A Commission's report recently published which provides an outlook on agricultural commodity market developments, shows that the agricultural commodity prices are expected to stay firm over the medium term.

The report "Prospects for agricultural markets and income 2011-2020", which was published by the Commission's Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development and with the Joint Research Centre contribution to the report focused on the modelling approach, in particular to run uncertainty analysis.

Besides providing an outlook on agricultural commodity market developments, the report projects that agricultural income per working unit in the EU is set to decline by 3.5% by 2020 in comparison to the 2007-11 average level in EU-15 Member States, but grow strongly by almost 35% in EU-12 Member States. In addition, the report highlights that the projections are subject to uncertainty especially due to the path of economic recovery in the EU and worldwide, which is currently a risk factor.

The present medium term prospects for agricultural markets and income in the EU feature some considerable improvements, including an extended time horizon (beyond the usual 7 years) and product coverage (including biofuels, detailed oilseed complex and whole milk powder) as well as an attempt to identify and quantify the main areas of uncertainty: a separate part has been added to the publication dealing with scenarios on various uncertainties.