Price Volatility and Prediction of Rapeseed as a Market Commodity

The price movement of agricultural commodities is decisive for producers and consumers. Rapeseed is one of the essential sources of proteins, vegetable oil and biofuels in European agriculture. Predicting and analysing its price movement is vital for effective economy, considering climate change, growing demand and geopolitical uncertainty. The article aims to analyse the rapeseed price movement in the Czech Republic from January 2010 to November 2024, forecasting the further price trend through December 2025 based on historical data. We used content analysis, linear regression, MLP and RBF neural networks for the predictions. The data come from publicly available monthly statistics of agricultural commodity prices. Our results show a steadily growing trend in rapeseed prices, peaking at 19,887 CZK/t in 2022, when the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine had dramatically swayed the price movement. Regression analysis confirmed an increasing trend, revealing a period with an accelerated price hike between 2020 and 2022. We used MLP and RBF neural networks for forecasts. MLP indicated the most accurate results with the values closest to the real prices between December 2024 and February 2025, while RBF neural structures tended to underestimate reality. The predicted movement suggests that the rapeseed price will be growing, which may affect the behaviour on purchasing, selling or warehousing this strategic commodity.