Abdolreza abbassian biography
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Commodity Markets: Evolution, Challenges, and Policies
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Commodity markets are integral to the global economy. Understanding what drives developments of these markets is critical to the design of policy frameworks that facilitate the economic objectives of sustainable growth, inflation stability, poverty reduction, food säkerhet, and the mitigation of climate change. This study is the first comprehensive analysis examining market and policy developments for all commodity groups, including energy, metals, and agriculture, over the past century. It finds that, while the quantity of commodities consumed has risen enormously, driven by population and income growth, the relative importance of commodities has shifted over time, as technological innovation created new uses for some materials and facilitated substitution among commodities. The study also shows that commodity markets are heterogeneous in terms of their drivers, price behavior, and macr
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Agricultural Market Information System
The Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) is an inter-agency platform to enhance food market transparency and encourage international policy coordination in times of crisis. It was established at the request of the Group of Twenty (G20) in 2011. Countries participating in AMIS encompass the main producing and consuming countries of major food crops covered by the initiative: wheat, maize, rice and soybeans. AMIS is hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome/Italy and supported by a joint Secretariat, which currently (September 2016) consists of eleven international organizations and entities. Apart from FAO, these are the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) initiative, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the International Grains Council (IGC), the Organisation for Economic Co-op
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No ‘Crisis’ From Grain Export Ban
MILAN, Italy — Russia's plan to extend its grain export ban destabilizes markets but does not bring closer a repeat of the 2007-08 food crisis, a senior United Nations economist said Friday as new protests flared in Mozambique after bread riots.
Falling wheat output in drought-hit Russia, last year the world's No. 3 exporter of grain, drove benchmark U.S. wheat futures to two-year highs of $8.41 a bushel in early August and sparked fears of food price spikes.
"It is true that Russia is thinking about extending the embargo, but it still does not mean that we are going to have a crisis," Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, told Reuters.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the export ban — which had been due for review after Dec. 31 — would be extended until late 2011, puzzling analysts and helping send wheat prices higher.
"Actions like this will s