Crude oil and grain, as two pivotal global commodities, exhibit significant price co-movement that profoundly affects national economic stability and food security. From the perspective of systems theory, the energy and grain markets do not exist in isolation but rather form a highly coupled complex system, characterized by nonlinear feedback, cross-market risk contagion, and cascading effects. This study systematically investigates the transmission mechanisms from international crude oil prices to the domestic prices of Chinese four major grains, employing the DY spillover index, Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), and a mediation effect framework. The empirical findings reveal three key insights. First, rising international crude oil prices significantly strengthen the pass-through of global grain prices to domestic markets, while simultaneously weakening the effectiveness of domestic price stabilization policies. Second, higher crude oil prices amplify international-to-domestic price spillovers by increasing maritime freight costs, a key channel in global grain trade logistics. Third, elevated oil prices stimulate demand for renewable biofuels, including biodiesel and ethanol, thereby boosting international demand for corn and soybeans and intensifying the transmission of price fluctuations in these commodities to the domestic market. These findings reveal the key pathways through which shocks in the energy market affect food security and highlight the necessity of studying the “energy–food” coupling mechanism within a systems framework, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of cross-market risk transmission.
Zhuang et al. (2025) studied this question.