Improved access to information appears to have greatly amended the performance of markets in many rural areas, especially in markets for perishable products. The emergence of money transfer and payment mechanisms has potentially enormous implications for access to finance and payment mechanisms for a huge population of people currently without access to banks. The theme “Agriculture in an Interconnected World” of the 29th International Conference of Agricultural Economists is intended to capture the widespread adoption of new communication technologies.

The theme embraces a wide range of interconnections that are contributing to unprecedented changes in global agriculture, such as:

• trade policy debates, both when prices are high and when they are low;
• the collective action problems associated with price volatility;
• international investment in agricultural land;
• links between scientific progress and productivity growth in agriculture;
• climate change and agriculture;
• competition between agriculture and other users of increasingly scarce water.
• links between agricultural and energy markets through biofuels and inputs of fuel and fertilizer;
• links between agriculture and other uses of land;
• links between agriculture and other sectors as developing countries urbanize and labor moves out of agriculture;
• the supermarket revolution in developing countries;

The 29th ICAE proposes to address these changes, their effects and the best ways to address the challenges.

The conference will be held in the wonderful northern-Italian city of Milan, place of EXPO 2015, that by bringing together leading experts in these areas will provide a forum for exchange of ideas and new insights.