Commodity price shocks are times when the prices for commodities have drastically increased or decreased over a short span of time.

Post-Napoleonic Irish grain price and land use shocks (1815–1816)

During the international Post-Napoleonic depression (1815–1821) following the conclusion of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815),

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

and other grain prices fell by half in

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, and alongside continued population growth,

landlord A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant (also a ''lessee'' or ''renter''). When a juristic person is in this position, t ...

s converted

cropland Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous with bot ...

into

rangeland Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. Types of rangelands include tallgrass and shortgrass prairies, desert grasslands and shrublands, woodlands, sava ...

by securing the passage of

tenant farmer A tenant farmer is a person (farmer or farmworker) who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, ...

eviction Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee (often, the prior owners who defaulted on a mortgag ...

legislation in 1816, which led, because of the Irish workforce's historic concentration in agriculture, to a greater subdivision of remaining land plots under

tillage Tillage is the agricultural preparation of soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Examples of human-powered tilling methods using hand tools include shoveling, picking, mattock work, hoein ...

and increasingly less efficient and less profitable subsistence farms.

1971–1973

At the time of the 1973 oil crisis, the price of corn and wheat went up by a factor of three.

2000s decade

During the 2000s, the price of

Brent Crude Brent Crude may refer to any or all of the components of the Brent Complex, a physically and financially traded oil market based around the North Sea of Northwest Europe; colloquially, Brent Crude usually refers to the price of the ICE (Intercon ...

rose above $30 a barrel in 2003 before peaking at $147.30 in July 2008. With the onset of the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

, reduced demand for oil caused the price to fall to $39 per barrel in December 2008. The 2007–08 world food price crisis saw corn, wheat, and rice go up by a factor of three when measured in US dollars.

Second half of 2014

Chinas New Normal Challenges Ahead for Asia-Pacific Trade 1

Global commodity prices fell 38% between June 2014 and February 2015. Demand and supply conditions led to lower price expectations for all nine of the World Bank's commodity price indices - an extremely rare occurrence. The commodity price shock in the second half of 2014 cannot be attributed to any single factor or defining event. It was caused by a host of industry-specific, macroeconomic and financial factors which came together to cause the simultaneous large drops across many different commodity classes. Amongst these, the transition of China's economy to more sustainable levels of growth and the shale-energy boom in the United States were the dominant demand-side and supply-side factors governing the downturn in global commodity prices.

2020

On April 20, 2020, WTI's May contract closed at -$37.63/barrel while the June contract closed at positive $20.43/barrel. The main cause is due to the ongoing

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

which has reduced demand along with storage issues and the expiration of the May contract the following day.

External links

"Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Report 2015: Supporting Participation in Value Chains", United Nations ESCAP, November, 2, 2015

References

{{Financial crises History of international trade Commodity markets