Suchergebnisse

Abstract Critics of the forest transition theory suggest that it occurs through the displacement of agricultural production abroad while exporting countries suffer agricultural expansion and deforestation. Other studies refute the idea of international trade as the main connection between the occurrence of the forest transition in importing countries and the advance of agricultural frontiers and deforestation in producing countries. Considering this divergence, we assessed whether international trade in agricultural commodities is associated with forest growth in importing countries and deforestation in exporting countries. Data on exports and imports of soy and palm oil among the leading countries in this market were confronted with their historical variation of forest cover between 1990 and 2020. The results suggest that global soy and palm oil markets significantly connect the exporting regions to importing countries that undergo forest transition.

This study applies vector autoregression to capture the relationships among inflation, cotton spot and futures price. Further, the autoregressive distributed lag model has been applied to capture the impact of rainfall on the cotton spot and futures price. The result of this study reveals that cotton spot price positively impacts cotton futures, while rainfall negatively impacts the price of cotton futures. There is no impact of inflation on cotton spot and futures markets. Due to the sensitivity of crops to rainfall, the monsoon plays a vital role in price discovery in the agricultural market. Similarly, inflation is another significant issue linked to agricultural prices. Further, any movement in futures prices driven by the speculative activity of traders in the commodity derivatives does not contribute to changes in the spot prices.

The paper examined the dynamics and extent of smuggling of selected agricultural products and assessed the effectiveness of existing policies in mitigating smuggling in the Philippines. Focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and field visits were conducted in selected sites/ports in the Philippines in Indonesia and Singapore. Econometric techniques were performed on secondary data collected for rice, sugar, ginger, onion, carrots, dressed chicken, beef, and pork from 1986 to 2010. Findings revealed that the Philippines' accreditation of importers is done by three different agencies while in Indonesia and Singapore such is done by a single agency thus preventing fictitious importers. Further, the boarding protocol in the Philippines is unique because the Bureau of Customs is the first to board and also the last hurdle in the importation process, contrary to the practice in Singapore and Indonesia. Volume of technical smuggling is increasing and the country's antismuggling measures were ineffective in mitigating smuggling. Reforms that would need legislative actions and those that simply require administrative order were recommended by the study.