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This study investigates the relationship between spot and futures prices of agricultural commodities in China. Our analyses show that, first, no cointegration relationship is found between spot and futures prices of corn and wheat. Second, the cointegration relationship exists between spot and futures prices of rapeseed meal and soybean oil. Finally, the asymmetric cointegration relationship is observed between spot and futures prices of soybean and rapeseed oil. Moreover, the constant vector error correction model (VECM) and the time-varying VECM are used to calculate the relative contributions of the two markets in the price discovery process. From the empirical results of static and dynamic price metrics, the spot market dominates the price discovery process of rapeseed meal and rapeseed oil, whereas the futures market dominates that of soybean oil. The static price discovery metric indicates that the spot market dominates the price discovery process of soybean. Then, the dynamic price discovery metric indicates that the price discovery process of soybean is dominated alternately by the spot and futures markets. Results show that the time-varying model can better reveal the dynamic process of the relative contribution of the two markets to the price discovery process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequent price volatility in China's agricultural futures market has aroused concern about price bubbles in the agricultural futures market. This paper analyzes the characteristics of price bubbles in China's agricultural futures market by using data from nine active agricultural commodities futures and the Nanhua agricultural price index. The empirical results show that only soybean futures, sugar futures, cotton futures, and the Nanhua agricultural price index exist price bubbles. The duration of price bubble accounts for 2.5–6.2% of the whole sample interval. Moreover, combined with China's agricultural policy, this paper finds that after 2014, China's policy reform from the "yellow box" policy to the "green box" policy and the "blue box" policy can inhibit price bubbles of agricultural futures market to a certain extent. Additionally, the higher the dependence on the international market, the higher the risk of price bubbles in the agricultural futures market. Besides, agricultural futures are more prone to price bubbles with long duration and large price change during the agricultural crisis (soybean and cotton experienced price bubbles from 2007 to 2008 and 2010 to 2011, respectively). The findings of this paper have important policy implications for policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent robots for fruit harvesting have been actively developed over the past decades to bridge the increasing gap between feeding a rapidly growing population and limited labour resources. Despite significant advancements in this field, widespread use of harvesting robots in orchards is yet to be seen. To identify the challenges and formulate future research and development directions, this work reviews the state-of-the-art of intelligent fruit harvesting robots by comparing their system architectures, visual perception approaches, fruit detachment methods and system performances. The potential reasons behind the inadequate performance of existing harvesting robots are analysed and a novel map of challenges and potential research directions is created, considering both environmental factors and user requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]