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Thesis (M.Comm.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009. / Full text also available online. Scroll down for electronic link.

M. S.

The effect of movements in the real exchange rate on agricultural prices and agricultural export sales is assessed based on the principle of Granger causality. An out-of-sample forecasting procedure is used to conduct tests for Granger causality from the exchange rate to agricultural prices and export sales. Technical time series issues such as stationarity, the method of lag-length selection, in sample versus out-of-sample tests for Granger causality, and long-range versus short-range forecasting are considered in relation to the outcome of Granger causality tests. Theoretical and empirical studies are reviewed which indicate the importance of working with stationary data series when testing for Granger causality. Differing methods of lag-length selection are found to affect the outcome of both in-sample and out-or-sample tests for Granger causality. The usual in-sample tests for Granger causality are compared to out-of-sample tests; the results of the comparison reveal that the in-sample tests do not in-general agree among themselves, nor do they agree with the out-of-sample tests' results. This indicates the importance of searching the model space for the best specification before conducting Granger causality tests. Long-range forecasts are compared to the I-step ahead forecasts used to test for Granger causality; these forecasts corroborate the out-of- sample tests for Granger causality in finding significant impacts from the exchange rate to agricultural export sales and agricultural prices. / Master of Science

The effects of anticipated versus unanticipated money growth on total, nonfarm, and farm real gross domestic product, real net farm income, real prices received by farmers for crops and livestock, and the real value of agricultural exports are evaluated. The distinction between anticipated and unanticipated components of money growth is motivated by the new classical rational expectations assertion that. anticipated money growth is discounted by agents and has no real effects, while unanticipated money may have real impacts. The differentiation of money growth into anticipated and unanticipated components follows a rational expectations scheme using Granger causality tests. The money growth equation and the output, real price, and agricultural export equations are estimated by a two-step estimation procedure. The regression results for total and nonfarm real gross domestic product and real net farm income indicate an influence from both anticipated and unanticipated components of money. On the other hand, real farm gross domestic product appears to be affected by only unanticipated components of money. The regression results for prices received by farmers for crops and livestock, and the real value of agricultural exports indicate little influence from either anticipated or unanticipated components of money. In sum, the results suggest that neither anticipated nor unanticipated money is always neutral, but only limited evidence is found of monetary impacts specifically on agriculture. / M.S.

This thesis is concerned with the problems of agricultural price administration. It is an examination of the different agricultural price administration experiments that have been used. These administered price experiments are the topics of discussion.

The working hypothesis underlying this research was that computerized electronic marketing influences price level and the price discovery process. Electronic markets were also hypothesized to alter bidding strategies of participants. The theoretical background which stimulated this study arose from the shortcomings of the competitive market system in agriculture. One possible solution to agriculture's pricing problems is electronic markets. Solving the thin market problem through increased participation via electronic markets can help to increase prices. Three types of buyers use ELPC's system: packers, order buyers, and local buyers. Larger buyers are more disciplined buyers. They bid less, pay lower prices, and obtain a higher percentage of lambs sold. Large buyers have different objectives than smaller local buyers and are under more economic pressure to stay abreast of market conditions. Electronic markets are unique since they set bid wait time intervals and identities of bidders remain anonymous. Both the bid wait time interval and the anonymity feature significantly influence improvements in price during the auction process. Bid wait time intervals are necessary in developing electronic markets. Finding the optimum interval (9 to 12 seconds) will aid in setting bid increments for new electronic markets. Bidders, with anonymous bidding, will bid for longer periods of time and this means higher prices. This important finding suggests that overt or tacit collusion, which could occur in conventional auctions, does not occur in the computerized sales with the anonymous bidding. / M.S.

