Title: Wheat price falls to lowest level in a decade | Financial Times
Headings: Wheat price falls to lowest level in a decade
Wheat price falls to lowest level in a decade
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Content: Wheat price falls to lowest level in a decade | Financial Times
Wheat price falls to lowest level in a decade
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Gregory Meyer in New York
August 28 2016
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The price of wheat has crashed to the lowest level in a decade as huge harvests pile up in big growers from Russia to the US, cutting the cost of staple foods around the world. Extensive planting and benign weather have forced analysts to repeatedly raise crop outlooks. The International Grains Council last week increased its global wheat production forecast to a record 743m tonnes, up 1 per cent from last year. Mounting supplies have exacerbated a broad washout in commodity markets and heaped pressure on farm economies. At about 220m hectares, wheat fields cover more land than any other grain. Benchmark soft winter wheat futures on Friday fell 4.4 per cent to $3.83½ a bushel in Chicago, the weakest price since September 2006. Wheat prices are down 71 per cent since 2008, when the most commonly consumed food grain leapt above $13 a bushel and riots swept the streets of some emerging countries. “The world can source wheat from the northern hemisphere or southern, eastern or western. That increases the food security of the world a whole heck of a lot,” said Ken Stein, co-manager of Kottke Commodity Capital in Chicago. The recent US winter wheat harvest was 45m tonnes, up 21 per cent from 2015, according to the US Department of Agriculture.