A Generous Tip for the Corn Delivery Man

The US invented the pizza delivery service. If you are too lazy to go out and collect a pizza, all you need to do is dial the pizza shop and a willing delivery man will satisfy your hunger quickly for a generous tip.

The popular press has been focused on how the US can cut its corn consumption to cope with the drought reduced domestic crop. Clearly, these journalists don’t eat pizza – or at least not the deliverable kind. Never mind cutting consumption, because the US futures markets have just dialed up the world to satisfy their hunger for corn (and wheat and soy) by raising prices insanely high to compensate foreign growers who can quickly supply their needs. Charter ships that have been idle for months have up-anchored and set sail to Asia, Africa, Australia and South America to collect their corn cargoes for US delivery at prices as high as 60% more than on offer two months ago.

The futures markets pushed the price of corn for March 2013 delivery to an all time high of $8.31 per bushel yesterday. Thats more than six months into the future. In a few weeks time, however, the US will have more corn than it can cope with and we all know what that means….yep, crashing corn prices.