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Chapter 4. Price Determination: Matching Quantities Supplied and Demanded. Effects of Demand Shifts. Demand Shifts for Food. Domestic demands fairly steady; unexpected shifts unusual Some increase seasonally for certain products Foreign demand more variable, less predictable.
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Chapter 4 Price Determination: Matching Quantities Supplied and Demanded
Demand Shifts for Food • Domestic demands fairly steady; unexpected shifts unusual • Some increase seasonally for certain products • Foreign demand more variable, less predictable
Market Clearing • Process of the market price adjusting so that all buyers and sellers currently wishing to trade at that price can do so. • The more perishable the commodity, the less able sellers are to wait for a better price.
Perishable Crops • Demand and supply curves of strawberries at harvest: suppliers’ alternatives extremely limited.
Nonperishable Crops • Storage alternatives open to suppliers give positive slope to the supply curve.
Example of Seasonal PricePattern for Storable Commodity For Kansas City No. 1 hard red winter wheat, 1995-2004 (DTN Ag Dayta, 2005).
Flow Commodities:Livestock and Poultry • Marketed every week of the year • Storage possible but expensive and impractical due to continuous production • Expectations regarding short-term price changes may influence producers’ willingness to sell
Price as a FeedbackSignal to Production • Outlook information: data and projections about market demand, supply, and prices provided by private agencies • Producers plan to increase production when anticipating profitable prices, cut production when prices go down • Adjustments of amounts supplied are limited by production lag times
Cobweb Model • A theoretical description of how prices of a commodity could cycle even if its demand and supply curves are stable • Introduces continual disequilibrium, a set of prices that keep changing over time even though basic supply and demand schedules are stable
Pricing:Farm-to-Retail Price Spread • The difference between the prices farmers receive and those that consumers pay • Also called price spread • Compiled and published for numerous farm commodities and the “market basket” • Price spread easier to calculate for products with less processing (e.g., eggs)
Pricing: Long-term Trendof Farmer’s Share • For period 1920-1990, farmer’s share of market basket averaged 40% • Today farmer’s share below 20%
Factors Affecting Price Spread • Amount of processing needed • Amount of commodity supplied to processors • Dollars needed to cover costs • Costs of marketing • Rising as processing costs fall (less automation in food service) • Food-marketing bill calculated by USDA
Class Exercise • Using the agricultural commodity assigned in Chapter 1: • Collect five years of monthly price data • Graph the data over the entire time period, using one graph spanning one year and five lines representing the five years • Establish whether the commodity is perishable or nonperishable • Determine what caused price fluctuations