Performance of Publicly Traded Agricultural Companies Since 2000: Construction of the Aglndex

Abstract

The crop farming sector has been relatively profitable in the past several years, whereas the general economy has gone through a great deal of turmoil. In this research, we constructed an Aglndex, which tracked the stock prices of publicly traded companies dealing with agriculture performed since 2000. As a group, the market values of publicly traded firms within the Aglndex exceeded those of Standard & Poors 500 (S&P 500) since 2000. Returns were higher for agricultural firms compared with S&P 500 firms. Performance varied across agricultural sectors with fertilizer and seed companies performing the best.