Add soybeans to the list of commodities whose price has been driven up by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Prices for soybean futures reached a record high of $17.69 a bushel earlier this month, and soybean oil got close to its April high of 87 cents a pound. Purchasing commitments for newly planted soybeans are up 68% from last year, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The war has interrupted global supplies of sunflower seeds and their oil, of which Ukraine was a leading exporter. This has had a cascading effect on the prices of other sources of edible oil.
The situation is worsened by weather trends. Drought in the American West, Latin America and other regions is expected to depress the global soybean crop, making American soybeans more valuable.
“The cash market has decided it wants to get as much as it can, right now,” a commodities trader told the Journal.
