NEW YORK-Prices for corn, wheat and soy­beans are set­tling high­er again with no re­lief in sight from the drought blan­ket­ing farm­ing states. De­cem­ber corn rose 7.25 cents to US$8.2375 a bushel yes­ter­day. Sep­tem­ber wheat rose 13.75 cents to US$9.13 a bushel and No­vem­ber soy­beans rose 50 cents to US$16.3125 a bushel. A record-set­ting heat wave in Ju­ly hit Plains states es­pe­cial­ly hard, new da­ta show. The week­ly US Drought Mon­i­tor map in­di­cat­ed that the amount of the con­tigu­ous US af­fect­ed by drought dropped a lit­tle more than 1 per­cent­age point, to 78 per cent. But the area still gripped by ex­treme or ex­cep­tion­al drought rose to 24 per cent, up near­ly 2 per­cent­age points from the pre­vi­ous week. Sep­a­rate­ly, a Unit­ed Na­tions agency said an in­crease in the cost of grain and sug­ar helped to dri­ve up glob­al food prices in Ju­ly.

The Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion's Food Price In­dex, which mea­sures month­ly change in the in­ter­na­tion­al prices of a group of food com­modi­ties, climbed 6 per cent last month. The FAO is tasked with re­duc­ing world hunger at a time of near-record high food prices. JP­Mor­gan an­a­lysts said in a note to in­vestors that the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the US corn crop is "un­like­ly to be re­versed." They al­so said hot and dry con­di­tions through­out south­east­ern Eu­rope, es­pe­cial­ly in Ro­ma­nia, Hun­gary, and Bul­gar­ia, would al­so like­ly re­duce glob­al corn sup­plies. On Fri­day the De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture will re­leas­es up­dat­ed pre­dic­tions on pro­duc­tion for corn, soy­beans and oth­er crops.

In oth­er com­modi­ties trad­ing, gold for De­cem­ber de­liv­ery rose US$4.20 to US$1,620.20 per ounce. Sep­tem­ber sil­ver rose 2.2 cents to US$28.097 per ounce. Oc­to­ber plat­inum rose US$2.60 to US$1,412.80 per ounce. Sep­tem­ber cop­per rose 0.35 cent to US$3.425 per pound and Sep­tem­ber pal­la­di­um rose 20 cents to US$586.70 per ounce. (AP)