Financial News on Corn/Rice/Soy/Wheat

Corn, Rice, Soy, Wheat - what feeds the world.

• The rice supplies in government warehouses in Bharat climbed over 14% from a year earlier to a record high for early September, while wheat inventories reached a four-year peak on stronger buying from farmers, official data showed on Wednesday. Record rice supplies will support higher exports by the biggest supplier of rice in the world, while improved wheat inventories give the government room to curb potential price spikes later this year through open market sales.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 17 September 2025

• Corn and soybeans rule the American farm. Why that is a growing problem, in charts. Huge crops and diminished demand for USA products, due to Trump's trade wars, are pressuring the profits of farmers (including the racist farmers who voted for Trump).
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 September 2025

• Huge crops in the 'corn belt' hit cash-strapped farmers in the USA with more unease. Farmers are about to harvest their largest corn crop ever, but that does not mean more profit, as corn prices remain near multi-year lows.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 August 2025

• Record high temperatures in Nihon, caused by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, is prompting worries over rice crops in Nihon. The worries are about drought, and a proliferation of stink bugs in some rice-growing areas.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 07 August 2025

• The GDP of Nebraska is down 6% under Trump, as the state [of idiots who voted for Trump] is losing money due to Trump's taxes/tariffs on other countries a motivation for these countries to buy less agricultural products (such as cord and soybeans) from farmers in Nebraska
  - The Hill, 05 August 2025

• Angry farmers in South Korea vow to fight if the government signs an unfavorable trade deal with the USA that gives socialistically-subsidized farmers in the USA greater access to the beef and rice markets of South Korea
  - Bloomberg, 30 July 2025

• Editorial: if Trump really wants to encourage companies to use more costly cane sugar, he could dismantle [socialist] USA federal policies that give corn syrup a cost advantage
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 July 2025

• The USA and Nihon sign a trade deal whereby the USA will impose a tax/tariff of 15% in imports from Nihon. Nihon will also invest $550 billion into the USA.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 22 July 2025

• The USA and Nihon sign a trade deal whereby the USA will impose a tax/tariff of 15% in imports from Nihon. Nihon will also invest $550 billion into the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 July 2025

• The USA and Nihon sign a trade deal whereby the USA will impose a tax/tariff of 15% in imports from Nihon. Nihon will also invest $550 billion into the USA.
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 22 July 2025

• Automobile stocks in Nihon jump after the USA and Nihon sign a trade deal. Toyota rises 10%, Honda 8%, Nissan 7%, and Mazda Motor 16%
  - Comcast's CNBC, 22 July 2025

• Automobile stocks in Nihon jump after the USA and Nihon sign a trade deal. Toyota rises 10%, Honda 8%, Nissan 7%, and Mazda Motor 16%
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 22 July 2025

• Automobile stocks in Nihon jump after the USA and Nihon sign a trade deal. Toyota rises 10%, Honda 8%, Nissan 7%, and Mazda Motor 16%
  - Zero Hedge, 22 July 2025

• Automakers in the USA - GM, Ford and Stellantis - complain about the trade deal with Nihon, which imposes taxes/tariffs of 15 on imports of vehicles from Nihon to the USA of 15%, while the American car companies have to pay taxes/tariffs of 25% on imports of their vehicles from Canada and Mexico
  - Thomson's Reuters, 22 July 2025

• The USA dollar is under pressure in comparison to the yen, after the USA and Nihon sign a trade deal
  - Thomson's Reuters, 22 July 2025

• Global food prices are spiking up, due to extreme weather caused by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels. Staple foods - including potatoes, rice, onions, lettuce and fruit - are rising in price due to the effects of extreme weather.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 July 2025

• The Liberal Democrat pary of Nihon, long dominant, suffers election losses and loses control of both chambers of its legislature, with voters giving more support to two right-want nationalist parties. The high price of rice was an important issue in the recent voting.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 July 2025

• Disruptions to the government of Nihon over the ruling party's recent election losses could complicate reaching a trade deal with the USA by August
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 July 2025

• Poor Bangladesh is 'forced' to sign a wheat-import deal with the USA to reduce Trump's threats of taxes/tariffs. Bangladesh prefers importing wheat from the Black Sea region due to its lower costs.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 20 July 2025

• Has the 'rice minister' of Nihon reducde the prices of rice enough to revive his Liberal Democratic Party before upcoming elections?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 July 2025

