Khabarov Nikolay, Obersteiner Michael
Ecosystems Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.
Front Nutr. 2017 Jun 14;4:22. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2017.00022. eCollection 2017.
The commodity market super-cycle and food price crisis have been associated with rampant food insecurity and the Arab spring. A multitude of factors were identified as culprits for excessive volatility on the commodity markets. However, as it regards fertilizers, a clear attribution of market drivers explaining the emergence of extreme price events is still missing. In this paper, we provide a quantitative assessment of the price spike of the global phosphorus fertilizer market in 2008 focusing on diammonium phosphate (DAP). We find that fertilizer market policies in India, the largest global importer of phosphorus fertilizers and phosphate rock, turned out to be a major contributor to the global price spike. India doubled its import of P-fertilizer in 2008 at a time when prices doubled. The analysis of a wide set of factors pertinent to the 2008 price spike in phosphorus fertilizer market leads us to the discovery of a price spike magnification and triggering mechanisms. We find that the price spike was magnified on the one hand by protective trade measures of fertilizer suppliers leading to a 19% drop in global phosphate fertilizer export. On the other hand, the Indian fertilizer subsidy scheme led to farmers not adjusting their demand for fertilizer. The triggering mechanism appeared to be the Indian production outage of P-fertilizer resulting in the additional import demand for DAP in size of about 20% of annual global supply. The main conclusion is that these three factors have jointly caused the spike, underscoring the need for improvements in fertilizer market regulation on both national and international levels.
大宗商品市场超级周期和粮食价格危机与猖獗的粮食不安全状况及阿拉伯之春相关联。众多因素被认定为大宗商品市场过度波动的罪魁祸首。然而，就化肥而言，对于解释极端价格事件出现的市场驱动因素仍缺乏明确的归因。在本文中，我们聚焦磷酸二铵（DAP），对2008年全球磷肥市场的价格飙升进行了定量评估。我们发现，全球最大的磷肥和磷矿石进口国印度的化肥市场政策，竟是全球价格飙升的主要促成因素。2008年，印度在价格翻倍之际，其磷肥进口量也翻了一番。对与2008年磷肥市场价格飙升相关的一系列广泛因素的分析，使我们发现了价格飙升的放大和触发机制。我们发现，一方面，化肥供应商的保护性贸易措施导致全球磷肥出口下降19%，从而放大了价格飙升。另一方面，印度的化肥补贴计划导致农民未调整对化肥的需求。触发机制似乎是印度磷肥生产中断，导致对磷酸二铵的额外进口需求达到全球年度供应量的20%左右。主要结论是，这三个因素共同导致了价格飙升，凸显了在国家和国际层面改善化肥市场监管的必要性。
