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Soft Commodities
Soft commodities, or softs, are commodities such as coffee, cocoa, sugar, corn, wheat, soybean, fruit and livestock.Patrick Maul, ''Investing in Commodities'', diplom.de, 2011, p8 table c. The term generally refers to commodities that are grown, rather than mined; the latter (such as oil, copper and gold) are known as hard commodities. Soft commodities play a major part in the futures market. They are used by farmers wishing to lock-in the future prices of their crops, by commercial purchasers of the products, and by speculative investors seeking a profit. The adjective "soft" is occasionally only applied to products that are classified as largely tropical, such coffee, chocolate, sugar, cotton, and orange juice. Soft commodities have been known to adopt a backwardation trend until the late 1990s when futures were actively traded. Speculation and investment requirements later shaped the common contango Contango is a situation in which the futures contract, futures price (or fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodity
In economics, a commodity is an economic goods, good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the Market (economics), market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who Production (economics), produced them. The price of a commodity good is typically determined as a function of its market as a whole: well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot market, spot and derivative (finance), derivative markets. The wide availability of commodities typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand, brand name) other than price. Most commodities are raw materials, basic resources, agriculture, agricultural, or mining products, such as iron ore, sugar, or grains like rice and wheat. Commodities can also be mass-produced unspecialized products such as chemical substance, chemicals and computer memory. Popular commodities include Petroleum, crude ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hard Commodity
In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a commodity good is typically determined as a function of its market as a whole: well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot and derivative markets. The wide availability of commodities typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand name) other than price. Most commodities are raw materials, basic resources, agricultural, or mining products, such as iron ore, sugar, or grains like rice and wheat. Commodities can also be mass-produced unspecialized products such as chemicals and computer memory. Popular commodities include crude oil, corn, and gold. Other definitions of commodity include something useful or valued and an alternative term for an economic good o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodification
Commodification is the process of transforming inalienable, free, or gifted things (objects, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals) into commodities, or objects for sale.For animals"United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database" UN ComTrade; Josephine Donovan, "Aestheticizing Animal Cruelty," ''College Literature'', 38(4), Fall 2011 (pp. 202–217), p. 203. For slaves as commodities, Appadurai 1986, pp. 84–85; David Hawkes, ''Shakespeare and Economic Theory'', Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, p. 130.For body commodification, Lesley A. Sharp, "The Commodification of the Body and Its Parts," ''Annual Review of Anthropology'', 29, 2000 (pp. 287–328) p. 295ff. It has a connotation of losing an inherent quality or social relationship when something is integrated by a capitalist marketplace. Concepts that have been argued as being commodified include broad items such as the body, intimacy, public goods, animals and holidays. History Terminology The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contango
Contango is a situation in which the futures contract, futures price (or forward contract, forward price) of a commodity is higher than the spot price. In a contango situation, arbitrageurs or speculators are "willing to pay more for a commodity [to be received] at some point in the future than to purchase the commodity immediately. This may be due to people's desire to pay a premium to have the commodity in the future rather than paying the costs of storage and carry costs of buying the commodity today." On the other side of the trade, Hedge (finance), hedgers (commodity producers and commodity holders) are happy to sell futures contracts and accept the higher-than-expected returns. A contango market is also known as a ''normal market'' or ''carrying cost, carrying-cost market''. The opposite market condition to contango is known as backwardation. "A market is 'in backwardation' when the futures price is below the spot price for a particular commodity. This is favorable for inves ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Backwardation
Normal backwardation, also sometimes called backwardation, is the market condition where the price of a commodity's forward contract, forward or futures contract is trading below the ''expected'' spot price at contract maturity. The resulting futures or forward curve would ''typically'' be downward sloping (i.e. "inverted"), since contracts for further dates would typically trade at even lower prices. In practice, the expected future spot price is unknown, and the term "backwardation" may refer to "positive basis", which occurs when the current spot price exceeds the price of the future. The opposite market condition to normal backwardation is known as contango. Contango refers to "negative basis" where the future price is trading above the expected spot price. Note: In industry parlance backwardation may refer to the situation that futures prices are below the ''current'' spot price. Backwardation occurs when the difference between the forward price and the spot price is less ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crop
