Posted on 04/18/2022 6:59:12 PM PDT by blam
A combination of factors has sent corn futures in Chicago to the highest level in a decade as investors fret over dwindling supplies.
Corn futures haven’t exceeded $8 a bushel since September 2012, following a devastating drought that damaged crops across the U.S. Midwest. Now supply risks return but for different reasons.
The global outlook for corn supplies has plunged since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in late February. The war-torn country supplies a fifth of the world’s corn and could experience a 50% decline in output this year.
Soaring fertilizer costs have forced some farmers in the U.S. to increase plantings of soybeans this growing season versus corn as the crop requires fewer nutrients.
Fertilizer prices are at record highs because of rising natural gas costs and Russia limiting fertilizer exports to ‘unfriendly‘ countries. Russia is one of the biggest exporters globally — the U.S. just so happens to be a large importer of nitrogen and potash from Russia.
And the latest development pushing corn prices to the stratosphere is the Biden administration’s announcement of emergency measures last week to expand biofuel sales to curb soaring gasoline prices. The problem with this move is that the ethanol industry absorbs a larger share of the corn crop, which would curb supplies to the food industry. So ultimately, it would increase prices.
This is happening as global food prices jumped a stunning 12.64% MoM in March – almost double the previous record monthly surge…
Global food prices have exceeded levels only seen during the inflation riots of 2010/11, known as Arab Spring.
Investors appear to be pricing in a corn shortage. It’s never been a better time to start growing your own garden.
20th century: Food shortage grow more corn for food.
21st century: Food shortage grow more corn for fuel.
Yep. I rmemebr the “Taco Protests” when the Mexicans were protesting high corn and fuel prices during the Obama years. We are rules by tyrannical idiots. The worst kind.
April 2022:
Sell future corn for $$$$$; Grow corn later for settlement of the profit [maybe].
Consumer confidence lowest in a decade.
Hey, hey, the Biden collection of creeps, vampires, and idiots is pushing increased consumption of alcohol based ethanol. After all, it’s better to waste food to use energy to produce a “fuel” that has less energy than gasoline.
Those people don’t need no stinkin’ food. DemotRATz sez so.
Since the price of fertilizer is going to drive increased soybean planting, what is happening to soybean futures?
LGBFJB
50 pound bag of whole Corn at Farm & Fleet went to $13.99 a bag last week. It was $6.99 when Trump was President.
Yet another Biden/Harris disaster.
Obviously, making more ethanol for gasoline will solve this problem.
Your government at work!
Let’s put more corn in gasoline!!!! That’ll make it cheaper!!!
Effing idiots…
Libs hate internal combustion engines, and more ethanol will destroy them more quickly.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feture (to them).
I’ll pick up an extra box or 2 of corn flakes tomorrow.
"Neither increases in government subsidies to corn-based ethanol fuel nor hikes in the price of petroleum can overcome what one Cornell University agricultural scientist calls a fundamental input-yield problem: It takes more energy to make ethanol from grain than the combustion of ethanol produces."
"Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning," says the Cornell professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences."
I don’t know where the hell the idiots claiming fundamentals underlying inflationary pressures are weakening are seeing that for long. COVID lockdowns in China may depress global gas and oil prices a bit, but supply chain disruptions will make up for that, elsewhere.
The food situation / inflation could easily become not just hardship here, but heavily fatal in poor countries. I think expecting even 1/2 of Ukraine’s food exports of 2021 (a great year for them) to go out in 2022 or 2023 is way too optimistic. My farmer neighbor is quite alarmed by the fertilizer situation / prices & fuel prices too, but is fairly sure grain prices next fall / winter will make up for it.
BTW, it is very interesting to look at satellite views of Ukraine. It may be that nearly 90% of the land area is worked farmland!
Ya think Vlad knows that?
Weather conditions are not optimal. If corn isn’t planted by Middle of May, the price is going higher (Beans 17.17 for May.)
I've read that there are 30 million truckers locked-down in China.
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