O objetivo deste estudo é analisar as relações de longo prazo do preço do milho na Bahia, Goiás, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina e São Paulo, estados importantes na produção, consumo e comercialização do grão. A análise foi realizada no período de 1996 a 2004, marcado pela liberalização comercial e menor intervenção governamental. Para determinar a relação de integração entre as variáveis, foram aplicados testes de raiz unitária de Dickey e Pantula - DP, de cointegração de Johansen e testes sobre os parâmetros &#946 e &#945 do vetor de cointegração. Avaliada a relevância de cada estado dentro do vetor de cointegração pela hipótese &#946i = 0, testou-se a hipótese de perfeita integração (&#946i = - &#946j), a fim de verificar se a Lei do Preço Único - LPU é válida para esses mercados. Porém, o fato da LPU não se aplicar não implica que esses mercados não sejam integrados. Partindo-se dessa consideração, uma hipótese menos restritiva foi testada, a qual não impõe a relação de perfeita integração entre os mercados. Os resultados mostram que os preços de São Paulo e Minas Gerais estão perfeitamente integrados com quase todos os demais, o que comprova a influência daqueles estados na formação do preço interno. O Centro-Oeste é uma das principais regiões produtoras e exportadoras de milho do país. Nessa região, os preços mostraram-se perfeitamente integrados com os do Paraná, Minas Gerais e São Paulo, importantes mercados produtores e consumidores de milho. Já os preços praticados na Bahia são mais independentes em relação ao dos demais estados, pois, apesar de ter expandido sua produção nos últimos anos, a Bahia ainda importa quantidades significativas de milho da Argentina e de outros países. No Rio Grande do Sul e em Santa Catarina, a produção de aves e suínos é representativa, o que faz com que esses estados sejam atualmente importadores de milho. Porém, apesar da viabilidade de comércio entre o Paraná e os estados de Santa Catarina e Rio Grande do Sul, não se verificou a validade da LPU. / This study aims to analyze the long term relations of the corn price in the states of Bahia, Goiás, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and São Paulo, major producing, consumer and trading areas of the grain in Brazil. The analysis was carried out from January 1996 to December 2004, period of commercial liberalization and lesser governamental intervention. To determine the relation of variables integration, it were applied tests of unit root of Dickey and Pantula - DP, cointegration tests of Johansen and tests on the parameters &#946 and &#945 of cointegration vectors. After testing the importance of each state into the cointegration vector, through the hypothesis &#946i = 0, it were tested the hypothesis of perfect integration ( &#946i = - &#946j) to verify if the Law of One Price - LOP is valid for these markets. However, if LOP is not verified, it doesn`t mean that those markets are not integrated. Taking this into consideration, a less restrictive hypothesis was tested, which doesn`t impose the relation of perfect integration between the markets. The results show that prices settled in the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais are perfectly integrated with almost all other states` ones, what proves the influence of those two states in the determination of the domestic price. The Center-Westerner region of Brazil is one of the major corn producing and exporting area, and the price of this region showed perfect integration with prices settled in Paraná, Minas Gerais and São Paulo, important consumers and exporting areas. In Bahia, prices are more independent in relation to the other states. This state has expanded the corn production in recent years, but, even so, it still importing significant amounts of corn from Argentina and other countries. The states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina are great poultry and hog/pork producers, and that make necessary to those states to import the grain. Even trade between Paraná state and its neighbors is viable, it was not verified the validity of the LOP.

O setor primário da região de Marília tem passado por crises periódicas, em função do comportamento cíclico de preços e produção do café, sua principal atividade agropecuária. Com isso, a receita dos cafeicultores está sujeita a sensíveis oscilações a cada ano, sugerindo um elevado nível de risco econômico. Como parte do Projeto de Apoio à Competitividade Global da Cultura do Maracujazeiro na Região de Vera Cruz, SP - AFRUVEC/Bioex-CNPq essa dissertação tem como objetivo avaliar o comportamento dos cafeicultores da região de Marília na presença do risco. Uma vez que o grau de aversão ao risco dos agricultores é refletido na escolha dos planos de exploração agropecuária, inicialmente desenvolveu-se uma metodologia para identificar os sistemas de produção de café existentes na região. Essa identificação baseou-se na elaboração e análise de grupos focais e validação dos resultados através de análise discriminante. Assim, foram identificados os sistemas "monocultura de café", "cafeicultura e pecuária" e "pequena propriedade diversificada". Posteriormente, selecionou-se uma propriedade típica de cada sistema para o estudo do comportamento dos agricultores perante o risco. A programação linear foi a técnica utilizada na modelagem dos sistemas de produção. Para a geração das fronteiras de eficiência, que refletem o trade-off entre rendimento e risco, foi empregado o MOTAD. Os resultados dessa pesquisa indicam que o produtor do sistema cafeicultura e pecuária é mais averso ao risco do que o monocultor. Esse comportamento era esperado, pois as margens brutas da pecuária são negativamente correlacionadas com as do café, indicando que a combinação dessas atividades é eficiente do ponto de vista da redução do risco. No entanto, constatou-se que o pequeno produtor diversificado é menos averso ao risco do que o monocultor, contrariando as hipóteses iniciais do trabalho. Esse comportamento pode ser explicado pela estratégia de diversificação adotada pelo agricultor, que optou por investir em diversas espécies frutíferas e na cafeicultura. Grande parte das frutas possui maior grau de risco que o café e, além disso, muitas dessas atividades são positivamente correlacionadas, o que reduz a eficiência da diversificação na minimização dos riscos do sistema. Com isso, pode-se afirmar que o objetivo principal da diversificação da pequena propriedade é a elevação da margem bruta do sistema, pois somente com a cafeicultura o produtor não obteria renda suficiente para permanecer na atividade. A grande contribuição dessa pesquisa é mostrar e divulgar a situação dos pequenos cafeicultores, a importância da diversificação para os mesmos e abrir espaço para a realização de outros estudos na região de Marília. É muito importante que futuras pesquisas levantem alternativas de cultivo para elevar a renda dos pequenos produtores da região, considerando estudos de mercado e identificação de canais de comercialização. Por outro lado, também seria interessante aprofundar o estudo da situação dos pequenos produtores inseridos em outros sistemas que não incluam a cafeicultura, para se ter uma visão mais abrangente dos problemas enfrentados e definir ações efetivas para o desenvolvimento regional. / Marília's region primary sector has passed for periodic crises because of coffee prices and cyclical production behavior. The coffee farmers' income is subject to sensible oscillations each year, suggesting a high level of economic risk. As part of the Passion Fruit Global Competitiveness Support Project in the region of Vera Cruz, SP - AFRUVEC/Bioex-CNPq, the objective of this thesis is to evaluate risk behavior of the Marília's region coffee farmers. Once the degree of farmers' aversion to risk is reflected in the choice of the farming plans, a methodology was initially developed to identify the coffee production systems in the region. This identification was based on focus groups analysis and the results validated through discriminant analysis. Thus, three production systems were identified: "single crop farm coffee", "coffee and cattle" and "small diversified farm". A typical farm for each system was selected for analysing farmers' behavior in the presence of risk. Linear programming technique was used for modeling production systems. MOTAD was used for generating the efficiency frontiers that reflect the trade-off between income and risk. The results indicate that the farmer of "coffee and cattle" system is more averse to risk than that of the "single crop farm". This was an expected behavior, because cattle gross margins are negatively correlated to the coffee ones, indicating that the combination of these activities is efficient in reducing risk. However, it was shown that the small diversified farmer is less averse to risk than the "single crop farm", as opposed to the initial hypotheses of the study. This behavior can be explained by the diversification strategy adopted by the farmer which has chosen to invest in a variety of fruit crops species and coffee. A great part of fruit crops have higher risk degree than the coffee crop, and many of these activities are positively correlated, what reduces the diversification efficiency in the quest of minimum system risk. So it can be stated that the main objective of the small farm diversification system is raising the gross margins, because the farmer would not earn enough income to remain in the activity by just cropping coffee. The major contribution of this research is to show and divulge the importance of the diversification for small coffee farmers. It is very important that future researches could provide farm alternatives to raise the income of small farmers of the region, considering market studies and identification of trading channels. On the other hand, it would also be interesting to deepen the analysis of the situation of small producers in other systems which not include coffee, to have a wider vision of the problems and to define effective actions to ensure the regional development.

