Price volatility is a specificity of agriculture and other sectors for which demand is rigid : even with high prices, consumers will continue to buy food while they will not increase consumption when they are low ... Only deep poverty can prevent them to buy when prices are high. In such a context, prices can increase or decrease almost without limits in response to small production variations.
At the same time, agricultural price volatility is detrimental to production levels, because farmers are responsive to price variability as well as to mean prices : At any mean price level, they will reduce supply if prices are changing too frequently, and increase it if prices are constant.
Thus, reducing food price variability is desirable. A possibility in this respect would be to increase the proportion of very poor in the population, which will increase food price elasticity.... Of course, this not serious ! More seriously, one have to cut the links between agriculture and markets, as recommanded by many serious economists such as Galiani in the 18th century, or Ezekiel, in the 1930's... See my book Les prix agricoles (l'harmattan, Paris 2017).
M. Jean-Marc Boussard