U.S. floods could reduce world corn supplies, raise food prices

The U.S. government will report later this month on how many acres of corn were lost to flood waters. But farmers and agriculture experts already say the toll appears grim, with thousands of acres probably destroyed in the region that grows most of the world’s corn.

“It’s not a very good picture at all. We’re looking at possibly a good reduction in acres if a lot of this crop remains underwater,” said Chad Hart, an agriculture economist at Iowa State University. “There’s still hope, but it wanes with each rainstorm.”

The disaster has drawn comparisons to the 1993 floods that displaced thousands of people and wiped away vast swaths of the heartland’s agriculture. At the time, about 18 bushels per acre of corn were destroyed, “and everybody is reporting that this year is worse,” said Jason Ward, grains analyst at North Star Commodity in Minneapolis.

The most recent floods have sent corn prices soaring past US$7 a bushel for the first time, up from about US$4 a year ago. Prices shot to a record for a seventh straight day Friday, climbing as high as US$7.37 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Flood waters also hurt soybean crops, sending prices to near all-time highs. Wheat, oats, rice and other food commodities were damaged, too.

And corn prices could jump further if flood waters don’t recede soon, experts say.

“We’ve got some major price volatility ahead the weaker this crop gets,” Hart said.

In Iowa, the country’s top corn producer, about 9 percent of the anticipated crop either hasn’t been planted because farmers can’t get into their fields, or it needs to be replanted because it’s waterlogged, said Roger Elmore, a corn expert at Iowa State.

That’s about 1.2 million acres of corn — almost 1.5 percent of the country’s anticipated harvest — that may produce only a fraction of its potential yield. Rain continued falling in much of Iowa on Friday, and it’s already late to be planting corn.

“It’s Noah’s Ark-like conditions out there ... and if you replant now you’re going to get much lower yields,” said Vic Lespinasse of grainanalyst.com in Chicago.

Corn prices have shot up more than 80 percent in the last year because of rising energy prices and surging global demand for biofuel and livestock feed. But excessive rainfall in the Midwest has pushed prices up nearly 20 percent in the last month alone.

Climbing commodity prices worldwide have hit Americans in their wallets and touched off riots in Haiti, Senegal, Egypt and other poor countries.

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