NEW YORK-The price of corn is climb­ing as a blis­ter­ing heat wave wilts crops in parts of the Mid­west. Corn for De­cem­ber de­liv­ery rose 30 cents, or 5.1 per cent, to fin­ish at $6.24 per bushel. The price has jumped about 22 per cent since the first of the month on spec­u­la­tion that the dry spell could lead to a small­er har­vest.

Farm­ers got an ear­ly start on plant­i­ng corn this year be­cause of a mild win­ter. Hopes were high that the crop-fore­cast to be the most acreage since 1937-would build up crit­i­cal­ly low sup­plies and sat­is­fy strong ex­port de­mand. But above-nor­mal tem­per­a­tures, with lit­tle to no rain­fall, have stressed the pol­li­nat­ing crops in re­cent days.

Mike Zu­zo­lo, pres­i­dent of Glob­al Com­mod­i­ty An­a­lyt­ics & Con­sult­ing LLC, pre­dict­ed that the yield will fall short of fore­casts and sup­plies will re­main tight head­ing in­to next sum­mer if the heat con­tin­ues with­out ad­e­quate rain. Traders have re­spond­ed by dri­ving up the price of corn this month. It's still more than a dol­lar less than the all-time high of US$7.87 per bushel set in June 2011, when crops were threat­ened by heavy rains.

The dif­fer­ence this year is the con­cern about prospects for fu­ture de­mand giv­en the Eu­ro­pean debt cri­sis and slow­ing economies in the US and Chi­na, Zu­zo­lo said. There al­so are few­er gov­ern­ment pro­grammes around the world to stim­u­late growth than were a year ago.

Many traders are wait­ing for a US Agri­cul­ture De­part­ment re­port due Fri­day that will pro­vide up­dat­ed amounts of how many acres of crops have been plant­ed. Sep­tem­ber wheat in­creased 6 cents to fin­ish at US$7.47 per bushel. No­vem­ber soy­beans fell 12.25 cents to US$14.1325 per bushel.

AP