A Study on the Volatility of Agricultural Commodities in Lagos and Ibadan Markets in Nigeria

In agricultural market where the value of agricultural derivatives is unpredictable, having insight in volatilities of agricultural commodities in these markets is very important for investors and the government. Appling discrete maximum likelihood, we derived the equation for the volatility of the agricultural commodity price and applied it to the data obtained from World Food Programme (WFP) food prices in Nigeria. We then compared the annual volatilities of same agricultural commodity in Lagos market and Oyo market to gain some insight in the uncertainty in the agricultural commodity price. We obtained from our study that the price of Yam and Maize (White) is more stable in Lagos (Lagos) market than price of Maize (White) in Oyo (Ibadan) market. Furthermore, price of Cowpeas (Brown) is relatively stable in Ibadan market compared to Lagos market and we also deduced that the price volatility of Sorghum (White) is relatively stable in Ibadan market compared to Lagos market for the period considered.