COVID-19 Influence on Developments in the Global Beef and Sheep Sectors

While the COVID-19 pandemic and associated government responses have had a substantial impact on consumers and meat supply chains worldwide, the effect on beef and sheep farming has been surprisingly small, short-lived and largely offset by other global influences. However, the impact has also varied greatly between countries and regions, largely due to differences in Government measures and in industry circumstances and influences. This study aims to provide insights into the pandemic’s impacts throughout global beef and sheep supply chains, but with a focus on the farm level, particularly producer prices in 2020. At the centre of the study is an analysis of online questionnaire-based survey responses to the Global agri benchmark Beef and Sheep Network. The study also utilizes a variety of other studies and information sources to explore other potential factors that could have also driven beef and sheep sectors worldwide in 2020. It explores how these influences interacted with the effect of the pandemic. Food service sales were highly impacted by the pandemic, meat processing was temporarily disrupted in North America but global livestock prices remained high due, in large part, to the continuation of strong beef and sheep meat demand and imports in China.

Ways of improving tariff regulation efficiency

The system of tariff regulation in the Russian Federation has been experiencing improvements since the beginning of the transition period and up until today. The issues of tariff regulation are given particular attention to both in the Russian Federation and abroad. At the time, tariffs do not form subsequent to certain economic waves, but are in most cases described by an annual regulation cycle and a quite limited range of regulation with regard to the long-term horizon. The authors have analyzed average consumer prices (tariffs) for particular services along with producer price indices by types of economic activities and average annual producer prices for main energy resources in Russia over the last 20 years based upon the official statistical data. The authors conclude that it is necessary to introduce new ways of improving tariff regulation efficiency. Among the priority ways are the following: formation of an investment-worthy tariff and justification of the supporting tariff for crucial social projects; digital tariff modeling and etc. All these changes require methodological justification and further development of the variable supporting tariff theory in order to test new cyclic models of regulation matching the cyclic economy of the country.

COVID-19, spatial market integration and producer prices: A case study of EU agri-food markets

The spread of COVID-19 has had a signifi cant impact on economic and social activities, with the agri-food sector being no exception. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, numerous studies investigating its sectoral infl uence have been carried out, putting emphasis on demand and supply shocks and changes in trade volumes. However, there has not been much research into the implications of the pandemic for prices. To fi ll the research gap, this paper is an attempt to examine the impact of COVID-19 on producer prices in the EU-27 in Q2 and Q3 of 2020. The study is based on monthly data on trade in agri-food commodities according to the SITC classifi cation in 2015-2020 and the monthly producer prices index of food (2015 = 100) in the EU countries. It was assumed that the agri-food trade balance is the key factor determining the level and changes of domestic prices. The theoretical background for empirical research is provided by a spatial partial equilibrium model and the concept of spatial market integration. The results of the study reveal that there is a negative and statistically signifi cant relationship between an export-import ratio (which illustrates the country’s self-suffi ciency level) in the pre-COVID-19 period and price changes in Q2 of 2020 as well as Q3 of 2020. However, no statistically signifi cant results were obtained for the regression models explaining the relationship between changes in the export/import ratio and price changes in second and third quarters of 2020.

Introducing the World’s First Global Producer Price Indices for Beef Cattle and Sheep

While international beef and sheep meat price developments are usually measured with meat trade prices (provided by FAO), no comparable information exists on world average of national prices that producers receive for livestock. This paper aims to fill this gap by introducing a set of global producer price indices representing cattle, lambs, and sheep prices as received by producers: the agri benchmark of weaner cattle, finished cattle, lambs and lambs and sheep price indices. These Laspeyres, production-weighted indices measure changes in global farm gate prices as provided annually by the agri benchmark Beef and Sheep Network, with this paper covering prices between 2000 and 2019. The results showed that growing Asian imports, local economic developments in South America, the interconnection with the dairy sector in Europe, growth of beef consumption in China and exchange rates shifts are the key factors that drove developments of global beef producer prices over the past 20 years. Droughts in Oceania and the rapid rise in China’s sheep meat prices are highly reflected in the Global Lambs and Lambs and Sheep Meat Price indices. The indices indicate whether cattle and sheep producers globally are receiving more, or less, for the commodity and may increase or reduce production and investment accordingly. This will be of more use if there were similar producer price indices for competing enterprises, such as dairy and cropping, and for competing proteins, such as pigs, poultry, and fish.

Commodity price pass-through along the pricing chain

This paper analyses the commodity price pass-through along the pricing chain for the global commodity price index and the indices of its main categories (i.e., agricultural raw materials, food and beverages, energy and metals) in the world, advanced and emerging economies. To do so, the study considers country-by-country vector autoregression models and pool the results by taking weighted means for 18 advanced economies and 19 emerging countries, as well as for the world (defined as the sum of advanced and emerging economies). The results show the following: (i) there is evidence in favour of partial pass-through from commodity prices to producer prices, although the evidence for the pass-through to consumer prices is less evident; (ii) the pass-through in the world seems to be led by both advanced and emerging countries for producer prices and only by advanced economies for consumer prices; (iii) higher prices in the four categories (agricultural raw materials only in the short-run) induce significant higher producer prices in almost all cases, with shocks in the prices of energy and metals showing the largest effects; and (iv) energy prices explain the highest variability of producer and consumer prices.