The Federal Reserve has increased nominal interest rates since early 2016. It is expected that commodity prices will drop in response to this monetary intervention. The overshooting hypothesis explains that commodity prices are more flexible than manufacturing prices and therefore are more volatile. In this situation, it is expected that agricultural commodities decline significantly (i.e., overshoot) and gradually return to their long-run equilibrium. This adjustment behavior has implications for income stability and financial viability of farmers. This research contributes to the overshooting literature by including the energy sector in the overshooting model. The interlinks between energy and other sectors in the economy as well as the vast resource allocation to biofuel production in recent decades demand more attention to the impact of energy on the dynamic adjustment path of relative prices’ reaction to monetary shocks. We assume energy prices have independent adjustment path and include the links between the energy and agricultural sectors through biofuel production in our model. Our theoretical model shows that by including energy prices in the model, agricultural prices and the exchange rate overshoot less than the prediction of prior studies. This happens because we expect that flexible energy prices share the burden of the shock with other flexible prices in the model. We also describe how an increasing share of biofuels in the total fuel consumption will reduce the flexibility of energy prices. In our empirical analysis, we use monthly data from January 1975 to December 2017 for three producer price indexes (i.e., agricultural commodities, energy, and industrial goods), exchange rates, and money supply to test the overshooting hypothesis. We found the series to be nonstationary and cointegrated of the order one, I(1). Thus, we estimated a vector error correction model to identify the short run adjustment parameters while maintaining the long-run relationships between the variables. We identify and control for three possible structural breaks in the data that coincide with two economic crises and the biofuel production era. We also estimated the empirical model using a sub-sample from January 1975 to March 1999 and compared the results with the findings in previous studies. Our empirical results confirm the theoretical expectation that agricultural commodities adjust faster than manufacturing prices. The analysis of the impulse response functions shows that after a money supply shock, agricultural prices were the most responsive, followed by energy prices and exchange rates. In both full sample and the sub-sample, the volatility of prices and exchange rates happen during the first 5 to 10 months. The sluggish adjustment of manufacturing prices was evident from the corresponding impulse response functions. The empirical evidence rejects the long-run money neutrality, consistent with the findings of previous empirical studies. Compared to previous models, our empirical model shows that including energy prices will reduce the extent to which agricultural commodities overshoot. Therefore we expect the disturbances to the farm income variability, in response to monetary policy, to be less than what prior model would have estimated. In this regard, energy prices are a stabilizing factor in this model. We find that increased share of biofuel from total fuel consumption would positively affect the overshooting of agricultural prices. So, higher biofuel mandates could reduce the flexibility of the energy prices and therefore have an adverse effect on the farm price stability.