{"id":330608,"date":"2026-03-09T22:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T22:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/330608\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T22:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T22:49:07","slug":"ag-commodities-prices-grow-as-war-in-middle-east-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/330608\/","title":{"rendered":"Ag commodities prices grow as war in Middle East continues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oil is hardly the only commodity that saw a price jump as the war in the Middle East enters its second week.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The palm oil that makes your peanut butter smooth <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/chicago-soy-oil-jumps-4-001907531.html\">hit its highest price<\/a> in more than a year. Wheat is <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/tradingeconomics.com\/commodity\/wheat\">at its highest<\/a> in almost two years. Soybeans and corn are up too.<\/p>\n<p>Even though we don\u2019t get those crops from the Middle East, the war is behind all of those price increases.<\/p>\n<p>There are two factors pushing commodity prices up. One is the price of oil.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you have crude oil jumping \u2026\u00a0<a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/energyexplained\/biofuels\/\">biofuels<\/a> become much more attractive,\u201d said David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University. <\/p>\n<p>He said palm oil gets used for a lot of biodiesel. So when palm oil gets more expensive?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen you have demand for vegetable oils increasing, and that leads to rising prices,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The other factor is fertilizer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Middle East is a <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fb.org\/market-intel\/middle-east-tensions-raise-spring-planting-concerns\">major production hub,<\/a> as well as a distribution hub for those fertilizers,\u201d said Michael Deliberto, a professor of agricultural economics at Louisiana State University.<\/p>\n<p>Roughly a third of the global fertilizer trade goes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has <a class=\"externallink\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.the-independent.com\/news\/world\/middle-east\/strait-of-hormuz-iran-closure-oil-prices-shipping-b2929802.html\">largely blocked<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Falling fertilizer supply paired with consistent demand is a perfect recipe for a price spike.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat has really come at probably the worst time for U.S. producers,\u201d Deliberto said.<\/p>\n<p>Here in the United States, it\u2019s planting season \u2014 right when farmers need fertilizer the most.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is\u00a0these\u00a0price spikes aren\u2019t going to affect your grocery bill for now. Deliberto said only about 15% of the price you pay at the supermarket is determined by the actual cost of the food. The rest is largely down to packaging, shipping, and storage \u2014 all of which require energy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf there&#8217;s any impact on food inflation, it&#8217;s largely going to be because of energy prices,\u201d said Joe Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. <\/p>\n<p>He said the spike in oil that\u2019s making you heave big sighs at the gas station will\u00a0hit grocery stores at\u00a0some\u00a0point.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTransporting the goods, trucking everywhere, the refrigeration, you know, just running electricity, all those things are tied because of the energy increases,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike the gas station, Glauber said it could take months for price spikes to show up at the supermarket.<\/p>\n<p>Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oil is hardly the only commodity that saw a price jump as the war in the Middle East&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2491,114,2791,4414,85,46,33690,163023],"class_list":{"0":"post-330608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-biofuels","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-commodities","11":"tag-energy-prices","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-palm-oil","15":"tag-vegetable-oil"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}