ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the percentage price changes and introduce the prevalence of commodity agreements for seven important commodities: cocoa, coffee, rubber, sugar, tea, tin and wheat. The rise and fall of the most significant international commodity agreements is briefly described for each period. An introduction to commodity protocols and compensatory financing schemes is given in the penultimate section and conclusions are presented in the final section. Owing to colonization, before the Second World War producers and consumers of primary commodities often belonged to countries under the same governments and, as part of the domestic policy, efforts were made to achieve steady availability of raw materials and remunerative and stable prices. The basic approach is to restrict output. For countries with monopolistic power, this option is readily available. An example is the ‘valorization scheme’ for coffee introduced by Brazil as early as 1906-7, when prices had dropped dramatically.
