Though COVID-19 might have emphasized many socio-political fault lines in the United States, there is perhaps no statement more agreed upon than this: the agricultural marketing system merits a deeper understanding. In the second edition of Agricultural Marketing and Price Analysis, Drs. Norwood, Lusk, Peel, and Riley provide a thorough structure for an advanced undergraduate course. The text introduces modern tools for understanding and participating in the economics of food marketing. That said, this text is very accessible as it does not require any prior knowledge of calculus – or the food system more broadly. The authors provide quality examples of statistical tools and market research techniques while mixing key economic concepts relevant to price setting, production arrangements, trade, supply chain management, and marketing plans.

The textbook starts from what the authors label as the “Three I’s of Economic Theory” (pg. 8) – incentives, interactions, and indifference. Out of those principles, the book includes an easy-to-understand description of economic concepts such as willingness to pay, opportunity costs, the time value of money, how to understand and analyze supply and demand, and elasticities. Other economic principles are addressed later in the text, including free-riders, utility theory, price discrimination, and game theory. This first section of the book is primarily helpful for students without any training in economics, creating an accessible on-ramp into the more complex topics covered later in the text.

Following Part I, the authors move to agricultural prices and markets. They use real-world examples of products like beef and corn to discuss how long-run supply and demand shifts cause price changes, seasonality, market shocks, and market adjustments. The book also covers a chapter on international trade in agriculture, explaining the concept of comparative advantage, tariffs, trade agreements, and ways to conduct price analysis for global trade patterns. In a chapter new to this edition, the authors also discuss supply chain analytics for food-at-home and food-away-from-home markets. This section analyzes food expenditures and the increasing share of the marketing bill (defined as the cost of transforming farm production into a consumer good). It then concludes with a discussion of production arrangements: vertical coordination, agricultural contracts, cooperatives, and their strengths, limitations, and concerns.

Part III proposes the book’s most advanced level of tools for students interested in agricultural marketing and price analysis. This section covers a wide range of analytical topics, including pricing schemes, futures and options contracts, regression and time series analysis, qualitative and quantitative forecasting, game theory and its applications for price setting, and market analysis to understand consumer behavior.

Norwood et al. make several changes to the second edition. Part I no longer includes a chapter on imperfect competition. Part II is relatively unchanged. Most of the important changes come in Part III, which includes two new chapters on price forecasting. Chapter 9 covers supply chain management and forecasting tools for supply chain managers, and Chapter 10 on quantitative forecasting tools covers characteristics of time series, exponential smoothing, and machine learning. Chapter 8 on futures and options markets is a significant improvement. For example, the updates on contract specs for agricultural commodities trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange make the second edition one of the most current textbooks on the subject. Chapter 13 reviews recent advancements in consumer research.

Minor changes to the second edition include a new table of contents, which makes the textbook easier to navigate. The authors remove the study questions and crossword puzzles from the end of each chapter. Finally, several of the applied examples include updates to the prices and dates, making them more relatable to students.

Overall, Norwood et al. deliver a quality textbook that covers topics in agricultural marketing and price analysis in a way that provides value not only for students in an agricultural economics department but also in other areas, including supply chain management and food systems. The updates and new chapters in the textbook are encouraging for instructors who might consider switching to the second edition. The textbook might also be helpful for industry professional trainings, especially for marketing managers involved with agribusiness. That said, a few additions might improve a future draft of the textbook and would likely need to be supplemented through other means. First, there would be value in including a chapter on regulations and their impacts on the supply chain and consumer behavior. Key regulatory burdens might include health labeling, country-of-origin legislation, and overall market protection. Case studies on dry counties, tariff rate quota systems, alternative milk labeling, and cannabis regulation might be helpful.

In the book’s last chapter, the authors address how attributes such as prices, convenience, and social perceptions can influence consumer preferences for food products. They focus on how each attribute is related to a person’s ‘web of beliefs’, which represents how a group of facts might lead to systematic thinking about food. The book might benefit from additional content describing the concept, roots, and effects of misconceptions and biased beliefs associated with a person’s web of beliefs about the agri-food system. Some ideas include distortions experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak (i.e., panic buying) or misconceptions related to health.

To that end, an additional chapter on cultural dynamics and social constructs for food might be helpful in the consumer behavior section of the text. Within that chapter, there would be value in emphasizing the importance of seasonal demand and the gaps between harvest and consumption for products during holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas, and Thanksgiving. The chapter would also benefit from discussing how international migration can create regional niche food markets, such as Italian food culture in New Jersey, halal practices, and kosher product demand.

That said, this textbook represents a welcome resource for any students interested in agricultural marketing and price analysis and can provide valuable insights for even students in advanced courses.