A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. In other words, a crop is a plant or plant product that is grown for a specific purpose such as food, Fiber, fibre, or fuel. When plants of the same species are cultivated in rows or other systematic arrangements, it is called crop field or crop cultivation. Most crops are harvested as food for humans or fodder for livestock. Important non-food crops include horticulture, floriculture, and industrial crops. Horticulture crops include plants used for other crops (e.g. fruit trees). Floriculture crops include bedding plants, houseplants, flowering garden and pot plants, cut cultivated greens, and cut flowers. Industrial crops are produced for clothing (fiber crops e.g. cotton), biofuel (energy crops, algae fuel), or medicine (medicinal plants). Production There was an increase in global production of primary crops by 56% between 2000 and 2022 to 9.6 billion tonnes, which represents a 0 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farmland or might work as a laborer on land owned by others. In most developed economies, a "farmer" is usually a farm owner ( landowner), while employees of the farm are known as '' farm workers'' (or farmhands). However, in other older definitions a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of plants, land, or crops or raises animals (as livestock or fish) by labor and attention. Over half a billion farmers are smallholders, most of whom are in developing countries and who economically support almost two billion people. Globally, women constitute more than 40% of agricultural employees. History Farming dates back as far as the Neolithic, being one of the defining characteristics of that era. By the Bronze ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Futures Market
A futures exchange or futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts defined by the exchange. Futures contracts are derivatives contracts to buy or sell specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future. Futures exchanges provide physical or electronic trading venues, details of standardized contracts, market and price data, clearing houses, exchange self-regulations, margin mechanisms, settlement procedures, delivery times, delivery procedures and other services to foster trading in futures contracts. Futures exchanges can be integrated under the same brand name or organization with other types of exchanges, such as stock markets, options markets, and bond markets. Futures exchanges can be organized as non-profit member-owned organizations or as for-profit organizations. Non-profit, member-owned futures exchanges benefit their members, who ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodities
In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a commodity good is typically determined as a function of its market as a whole: well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot and derivative markets. The wide availability of commodities typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand name) other than price. Most commodities are raw materials, basic resources, agricultural, or mining products, such as iron ore, sugar, or grains like rice and wheat. Commodities can also be mass-produced unspecialized products such as chemicals and computer memory. Popular commodities include crude oil, corn, and gold. Other definitions of commodity include something useful or valued and an alternative term for an econo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coffee
Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially available. There are also various coffee substitutes. Typically served hot, coffee has the highest sales in the world market for hot drinks. Coffee production begins when the seeds from coffee cherries (the '' Coffea'' plant's fruits) are separated to produce unroasted green coffee beans. The "beans" are roasted and then ground into fine particles. Coffee is brewed from the ground roasted beans, which are typically steeped in hot water before being filtered out. It is usually served hot, although chilled or iced coffee is common. Coffee can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways (e.g., espresso, French press, caffè latte, or already-brewed canned coffee). Sugar, sugar substitutes, milk, and cream are often added to mask ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Livestock
Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals which are raised for consumption, and sometimes used to refer solely to farmed ruminants, such as cattle, sheep, and goats. The breeding, maintenance, slaughter and general subjugation of livestock called ''animal husbandry'', is a part of modern agriculture and has been practiced in many cultures since humanity's transition to farming from hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Animal husbandry practices have varied widely across cultures and periods. It continues to play a major economic and cultural role in numerous communities. Livestock farming practices have largely shifted to intensive animal farming. Intensive animal farming increases the yield of the various commercial outputs, but also nega ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fruit
In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants (angiosperms) that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particular have long propagated using the movements of humans and other animals in a symbiotic relationship that is the means for seed dispersal for the one group and nutrition for the other; humans, and many other animals, have become dependent on fruits as a source of food. Consequently, fruits account for a substantial fraction of the world's agricultural output, and some (such as the apple and the pomegranate) have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings. In common language and culinary usage, ''fruit'' normally means the seed-associated fleshy structures (or produce) of plants that typically are sweet (or sour) and edible in the raw state, such as apples, bananas, grapes, lemons, oranges, and strawberries. In botanical usage, the term ''fruit'' als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
