More bad weather is damaging fields from North America to Europe to Asia, this less than a year after the worst drought in a generation destroyed one-third of the Russian wheat crop.
As dry spells threaten crops in France, Western Australia and China, drought conditions have left the Kansas wheat crop in worst shape since 1996. In Canada fields are so muddy that only 3 percent of the grain has been sown, while in the U.S. corn planting is advancing at half of last years pace because of excess rains.
“We need everything to go perfectly, but there is really a lot of potential for problems, based on weather issues” said Sterling Liddell, a vice president for food and agribusiness research at Rabo AgriFinance in St. Louis, who expects Corn to reach $8 per bushel if conditions worsen.