  We present the results of study of a possible relationship between the space
weather and terrestrial markets of agricultural products. It is shown that to
implement the possible effect of space weather on the terrestrial harvests and
prices, a simultaneous fulfillment of three conditions is required: 1)
sensitivity of local weather (cloud cover, atmospheric circulation) to the
state of space weather; 2) sensitivity of the area of specific agricultural
crops to the weather anomalies (belonging to the area of risk farming); 3)
relative isolation of the market, making it difficult to damp the price hikes
by the external food supplies. Four possible scenarios of the market response
to the modulations of local terrestrial weather via the solar activity are
described. The data sources and analysis methods applied to detect this
relationship are characterized. We describe the behavior of 22 European markets
during the medieval period, in particular, during the Maunder minimum
(1650-1715). We demonstrate a reliable manifestation of the influence of space
weather on prices, discovered in the statistics of intervals between the price
hikes and phase price asymmetry. We show that the effects of phase price
asymmetry persist even during the early modern period in the U.S. in the
production of the durum wheat. Within the proposed approach, we analyze the
statistics of depopulation in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Iceland,
induced by the famine due to a sharp livestock reduction owing to, in its turn,
the lack of foodstuff due to the local weather anomalies. A high statistical
significance of temporal matching of these events with the periods of extreme
solar activity is demonstrated. We discuss the possible consequences of the
observed global climate change in the formation of new areas of risk farming,
sensitive to space weather.
