In some quarters, programmes to persuade impoverished farmers to switch to legal crops have curbed supplies of raw materials.One part of the industry, however, seems to be blossoming as never before.
At the same time, dwindling farmlands and, especially in China, urbanisation are curbing supply.Yet Malthusian doom is highly improbable.
Reports of a row come with Opec countries due to meet on 30 November to discuss curbing supply to boost prices, as they wrestle with a global oil glut.
It is economic illiteracy to pretend that demand can be stemmed by curbing supply, and grotesquely unfair to persecute a poor supplier while one's own elite consumes vast quantities of the stuff.
Many more students of the drug problem have concluded that money spent on demand reduction has a much bigger impact than attempts to curb supply.More specifically, the aid can only work in the medium-term if Mexico builds an effective national police force.
Briefs from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, scoff that this argument "radically shrivels the right to own property" and "threatens to send [it] the way of the California Raisins [a group of singing dried fruit who are not as popular as they used to be] .The government maintains that the programme is intended to help raisin farmers by curbing supply and stabilising prices.
Most national drug control strategies have focused on law enforcement to curb supply despite calls to explore other approaches, such as decriminalisation and strict legal regulation, it said.
Oil prices fell on Thursday as scepticism deepened that an OPEC agreement to curb supply would tighten up the market, which slipped heavily the session before after news of a huge build in U.S. crude inventories.
As the New Year began, some analysts predicted oil would not fall below $55 a barrel due to strong demand from the Middle East and Asia coupled with attempts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to curb supply.
As the self-styled guardian of diamond prices, De Beers often finds itself in the unenviable position as the buyer of last resort and has built huge stockpiles of diamonds to curb supply.
