Agricultural Markets and Food Price Inflation—A Conference Summary (Special Issue)
Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth
Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics
The primary goals of the conference
were to examine the roots of increases
in agricultural prices, particularly the
underlying global factors; to explore the
implications of these increases for the
food industry; and to discuss the potential
implications of persistent changes in
food prices on price stability at the
macroeconomic level. The conference started by
highlighting the intense media attention
of the past year on food supplies and
price increases. Yet, real crop prices never
reached the heights of the 1970s, and
they had already started to decline in
2008. Farmland markets responded to
higher commodity prices, evidenced by
a 16% jump in farmland values for 2007
in the Seventh Federal Reserve District.
