The vagaries of nature and of world grain markets, causing domestic food production and food import prices to fluctuate, are commonly considered the major external sources of food insecurity in developing countries. The need for steady domestic food production, and for stable world grain prices...

Computable general equilibrium models are used to study the short-run impact of fluctuating primary commodity prices on the economies of Colombia, Ivory Coast and Kenya. The results indicate that these economies are destabilized by primary commodity price fluctuations unless governments act to...