Vegetable and cereal production dynamics impact socioeconomic conditions, agricultural performance, and the food industry structure. Specifically, cereals play a determinant role in the sustainability of societies, considering that they are used by several food industries and their importance for the human diet. Taking into account the importance of potatoes and wheat for the Portuguese contexts, a special focus was given to these two products. In this way, it analysed the potential consequences of the pandemic and recent crises on the potatoes and wheat producer prices, considering statistical information for the weeks of 2017-2022 from the SIMA (Sistema de Informação de Mercados Agrícolas). The impacts seem to be higher on the wheat prices than on the potatoes, and these implications came from namely in 2022.
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Cereal markets and respective chains have a crucial contribution to food security and the whole food industry, considering their use for the production of many other products. In this way, cereal prices influence other markets (De Roest et al., 2008), including the supply of livestock feed (Olaizola et al., 2015) and household consumption (Sy et al., 2022). They affect also agricultural decisions (Doole & Weetman, 2009), options (Xu & Mola-Yudego, 2021) and resource allocation (Dzanku, 2015). Effects on pulses production are an example of these implications from the cereal markets (Ghelfi & Palmieri, 2017).
The cereal markets contribute significantly to inflation in developing countries (Durevall et al., 2013). The food and agricultural supply must adjust to the input prices (Deleuran et al., 2013). Wheat and sorghum are among the most important cereals (Abay et al., 2023). These markets are impacted by several variables, but speculation, in some circumstances is among the main causal variables (Andreosso-O’Callaghan & Zolin, 2010). The competition for land between biofuel crops and food production is another factor that affects the commodities prices (Müller et al., 2008), as well as the climate changes in certain cases (Parry et al., 2004) and the agricultural practices (Salo et al., 2007).
The increase in cereal prices after the pandemic promoted the interest in better management of food waste (Ben Rejeb et al., 2022). The cereals prices were also impacted by the 2008 international crisis (Shenggen Fan, 2010), showing their vulnerability to international shocks, and consequent implications welfare of the citizens (Rocchi et al., 2013). The volatility in the cereal markets is another topic of interest (Ott, 2014).
The cereal markets are affected by the European Union decisions, specifically in the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and respective reforms (Benoit & Laignel, 2014) over the years after its creation in the fifties (Popović et al., 2020). Generally, agricultural policies impact the agricultural markets, including cereal prices (García et al., 2008), and food security (Rosegrant et al., 2005).
Potato is another important crop for food security worldwide and a raw material for processed food. The expansion of this crop across the world was decisive to improve the nutritional condition of the population (Lutaladio & Prakash, 2010).
These motivations and the current conjuncture justify the present research about the impacts of the recent events (the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis, particularly) on Portuguese vegetable and cereal prices. For that, data from the national agricultural markets information system (SIMA, 2023) were considered for the last years. Scopus (2023) was surveyed and Stata (StataCorp, 2017a, 2017b; Stata, 2023) software was taken into account to obtain some results. Normalised values=(xi-xminimum)/(xmaximum-xminimum).