of issues remain unresolved. The authors review a wide range of these issues and provide a survey of current methodological and empirical research to increase our understanding of the nature of commodity markets. Price behaviour and the reliability of different prediction methods are examined and the particular implications for commodity dependent developing countries are also highlighted