Corn closed just under $7 per bushel. Wheat - just under $8.50 per bushel.
"Killer Cows" in the Southeast are $.75 to $1.00 per pound (a "Killer Cow" is a breeding female that has lived past the point of diminishing returns in the calve to feed ratio and is slaughtered and sold for "cheap meat", as opposed to sliced meats from a young, healthy steer), up from $.42 per pound last spring.
I cannot remember this happening before... that is, when the price of corn goes up, farmers and ranchers tend to over-slaughter, and that has traditionally caused meat prices to fall because meat is a "sell it or smell it" commodity. Today's market is giving a tremendous incentive to over-slaughter: high prices for meat and high costs for feed. Problem is, who is going to calve next spring? The U.S. cattle herd continues to shrink to levels not seen in decades, and while higher slaughter weights have made up for headcount, that won't be true if grain prices keep heading north.
At this point, it is ALL about the weather. G-d forbid, the U.S. corn and wheat belt have a bad harvest and one other major region, say Ukraine this summer or Argentina next winter, and the world will be in a universe of hurt. It is all the weather. I always link people to the heatwave and drought of 1936. That weather pattern brought us "The Grapes of Wrath". If that type of weather pattern were to befall the U.S. grain crop this year it would be a significantly bigger disaster, because inventories are so very low. If it happened 2 years in a row, that disaster would be biblical. Or Hollywoodish.
World food prices have now eclipsed 2008's run up, and have left Egypt and Tunisia upended. The big Asian population centers are completely addicted to fossil water - and that resource is literally drying up. There are many more political implications to this story than even Oil.
While I occasionally poke fun at the doomers, I think if you are not a prepper you don't have an appreciation for probability theory.