In the decades since that first meeting, this conference has seen a number of boom and bust cycles in agriculture, most often the result of volatile swings in commodity prices, land price valuations, and borrowing costs for agricultural business owners. Through all of these challenges, this conference has provided an important opportunity to promote a greater understanding of emerging issues in agricultural finance.
It is my contention that the main driver of the crisis was located in the financial sector, particularly banks which intermediated large capital flows towards the periphery, creating imbalances that became unsustainable when a sudden stop occurred following the international crisis and the abrupt revision of price of risk that it entailed.