Patent ID: 6865542

Claim:
A method of using a computer for forecasting a price, an amount of consumption, an amount of production and an amount of trade flow of a plurality of primary and processed agricultural commodities, so as to enable their use to optimally allocate industrial or technological resources employed in the production, consumption or trading of said agricultural commodities based on said forecasted values for the commodity prices and amounts of consumption, production and trade flow, using said computer to perform the following steps comprising: accessibly storing an inputs database; creating the inputs database, comprising: inputting to the inputs database a definition of a plurality of regions; inputting to the inputs database a definition of an at least one forecast scenario in said regions comprising a set of trade policies on an amount of the primary and processed commodities imported and exported between the regions, and a set of domestic policies, one of the forecast scenarios being a base forecast scenario in which the set of trade policies and the set of domestic policies are set to recent values; inputting to the inputs database a plurality of data from an at least one source database, the data comprising actual values for the price and amounts of consumption, production and trade flow in said regions over a plurality of recent years, said trade flow comprising the amount of imports and exports of the primary and processed commodities; refining a multi-component spatial equilibrium function ( 210 ) approximating an inter-regional market in said primary and processed commodities; forecasting the price and amounts of consumption, production and trade flow of the primary and processed commodities in the regions, by solving the refined function ( 210 ) under one of said at least one forecast scenarios over an at least annual time period; if more than one forecast scenario is defined, repeating the forecasting step under each of said forecast scenarios; accessibly storing a results database comprising the forecasted price and amounts of consumption, production and trade flow of the primary and processed commodities; and, outputting any of said results to use in deciding how to optimally allocate industrial or technological resources employed in the production, consumption or trading of said agricultural commodities.