International trade in wheat and other cereals and the collapse of the first wave of globalization, 1900–38

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the dynamics of international trade in cereals, primarily wheat, in the first third of the twentieth century, with a special focus on the causes of the fall in exchanges and prices that took place in the 1930s. Developments over this period are compared with the general trade in food and agricultural products. An examination of the structure of the trade in wheat, maize, and rice shows the operation of their respective markets, giving special attention to the import and export flows between consumers and producers. To understand the functioning of the market for these products, the article examines the changes in supply, demand, and prices, and the emergence and development of intermediary companies in this business. The argument draws from a new database, based on the statistics published by the International Institute of Agriculture.

A Different Product? The Formation and Expansion of the International Meat and Live Cattle Market (1850–1939)

“…2009). As a consequence, certain products, such as cereals, started to show signs of oversupply (Pinilla and Aparicio 2019) and global agricultural exchanges began to slow down in the second half of the 1920s.…”

“…On the other hand, the increases in income due to the post-war recovery implied higher growth in the imports of meat than those of other agricultural products, due to the higher income elasticity of meat. In fact, while cereals had a negative income elasticity in the 1920s (Pinilla and Aparicio 2019, p. 60), several authors show a higher elasticity for meat in different periods of time. For example, Richard Stone calculates an income elasticity of 0.5 for meat between 1920 and 1938 and Yates of 0.52 for the years following the Second World War (Stone 1954; Yates 1960) 6 .…”

“…The preference for this group of products is not a coincidence. Their trade was already very active in the pre-industrial era and during the first globalisation they represented around 20 per cent of world trade in agricultural and food products (Pinilla and Aparicio 2019). However, we believe that our knowledge of international agri-food trade in the first globalisation can be significantly expanded if we study other groups of products with characteristics different to those of cereals.…”

How did international economic regulation survive the last period of deglobalization?

“…This was exhibited in the weakness of the Stevenson plan for rubber in the 1920s which only encompassed the major estates and not the small producers (Knorr 1945), and in the 1931 Chadbourne agreement for sugar (Dye & Sicotte 2006). It also became visible in the failure of the tea cartel in the early 1930s (Gupta 2001), as well as the failure of various efforts in agreement over wheat in the 1930s (Tyszynski 1949) such as the 1930–1931 London wheat conference (Aparicio & Pinilla 2019). Enclaved ordering turns a recognition of common external threat into strengthening of bonds and a sense of solidarity against that threat.…”

National savings in freshwater consumption in Iran by virtual water imports (a case study on cereals)

“…This means that water can be traded between different regions and countries through exchanging physical goods (e.g., agricultural products) whose production requires water. This type of trade is called the virtual water trade (Aparicio & Pinilla, 2019). The virtual water trade refers to the fact that the trade of various goods and products can be considered the trade of a country's freshwater resources virtually (Hekmatnia et al, 2020).…”