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Wheat Skyrockets as World’s Poor Trade Up

More evidence mounts that global inflation will soon soar even higher.

Wheat supplies, for which demand is skyrocketing, faces increasingly inadequate supply.

The cost of common wheat has climbed 50 percent since August and costs for the most sought-after varieties are even higher — as high as $17 a bushel. Common wheat for March delivery was trading over $10 a bushel and recently hit a nominal record of $11.53.

The inflation-adjusted record for wheat prices was $20 a bushel, set in the mid-1970s.

A commodity no one but growers usually spend time thinking about, wheat has a history of being both plentiful and cheap.

But droughts have lowered wheat supplies and U.S. stockpiles are at their lowest since 1948. High international grain prices have driven food shortages, hoarding and even riots in some parts of the world.

"Anyone who tells you they’ve seen something like this (before) is a liar,” says South Dakota trader Vince Boddicker.

As a result, the three United States exchanges that trade wheat futures contracts have since doubled their daily limits on price movements to 60 cents to accommodate trading fluctuations.

Unfortunately for farmers, most lack enough harvested wheat to benefit from recent price increases now. They sold crops their last fall for prices that sounded good then.

Prices are being driven in large part by strong economic growth in once-poor countries. Having more money has enabled people living there to develop a taste for the wheat products they were long unable to buy.

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"We haven’t hit a price that has slowed the international interest,” commodity researcher Joe Victor told The New York Times. "That is something that definitely has the market excited.”

Traders and investors may feel anxious, but not the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It says the wheat shortage is temporary and that stockpiles will fall from 456 to 312 million bushels this year before rebounding to 700 million bushels by the end of the decade.

However, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization says that world wheat production will rise this year to nearly 664 million tons, up from just 655 million tons — far too little to replenish stores and lower prices.

Higher prices will encourage additional acreage and production, the Ag Department’s recent report optimistically forecast, with wheat plantings of 65 million acres in the 2008-2009 growing season.

That would be up from 60.4 million this year, but that number will fall due to competition from other crops.

Egypt, which recently put out an offer for a large wheat purchase, chose not to buy — presumably waiting for lower prices; Japan is reported to be bidding for 85,000 tons of American spring wheat.

"When the last person who has to buy in a market does so, you have a top,” Boddicker points out. "We’re quickly approaching that point, if we haven’t hit it already.”

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