With the rapid expansion of biofuel industry with corn, soybean and other food crops as the main raw materials in the world, food prices are not only affected by traditional factors such as supply and demand, cost, but also impacted by non-traditional external factors such as energy market, and the energy-based characteristics of food prices are gradually formed.
Although the rise of food price is intertwined with many factors, with the development of modern petroleum agriculture and the popularization of biofuel technology, the rise of crude oil price is regarded as the main reason by most domestic scholars. It is generally believed that the increase in crude oil prices will lead to the same development trend of food prices through direct "cost impact" and indirect stimulation of "demand increase" by expanding bioenergy industry.
However, some studies have found that the price fluctuation of grain and oil market has asymmetric characteristics, that is, the influence of price fluctuation information on grain prices is not the same. So, what are the transmission effects of crude oil prices and grain prices respectively? How is the change of crude oil price transmitted to the whole grain market? Are the transmission effects of rising and falling crude oil prices on food prices consistent?
With the development of bioenergy technology and the improvement of agricultural mechanization, the co-integration relationship and conduction effect between crude oil price and grain price should be a dynamic process. However, the existing research at home and abroad basically adopts the research method of static estimation of the whole sample or dividing the whole sample into several sub-samples to measure the overall performance and stage characteristics of the conduction effect, and it is difficult to grasp the co-integration relationship between crude oil prices and grain prices and the time-varying panorama of the conduction effect. The conclusions are as follows:
1) Relatively speaking, the transmission effect between soybean and crude oil is the strongest, especially when the crude oil price is high, the cointegration relationship between soybean and crude oil price has a strong pulling force, which can quickly pull the temporary unbalanced state back to the equilibrium state; As the main raw material for producing fuel ethanol, corn is most affected by the increase of crude oil price, and the transmission effect between corn and crude oil is the strongest in the rising stage of crude oil price, but there is basically no significant transmission effect between corn and crude oil when the crude oil price is low.
The price of wheat is not sensitive to the change of crude oil price, but when the price of corn exceeds the price of wheat with the increase of crude oil price, the substitution effect of corn and wheat pushes the price of wheat up, which leads to the enhanced conduction effect between wheat and crude oil. The transmission effect of rice-crude oil is similar to that of wheat, but in recent years, the co-integration relationship between rice and crude oil has been gradually established, and the adjustment speed of rice price to long-term equilibrium has obviously accelerated.
2) Generally speaking, the transmission effect of crude oil price on grain price is strong in the rising and high-level operation stage of crude oil price, but weak in the continuous falling and low-level hovering stage of price. On the one hand, crude oil has penetrated into all aspects of grain production, processing and transportation, and the high price of crude oil undoubtedly increases the cost of all links in the grain industry chain, thus pushing up the grain price;
On the other hand, the rise of crude oil prices broke the relatively stable pattern of grain demand through the "energy" of grain, thus rapidly promoting the rise of grain prices. This paper holds that the rise of crude oil price first affects the prices of soybeans with high degree of marketization and corn directly related to bioenergy production, and then affects the prices of their substitutes rice and wheat, which are transmitted to the whole grain market.
Countermeasures and suggestions: At present, China has started the reform of grain marketization, and grain prices will be more easily affected by external factors. At the same time, China's economy is at a critical stage of structural adjustment. Driven by the "destocking" and "supply-side" reforms, the demand of the grain industry has increased, and the energy attribute of grain prices has become stronger and stronger. Therefore, under the increasingly obvious market situation of grain energy, the government should take the following measures to realize the two-way virtuous circle of energy industry and grain industry.
1) Pay close attention to the energy market as a price information source, and scientifically build a domestic market information monitoring and price early warning mechanism for bulk agricultural products with major grain varieties as the core. Especially in the case of crude oil crisis, it is necessary to appropriately slow down the strategy of opening up the grain market and avoid risks as much as possible. The government carries out macro-control on grain prices through import and export trade, domestic support and other policy measures, so as to prevent the transmission chain of crude oil price bubbles to the grain market from the source and increase the risk resistance of the grain market.
2) Under the background of the market-oriented reform of staple food prices, to fundamentally solve the cross-market contagion problem of price changes, it is necessary to establish and improve the domestic grain market system according to the development characteristics of the grain market itself and enhance the ability to resist price bubbles. At the same time, strictly control the price transmission of energy channels, adjust the strategy in time on the basis of digesting aged grain, accelerate the development of the second generation bioenergy technology, ensure the realization of bioenergy, and minimize the risk.