The Caribbean Sugar Crisis: Consequences and Challenges

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott B. MacDonald ◽  
F. Joseph Demetrius

“Being in Sugar is like collecting Confederate currency”. This assessment, offered by anthropologist Sidney Mintz (1985), is shared by many sugar industry observers, insiders, and, increasingly, by many Caribbean officials. King sugar, instrumental in shaping the diverse political, economic, and social histories of the Caribbean since colonial times, confronts a seemingly intractable crisis: a severe, and sustained, disequilibrium between global demand and supply which makes export of sugar very unattractive. Except in those cases where preferential arrangements exist between producers and consumers-the Lomé Convention, the US sugar quota system, and the Soviet guaranteed purchase of Cuban sugar-world prices for sugar are at a record low, well below production costs.

2013 ◽  
pp. 770-777
Author(s):  
Yelto Zimmer

The EU is about to abolish the sugar – and the isoglucose – quota system in 2016/17. Isoglucose made from corn occupies about 50% of the US sweetener market while its market share in the EU caloric sweetener market is less than 5%. Against this background, this paper analyses the economics of isoglucose production in Europe in order to understand its competitiveness vis-à-vis sugar. Key results: (1) Isoglucose will become a rather competitive product. The EU sugar industry will have to give up about 40% of its current processing and profit margin in order to sell sugar at the same price as isoglucose will be traded; (2) Once industrial sugar users move to isoglucose, they will tend to be “hooked-in,” giving the sugar industry a strong incentive to defend its market share; and (3) Since only about 30% of the current sugar market is able to switch to isoglucose, the sugar industry has the option to practice a mixed calculation. In an extreme scenario, the industry may even opt to cross-subsidize sales. Therefore it’s not clear whether investors in isoglucose will be able to gain a major market share in Europe.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Curry-Machado
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Florian Ielpo

This chapter covers the economic fundamentals of commodity markets (i.e., what shapes the evolution of the price of raw materials) in three steps. First, it covers the theories explaining why the futures curve can be upward or downward sloping, an essential element for commodity producing companies. The evolution of inventories and hedging pressures are the two dominant sources of explanation. Second, the chapter reviews the fundamentals of commodity spot prices: technologies, supply, demand, and speculation. Production costs draw the long-term evolution of prices, but demand and supply shocks can trigger substantial variations in commodity prices. Third, the chapter presents how commodity prices interact with the business cycle. Commodities are influenced by the world activity but can also have a material impact on it.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ecler Jaqua ◽  
Terry Jaqua ◽  
Van Nguyen

Supply and demand are amongst the essential requirements before starting up a business. Understanding the quantity of a commodity wished to be sold by producers based on different prices and the item needed by consumers wish purchasing is essential in coming up with ideas. Based on the understanding of this and background research on costs in healthcare, specifically family medicine, it is found that healthcare is amongst the essential requirements, and thus the critical focus of the business idea in a physician’s practice focusing on family medicine care in the US. Starting up the business is based on healthcare demands in the market and further the pricing strategy utilized by most family medicine clinics. Through a connection to the business based on visits in hospitals and the quality offered by these service providers, it is noted that the demand is high and is the most expensive sector in the world, but care is ineffective (The Peterson Center on Healthcare, n.d.) thus leading to searching for effective alternatives by consumers. This creates a potential for offering the most effective services to cater to the demands, and as noted by the Peterson Center on Healthcare (n.d.), the US healthcare system is the most expensive, and costs are projected to grow dramatically in the coming years thus creating the most significant business opportunity to entrepreneurs. By adjusting the resources and trying to cater to the demand in various locations, the key idea is to cater to the need and profit from the sector. The concern of gaining information in the market is research on different healthcare websites and the prices offered and the quality of their services. This will aid in adjusting the prices effectively and thus retaining the demand and supply chain.


