Bioenergy & Renewable Energy
Exchange rates have long been thought to have an important impact on the export and import of goods and services, and, thus, exchange rates are expected to influence the price of those products that are traded. At the same time, energy impacts commodity production in some very important ways. The use of chemical and petroleum derived inputs has increased in agriculture over time; the prices of these critical inputs, then, would be expected to alter supply, and, therefore, the prices of commodities using these inputs. Also, agricultural commodities have been increasingly used to produce energy, thereby leading to an expectation of a linkage between energy and commodity markets. In this paper, we examine the price relationship through time of the primary agricultural commodities, exchange rates, and oil prices. Using overlapping time periods, we examine the cointegration relationship between prices to determine changes in the strength of the linkage between markets through time. In general, we find that commodity prices are linked to oil for corn, cotton, and soybeans, but not for wheat, and that exchange rates do play a role in the linkage of prices over time.
In this presentation we assess the potential for bio-fuels in the southeast region and then address the economic issues associated with producing bio-fuels in the Mississippi. In particular we point out that any new uses of land will have to 'buy' acres from current use. We further note the risk and returns of producing an energy commodity.
