Corn prices are rising as surging floodwaters and soaking rains — combined with President Trump’s trade war with China — are making it an exceptionally difficult year for farmers facing risky choices about what crops to plant, or whether to plant at all. “It’s probably the most complicated decision season I’ve ever seen,” said Wallace Tyner, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. So far this year, farmers have planted only two-thirds of the corn they would have been expected to by now, based on the previous five years. The resulting rise in commodities prices could eventually mean higher food costs in the nation’s grocery stores. Yet the standard decisions facing most grain farmers are already trickier than usual this year, as a result of President Trump’s escalating trade dispute with China, one of the most important foreign markets for agricultural products from the American Midwest.

Source: New York Times May 31, 2019 21:19 UTC