Do biofuel production and financial speculation in agricultural commodities influence African food prices? New evidence from a TVP-VAR extended joint connectedness approach

Many African countries experienced social disorder and subsequent political instability as a result of global commodity price inflation in 2007–2008, which reaffirmed the importance of overseas factors such as biofuel production, international food and energy prices, and financial speculation. Biofuel, in particular, is often placed at the center of the debate around identifying potential determinants of food price hikes. We apply a time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) extended joint connectedness approach to uncover the dynamic connectivity of African food prices, US biofuel production, global energy and food prices, and financial speculation. The key findings are;1) the results of averaged connectedness suggest that US biofuel production and financial speculation in agricultural commodities significantly influence African food prices;2) the hefty surges in the dynamic connectedness between African food prices and four cross-border factors are triggered by global events like the 2000 dot-com bubble, the 2008 global commodity boom, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic;3) arbitrage transactions transmitted intense shocks to African food prices between 2001 and 2012, while biofuel production constantly affected African food prices between 2001 and 2021. We draw pragmatic policy implications to prevent or mitigate market shock transmissions to African food markets.

The Effectiveness of Self-Sufficiency Policy: International Price Transmissions in Beef Markets

International beef markets have shocked regional markets in importing countries due to unexpected events such as the COVID-19 epidemic, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and high prices for grain feed. After the global food price spikes in 2008, many national governments aimed to improve food self-sufficiency to secure food supply. However, the efficacy of food self-sufficiency policy, particularly that of meat products, is not fully understood. This paper investigates the causal nexus and estimates the degree of volatility transmissions between global and regional beef prices in 10 beef-importing nations for the period January 2006 to December 2013. Furthermore, we empirically analyze how beef self-sufficiency rates affect the correlations between global and local beef markets using a panel analysis. Our primary findings are: (1) Unidirectional causality from global to local markets was found for Georgia, the UK and the United States. Meanwhile, Japan is a large beef importer, and its price causally influences global prices;(2) We found that the interconnectivity between world and regional markets is relatively weak. Regional markets can absorb external shocks in the meat sector better than wheat because meat production is more flexible than grain production, which is heavily dependent on climatic conditions and (3) Empirical results provide strong indications that high self-sufficiency is useful in isolating local markets from global markets. The results obtained from our analysis are extremely useful for policymakers of national governments who desire to insulate domestic from international beef markets in an emergent situation.