• Will high rice prices in Nihon cause huge problems for the government, adding to inflation and a strong yen, could hurt government bonds of Nihon
  - Zero Hedge, 08 July 2025

• Recent studies show high lives of arsenic in rice (due to naturally-occurring arsenic in the soil). How to eat rich safely.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 July 2025

• Trump threatens Nihon with new taxes/tariffs, claiming Nihon will not buy much rice from the USA
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 30 June 2025

• Bharat is allocating record rice volumes for ethanol production as it struggles with unprecedented inventories that are likely to swell further with the arrival of the new season crop, a reversal from earlier shortages that led to export curbs.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 26 June 2025

• War, inflation and now drought are hitting global food supplies. Staples including wheat, beef and coffee are all being affected by the lack of rainfall. In some cases, prices are climbing to record highs.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 June 2025

• "Amber waves of grain" recede in the heartland of the USA, as wheat farmers struggle as wheat prices decline to five-year lows. With prices hovering around $5 per bushel, U.S. wheat farmers have reached an inflection point, with many forced to either lose money, feed wheat to cattle or kill off the crop.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 19 June 2025

• How global heating and climate change will worsen hunger. Even the richest farmlands in the USA cannot outrun climate collapse. More than one-third of the worl'd wheat and barley exports come from Ukraine and Russia, for example. Some of these highly productive farmlands, including major crop-growing regions in the United States, are on track to see the sharpest drops in harvests due to climate change and global heating.
  - Vox, 18 June 2025

• Ethanol biofuels, an important source of income for agriculture in the USA, has been a failure for the climate. An expansion of existing biofuels policies under Trump would lead to more greenhouse gas emissions and fewer food crops. The socialist energy program, while benefitting huge corporate corn and soybean farms, has caused economic and social imbalances across rural communities and increases greenhouse gas emissions.
  - Inside Climate News, 13 June 2025

• Biofuel refineries are releasing toxic air pollutants in farm communities across the USA. The ethanol industry has billed itself as a green alternative to oil and gas, but new research finds biofuel refineries are releasing toxic chemicals in farm communities across the nation, while doing little to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
  - Inside Climate News, 13 June 2025

• No imports needed this year: the wheat harvest in Bharat defies market speculation. Early state inventory purchases signalling that this year's crop is about 4 million tons bigger than last year's.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 28 May 2025

• Bharat hopes for more rice exports in Asia, with rice prices stabilizing in Asia after they spiked over supply concerns resulting from the conflict between Bharat and Pakistan
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 19 May 2025

• Buyers in Zhōngguó bought between 400,000 and 500,000 metric tons of wheat from Australia and Canada in recent weeks, traders said, as heat threatens to damage crops in the agricultural heartlands of Zhōngguó. Buyer in Zhōngguó have avoided buying wheat from the USA due to Trump's tax/tariff trade war against Zhōngguó.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 09 May 2025

• Scientists in Zhōngguó unlock the genetics of drought-tolerant rice. It will take about 8 to 10 years to produce a stable and widely adoptable rice variety through crossbreeding.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 07 May 2025

• An exports decline in the USA that began in early 2025 has reached most ports across the USA, and nearly all export market products, as the impact of Trump's tax/tariff trade war worsens, with agricultural exports (soybeans, corn, beef) from the USA declining the most. The Port of Portland, Oregon, tops the list with a 51% decrease in exports, while the Port of Tacoma, Washington, a large agricultural export port, has seen a 28% decrease.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 06 May 2025

• Once shunned by consumers in Nihon, rice from Korea is being readily bought in Nihon. Faced with shortages and rising prices for domestic rice, many people in Nihon are doing what was once unthinkable -- buying a foreign variety.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 April 2025

• Climate change and global heating (due to the burning of fossil fuels) may significantly impact arsenic levels in paddy rice, a staple food for millions across Asia. The research shows that increased temperatures above , coupled with rising carbon dioxide levels, lead to higher concentrations of inorganic arsenic (iAs) in rice, potentially raising lifetime health risks for populations in Asia by 2050.
  - Phys.org, 16 April 2025

• Climate change and global heating (due to the burning of fossil fuels) may significantly impact arsenic levels in paddy rice, a staple food for millions across Asia. The research shows that increased temperatures above , coupled with rising carbon dioxide levels, lead to higher concentrations of inorganic arsenic (iAs) in rice, potentially raising lifetime health risks for populations in Asia by 2050.
  - Condé Nast's Ars Technica, 16 April 2025

• Buyers in Asia are shunning agricultural products from the USA, due to problems with shipping and Trump's tax/tariff trade war
  - Thomson's Reuters, 09 April 2025

• Is Indonesia's planned rice megaproject doomed to fail? Poor soils and dry climate could undermine effort to expand rice growing by 1 million hectares, experts warn.
  - Science, 04 April 2025

• From the Philippines to Senegal, billions of people are finding it easier to feed their families now that rice prices have plunged off 15-year highs. While good news for consumers, ample stockpiles and falling prices are creating challenges for farmers and their profit margins. If prices fall too far, it could spur farmers to plant less in the approaching season, risking a cut in supplies.
  - Bloomberg, 20 March 2025

• Wheat prices are predicted to jump (unusually unfavorable weather conditions, and dwindling Russian wheat inventories). Consider buying WEAT - the Tecurium Wheat ETF.
  - Barron's, 08 March 2025

• Mexico's lower house of Congress on Tuesday approved a constitutional reform to ban the planting of genetically modified (GM) corn, a move that could lead to more tension with the United States after the resolution of a trade dispute. "Any other use of genetically modified corn must be evaluated ... to be free of threats to the biosecurity, health and biocultural heritage of México and its population". México buys from the USA about $5 billion of genetically-modified corn each year, mostly for livestock feed.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 25 February 2025

• "It will not come back" - farmers in Argentina battle drought and a shrinking harvest
  - Thomson's Reuters, 03 February 2025

• Farmers in Rossiya, the top exporter of wheat in the world, are pivoting away from growing wheat, and instead will grow more peas, lentils, and sunflowers after a year of catastrophic losses and low prices drove the profit margin on wheat farming close to zero. Frosts and drought that killed significant portions of the crops were to blame, as were massive rains during harvesting season that made getting the wheat harvested almost impossible. Add falling wheat prices around the globe, and farmers have started pivoting to other crops in an effort to make a profit.
  - The Cool Down, 26 January 2025

• Improving corn prices offer a kernel of hope for farmers. Prices for corn in the USA appear to be rebounding ahead of the next planting season for U.S. farmers, this after tumbling last year to their lowest levels since the COVID-19 pandemic.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 January 2025

• A pledge by RFK Junior to ban high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and seed oils could severely economically damage farmers, especially in Trump-supporting Ohio. Corn farming in this area is a major industry, and a significant portion of the crop is used to produce HFCS, an addictive sweetener found in a wide range of processed foods.
  - Benzinga, 20 January 2025

• Across the SouthEast of the USA, weedy rice that infests rice fields is stealing herbicide resistance from rice crops. To combat this agricultural pest, rice growers in the southeastern United States have been planting rice cultivars that were tweaked to allow them to apply herbicides that target weedy rice without harming the crop. But only a handful of years after the introduction of herbicide-resistant rice in the early 2000s, Arkansas farmers started reporting that weeds in their fields were becoming herbicide-resistant, too.
  - Phys.org, 17 December 2024

• Corn farmers in Illinois who voted for Trump, and Trump's choice of RFK Junior as Secretary of Health and Human Services, are now realizing that they may suffer from RFK's campaign against poisonous high fructose corn syrup that is "just a formula for making you obese and diabetic", he argues. Generous federal crop subsidies of soy, corn and wheat artificially lower their costs, making byproducts like corn syrup cheaper for manufacturers who put it into everything from soft drinks to hot dogs to heavily processed bread.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 December 2024

• Will Zhōngguó rely more on Argentina to fill its import gap for grain products? Wheat and see. The first wheat shipment from Argentina to Zhōngguó suggests a deeper trade relationship could occur in the coming years.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 03 December 2024

• Global heating is reducing the quality of rice grown in East Asia. In particular, as nighttime temperatures become warmer, a critical threshold for decline begins at 12 Centigrade and 18 Centigrade for Nihon and Zhōngguó, repsectively. When flowering and grain growth occur in such conditions, rates of photosynthesis and starch accumulation in the grain decrease, leading to lower rice quality as more grains are susceptible to breakage.
  - Phys.org, 03 December 2024

• Wheat traders in Argentina are seeking to close their first significant sales to Zhōngguó since the 1990s, according to the head of thetop crop-exporting group in Argentina, CIARA-CEC. The wheat traders are positioning to exploit Trump's coming tax/tariff war with Zhōngguó.
  - Buenos Aires Times, 28 November 2024

• Rice inventories in Bharat surged to an all-time high of 29.7 million metric tons in November, sources said on Friday, nearly three times the government's target, as export curbs imposed over the past two years bumped up local supplies.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 08 November 2024

• A new variety of corn, 'short corn', could replace the towering cornfields steamrolled by a changing climate. The short corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres (12,141 hectares) in the Midwest with the promise of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change. The corn's smaller stature and sturdier base enable it to withstand winds of up to 50 mph -- researchers hover over fields with a helicopter to see how the plants handle the wind. The smaller plants also let farmers plant at greater density, so they can grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits. The smaller stalks could also lead to less water use at a time of growing drought concerns.
  - Associated Press, 24 September 2024

• "Corn sweat" - the term for the late-summer spike in humidity from corn plants cooling themselves. This hallmark of Midwestern summer might be growing stickier thanks to climate change and the steady march of industrial agriculture. Climate change is driving warmer temperatures and warmer nights and allowing the atmosphere to hold more moisture. It is also changed growing conditions, allowing farmers to plant corn further north and increasing the total amount of corn in the United States.
  - Associated Press, 28 August 2024

• A big corn harvest in the USA pressures Chicago prices to four-year-low amid severe farm income downtown. Corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade slid under $4 a bushel in recent weeks, nearing early 2020 lows. Prices have been halved since peaking around $8 in April 2022. Money managers have increased bearish bets on the grain to the most in three weeks.
  - Zero Hedge, 26 August 2024

• A big corn harvest in the USA pressures Chicago prices to four-year-low amid severe farm income downtown. Corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade slid under $4 a bushel in recent weeks, nearing early 2020 lows. Prices have been halved since peaking around $8 in April 2022. Money managers have increased bearish bets on the grain to the most in three weeks.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 August 2024

• Hedge funds boost bearish bets on corn to record, driven by elevated grain supplies and the best early crop ratings in years. These factors have pressured corn prices lower.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 July 2024

• Under the sweltering sun and in temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius, farmers in the Rostov region, the 'breadbasket' of Rossiya, toil to salvage a harvest battered by heatwave, frosts and floods. The region has reduced its forecasted harvest by 38%. Global heating has opened up new northern areas in Rossiya for agriculture, but extreme weather patterns have made harvests volatile in southern regions like Rostov.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 16 July 2024

• Farmers in the USA hoard corn like it is 1988, as corn prices have dropped for the last six quarters
  - Zero Hedge, 08 July 2024

• Farmers in the USA are not selling to buyers, retaining their unsold corn as prices slump, with prices hovering above three-year lows
  - Thomson's Reuters, 17 June 2024

• Wheat jumps to nine-month high on fears of dwindling global stockpiles
  - Zero Hedge, 28 May 2024

• Exports of grains such as corn and wheat from Ukraine return to levels before it was invaded by Rossiya. The flow of grain ships through ports in the Odesa region is a welcome boost for the war-ravaged economy of Ukraine. But analysts warn it may not last.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 May 2024

• Zhōngguó, the top agricultural importer in the world, has canceled half a million tons of wheat from the US over the past week, adding to the record number of cancellations that have weighed on Chicago futures. Early last week, speculation about Zhōngguó canceling orders of wheat from the USA, pushed wheat futures in Chicago lower. There have been mounting concerns that Brazil and the Black Sea markets will have increased wheat production.
  - Zero Hedge, 12 March 2024

• Prices for corn drop to 3-year lows as supplies expected to surge to levels reported in 1987 in the USA. The current predictions are that there will be higher domestic crop supplies and elevated spring plantings.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 February 2024

• The European Union demands that Hungary, Poland and Slovakia open their broders to imports of cheap and poor quality grain from Ukraine
  - Zero Hedge, 16 February 2024

• Why farmers are again marching toward Delhi, the capital of Bharat. This time they want a stronger guarantee that they can make money selling their wheat and rice crops. This time, the central demand of the farmers concerns something called the minimum support price, or M.S.P. They want it to be increased, adding a 50 percent premium to whatever it costs them to produce wheat and rice.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 February 2024

• Corn and wheat prices post the largest yearly decline in decade as hope for easing food inflation rises. "The price decline was driven by bumper crops in key crop suppliers Brazil, USA and Rossiya following years of disruptions.".
  - Zero Hedge, 01 January 2024