2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 905-912 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. van der Zaag ◽  
J. Gupta ◽  
L. P. Darvis

Abstract. In this opinion paper we submit that water experts conduct comparatively little research on the more urgent challenges facing the global community. Five specific biases are identified. First, research in the field of water and sanitation is heavily biased against sanitation. Second, research on food security is biased in favour of conventional irrigation and fails to address the problems and opportunities of rainfed agriculture. Third, insufficient water research is dedicated to developmental compared to environmental issues. Fourth, too little research is conducted on adaptation to climate change by developing countries. And finally, research on water governance has a fascination for conflict but too little eye for cooperation and meeting basic needs. This paper illustrates these biases with bibliometric indicators extracted from the ISI Web of Science. There is a stark mismatch between the global demand for knowledge and the supply of it. This mismatch is identified here as a problem that we water scientists must confront and resolve. We still lack a full understanding why this divergence between demand and supply occurs and persists; an understanding that is required to guide us towards aligning our research priorities to societal demands. The paper, however, makes some inferences. On the one hand, we should promote the global South to create its own research biases and allow it to develop alternative solutions. Simultaneously we would benefit from critical examination of our own research practice. Although this paper addresses a critical challenge it does not aim to be exhaustive or definitive. We merely identify the persistence of intransigent water problems as a valid research object in itself.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Noralv Veggeland

The purpose of this paper is to show that the administration of a modern welfare state is a complex thing. The statemeets the challenge of the “trilemma”. Social policy formation does fundamentally relay on the outcome of the debateabout the future of the European welfare state. From the perspective of the political-economic approach, social policyformation is a dependent variable to both European integration policy and national administrative traditions. However,the national state does not act in a sovereign manner neither in relation to the European Union (EU) nor to domesticmember actors. All of them confronted with a so-called “trilemma” aspect, a term first introduced by the US socialscientist Torben Iversen (2005). In this paper, I follow up his analysis and shows the difficult choices that confrontspolicy-makers on the different administrative levels because of this trilemma and its trade-offs. New PublicManagement ideas are dominant and for the time being confront the other ruling administrative social traditions ofWestern Europe. In this paper, I conclude that a European agreement on a social choice, related to the overcome oftrilemma, must be accomplished to save the welfare state model as we know it. The traditional Nordic welfare statemodel gives an example.


Author(s):  
Sally-Ann Treharne

The US-led invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada at the alleged behest of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) on 25 October 1983 had a profound negative impact upon the development of the Special Relationship under Reagan and Thatcher. The dubious legality of the intervention was widely criticised by the international community, most notably the UK. And yet, it was the Thatcher government that bore the scars of considerable domestic criticism regarding the unlawful US involvement in the internal affairs of a member of the British Commonwealth. The US invasion of Grenada, or operation ‘Urgent Fury’ as it is otherwise known, raised important questions regarding the limits of British credibility and importance within the Anglo-American alliance.


Author(s):  
Wendy C. Grenade

One of the consequences of the demise of the Grenada Revolution and the US invasion of Grenada in 1983 was the formation of a new political party architecture to break with the past to rid Grenada of the vestiges of the revolution and the Eric Gairy regime that preceded it. The new architecture was intended to transcend authoritarianism, intra-party conflict and political violence to turn Grenada into a showcase for democracy and free enterprise. This chapter maps the contours of party politics in post-revolutionary Grenada. It argues that Grenada has transitioned to formal democracy but has not yet achieved deeper substantive democracy. The chapter teases out lessons from the Grenada case for democratic renewal in the Caribbean.


Author(s):  
Ye-Sho Chen ◽  
Chuanlan Liu ◽  
Qingfeng Zeng ◽  
Renato F. L. Azevedo

Franchising as a global growth strategy, especially in emerging markets, is gaining its popularity. For example, the U.S. Commercial Service estimated that China, having over 2,600 brands with 200,000 franchised retail stores in over 80 sectors, is now the largest franchise market in the world. The popularity of franchising continues to increase, as we witness an emergence of a new e-business model, Netchising, which is the combination power of the Internet for global demand-and-supply processes and the international franchising arrangement for local responsiveness. The essence of franchising lies in managing the good relationship between the franchisor and the franchisee. In this paper, we showed how e-business and analytics strategy plays an important role in growing and nurturing such a good relationship. Specifically, we discussed: managing the franchisor/franchisee relationship, harnessing the e-business strategy with aligning the e-business strategy with application service providers, an attention-based framework for franchisee training and how big data and business analytics can be used to implement the attention-based framework.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document