"The antecedent to the present work is Marian Radetzki's book A Guide to Primary Commodities in the World Economy, published by Blackwell in 1990, three decades ago. In that book Radetzki presented the gist of what he had learnt over the 30 preceding years of active study and research on international primary commodity markets. The timing of that publication was clearly inopportune. Though the book received positive reviews, it aroused only limited attention. Through the 1980s and 1990s, primary commodity markets were in the doldrums. Supply conditions for most commodities were quite relaxed most of the time, and prices remained suppressed. The advanced economies were in a process of dematerialization, where declining volumes of raw materials were needed per unit of value added. This suppressed demand growth and reduced the significance of commodities in their macroeconomies.

In these circumstances, security of supply assumed a low priority for users. Producers struggled with excess capacity and weak profitability"--.