Analysis of Global Food Market and Food-Energy Price Links: Based on System Dynamics Approach

The situation of the global food markets has been being rapidly restructured and entering on a new phase by new dynamic and driving forces. The factors such as economic growth and income increase, high energy price, globalization, urbanization, and global climate change are transforming patterns of food consumption, production, and markets. The prices and markets of world food and energy are getting increasingly linked each other. Food and fuel are the global dilemma issues associated with the risk of diverting farmland or of consuming cereals for biofuel production in detriment of the cereals supply to the global food markets. An estimated 100 million tons of grain per year are being redirected from food to fuel. Therefore, the objectives of this study are as follows: Firstly, the study examines situations of the world food and energy resources, analyzes the trends of prices of the crude oil and biofuel, and formulates the food-energy links mechanism. Secondly, the study builds a simulation model, based on system dynamics approach, for not only analyzing the global cereals market and energy market but also forecasting the global production, consumption, and stock of those markets by 2030 in the future. The model of this study consists of four sectors, i.e., world population dynamics sector, global food market dynamics sector, global energy market dynamics sector, scenario sector of world economic growth and oil price.