Wheat prices up, but so are the costs of doing business
Normally, higher prices are good for producers. In the case of wheat, uncertainty over access to Europe’s breadbasket is just creating a cloudy future.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the single biggest reason that the price of wheat has increased since late February, said Theresa Sisung, an industry relations specialist with the Michigan Farm Bureau. Before the war started, winter wheat — the kind most grown in Michigan — was selling for $8.50 a bushel. This week, it’d increased to $12.
May’s edition of World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates, a publication of the United States Department of Agriculture, estimates that the average per-bushel price for the 2022-23 year will be $10.23, the highest in history and topping the previous record of $8.02 set in 2008, according to the Michigan Farm News, itself a Michigan Farm Bureau publication.
Much of that will get eaten up in higher costs, Sisung said. The same…
