David Dawe (Agricultural Development Economics Division Food and Agriculture Organization Italy)
Abstract
Beginning in 1999/2000, global stock to use ratios for the major cereal grains declined rapidly, and just before the beginnings of the world food crisis in the second half of 2006 these ratios had reached their lowest levels in more than 20 years for all of the three major grains (rice, wheat, and maize). Most of the decline was driven by stock drawdowns in China, however. The declines in stock to use ratios for the world without China were much less rapid and the ratios did not reach particularly low levels before, or even during, the world food crisis. Although China’s demand does influence world markets, it makes sense to analyze the stock data without China because China is a relatively small player in world grain markets and because China’s stock management does not appear to influence or be influenced by world market trends. These observations suggest that stocks did not have an important effect on the evolution of the world food crisis.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO - ESA) in its series Working Papers with number
09-01.
Length: 13 pages Date of creation: 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:fao:wpaper:0901
Contact details of provider: Postal: Agricultural Sector in Economic Development Service FAO Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 00153 Rome Italy Phone: +39(6) 57051 Fax: +39 06 57055522 Email: Web page: http://www.fao.org/es/esa/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Gustavo Anríquez).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: