Corn climbed to a record near US$8 a bushel as floods damaged crops in the US, the largest producer and exporter, threatening global food supplies.
The flooding may be the worst in the Midwest since 1993 and will probably cause “hundreds of millions of dollars” of damage, the National Weather Service said.
US corn stockpiles may fall 53 percent to a 13-year low before next year’s harvest, the US Department of Agriculture said on June 10.
PHOTO:AFP
Record crude oil, wheat, rice and soybean prices this year have driven inflation, forcing governments to increase interest rates as the economy slows and raising production costs. Food and fuel costs have eclipsed the credit squeeze as the greatest threat to the world economy, the G8 said.
“Inflation pressures are building around the world,” stoked by food and fuel prices, David Cohen, director of Asian economic forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore, said by phone yesterday. That’s “squeezing household budgets, especially the poorest, and company profits.”
Corn gained as much as 3.5 percent to US$7.9150 a bushel in Chicago and has advanced 33 percent in the past two weeks. It’s up 86 percent in the past year on record demand for biofuels and livestock feed as rising Asian incomes increase meat consumption.
High food prices “are here to stay” as governments divert resources to make biofuels, amass stockpiles and limit exports, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestle SA, the world’s largest food company, said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
“Elevated commodity prices, especially of oil and food, pose a serious challenge to stable growth worldwide, have serious implications for the most vulnerable and may increase global inflationary pressure,” G8 finance ministers said in a statement released after a meeting in Osaka, Japan, on Saturday.
Consumer prices last month probably rose the most since 1997 in the UK and the fastest in 16 years in the euro area, while US producer prices are predicted to have gained 1 percent from April, according to economist forecasts.
More thunderstorms were expected on Sunday in the US Midwest, Accuweather.com forecast. As much as 30cm of rain dropped in the Midwest last week, and some fields had five times the normal moisture since the end of last month, the National Weather Service said.
Meanwhile, Argentine farmers intensified protests against higher export taxes after a farm leader was arrested by police, threatening to spark food shortages and halt the flow of grains in the country. Farmers began their fourth strike in three months on Sunday, withholding crops and blocking roads.
The country is the world’s third-largest soybean exporter behind the US and Brazil, and second only to the US for corn.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
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