Abstract

Current evidence has revealed that international markets of a number of agricultural commodities operate under oligopoly. This paper uses a theoretical framework to show that under this market imperfection and when farmers do not have perfect information about the prices they will receive in the future, an unstable model arises. It is predicted from this result that high degree of export instability might arise as countries continue to sign international trade agreements. The paper argues that in order to minimise this problem, informational strategies should be implemented at the farming level.