Wheat futures have surged by more than 40% over the last five days, on track for the biggest weekly rise since at least 1959 as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine crimps exports of the crucial food grain and stokes global inflation fears.
Soft red winter wheat for May delivery W00, 0.25% WK22, 0.37% on the Chicago Board of Trade jumped by its expanded, 75-cent daily limit again on Friday, a gain of 6.6%, to lock at $12.09 a bushel, its highest since 2008. That leaves wheat up 40.6% on the week, the strongest weekly rise since at least July 1959, based on available FactSet data.
Corn futures C00, -0.03% have jumped 18% this week and soybean futures have been dragged up by more than 5%.
“I am convinced it is going to be the biggest supply shock to global grain markets in my lifetime,” tweeted Scott Irwin, agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, on Wednesday.
“As just one data point. It has been reported that there are 600 million bushels of corn contracted for export that is currently trapped in Ukraine,” he wrote. “And what about 2022 [production]?”