Structural change in the agricultural futures markets?

The tide of financial flows into commodities markets, seemingly unstoppable over the past decade, appears to be ebbing. The simplest explanation for the cooling commodities enthusiasm is a significant price decline across several sectors. However, the reality involves many complex variables explained in this paper, including federal regulators’ re-examination of the banking sector’s commodities activities, allegations of commodity price manipulation in the energy and metals markets, a review of high speed computerized trading and rising interest rates following a signaled change in monetary policy by the US Federal Reserve.