A systematic review on price volatility in agriculture

Abstract

The recent extreme volatility in agriculture prices determines serious repercussions to various stakeholders and levels in the food value chain, that is, producers, intermediaries, and customers, at micro-, meso- and macro-economic governance levels, respectively. Persistent high/low degree of agriculture prices leads to unsustainable production/consumption patterns, thus representing an impediment to reaching the goal of responsible consumption and production (UN-SDGs 12). The lack of comprehensive real-time information on price volatility's internal and external factors often resulted in an inconclusive and counterintuitive outcome while performing empirical estimation. The present review was conducted using the PRISMA framework to systematically identify and analyze literature from two important databases. Papers have been grouped by volatility drivers, governance levels, theoretical approaches, and background data types. The present review is a valuable starting point for understanding the links between multi-dimensional factors affecting the persistent price volatility and the theoretical and empirical analytics trends to provide the computational advancement needed to cope with model estimation issues. It also highlights the importance of a paradigm shift in researching agriculture price volatility to addressing food crises, considering principal objectives and perspectives such as food security, poverty alleviation, sustainability in food value chains, and resilience of food systems across the globe.