View of a grain field during the early harvest season in Rostov region, southern Russia, July 14, 2026.
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corn and wheat Prices have risen to their highest level in more than three years. However, the forces driving recent gains for these two crops are markedly different.
Wheat futures were trading 3.1% higher at 784 cents a bushel after hitting a high of 790.25 cents on Friday. This was the highest price since 797.5 cents on February 14, 2023. Wheat rose 12.1% this week, the biggest weekly gain since March 2022. Overall, wheat futures have risen more than 54.5% since the beginning of the year amid rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea.
Corn futures prices closed 0.6% higher at 536.5 cents per bushel on Friday, after hitting 541.25 cents, the highest since July 28, 2023. Corn is up 5.5% for the week and 15.6% in August, its fastest pace since April 2021, when it rose 19.31%. Contracts have increased 21.8% since the start of the year on tight U.S. supplies and strong demand, and Ukraine’s export curbs are putting pressure on global supply.
Corn’s recent rally is largely driven by growing concerns and a weak outlook for supplies of the U.S. crop, while disruptions to Ukrainian exports continue to put pressure on global supplies.
“From the beginning of August to now, the market consensus is that there is less supply than we thought at the beginning of the month,” said William Osnato, director of commodity data research and analysis at Barchart.
Osnato cites several reasons for this. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report for August revised corn yield forecasts lower than traders had expected, despite forecasting the second-largest harvest on record. The agency lowered its yield estimate by 2.3 bushels per acre to 180.7 bushels.
In addition, Osnato said the outlook for the crop was further affected by disappointing field observations by the Pro Farmers Crop Tour. ProFarmer found that after excessive rain in June in many parts of the U.S., intense heat in July is impacting crops.
“We are a little past the peak growing season of late July to early August, but bad weather can still affect the crop at this point,” Osnato said. Several areas in the eastern Corn Belt were affected by excessive rainfall in August, resulting in an outbreak of corn fungal diseases late in the growing season.
Jim McCormick, co-founder and chief operating officer of AgMarket.Net, told CNBC that concerns about U.S. crops have become more important because global supplies are already tight.
“We thought U.S. supply would save the world. Now U.S. supply is in question and the market has moved into rationing mode,” he said.
Osnato said that while not as important as the U.S. crop itself, other factors such as the extreme heat and drought that persisted throughout the summer in Europe had a big impact on corn production. Strong export demand from Europe put further pressure on already constrained supplies. In its report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture increased exports by 75 million bushels to 3.3 billion bushels, reflecting increased global demand and curbs on exports to Ukraine, the world’s leading corn exporter. But Osnat said the impact would be less important for corn than for wheat, adding that some disruption to Ukraine’s corn exports was already priced into the market.
McCormick said Europe’s drought-stricken corn crops could also put pressure on wheat, with reduced corn availability potentially leading the region to use more wheat to feed livestock and to keep wheat at home rather than exporting it.
Wheat supply disruption
Unlike corn, soaring wheat prices are tied to global supply disruptions.
Disruption in grain exports is pushing up prices following reports of escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea region. Russia and Ukraine together account for more than a quarter of world wheat exports. Growing concerns about supply disruptions in the region are a strong catalyst for price increases.
“There were a lot of disruptions in the Black Sea, that’s definitely the main story,” Osnat said, explaining that damage to Russia’s grain export infrastructure led to a decline in expectations for Russian wheat shipments in the short term. The Black Sea is the largest export destination.
Russia is the largest exporter of wheat and a low-cost supplier, whose prices often influence the world market. However, crops do not move much through the Black Sea. Recent attacks in the Sea of Azov, a source of supplies to the Black Sea, and additional military attacks on grain export facilities, oil tankers and ships in the Black Sea region are making it difficult for shipping companies to even obtain insurance.
“What will drive the market is the change in expectations. Russia will not be able to ship millions of tonnes of wheat because shipping capacity from the Black Sea is severely impaired,” Osnat said.
The weather added further pressure on wheat supplies. Mr Osnato said the severe heat wave had reduced wheat production in Europe by about 8 million to 10 million tonnes, and the drought had also reduced winter hard red wheat production in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Beyond the underlying supply concerns driving both of these crops, the move to multi-year highs could itself prompt further buying.
“When a contract hits a new high or a multi-year high, it starts to gain momentum and systematic traders start to get interested. So right now it’s a mix of fundamentals and systematic traders looking at the market positively,” Osnato said.
