Grain During Wartime
The Ukraine war sent ag prices soaring, but supply caught up
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When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, investors worried about how the war would affect energy prices and what might happen in several global commodity markets.
Before the conflict, Ukraine ranked among the world’s top five producers of corn and wheat. Disrupting Ukrainian output could mean a sudden supply shock, sending food prices skyrocketing.
To make matters worse, one could argue a surge in food prices would be more dangerous to global stability than a rise in energy prices. Don’t forget what happened in the early 2010s when a surge in agricultural (ag) commodity prices gave rise to what eventually became the Arab Spring.
From March through August 2022, those fears seemed well-founded, as Ukrainian shipments of...
