Orange juice, corn, soybeans and palm oil have all stretched to near three-year highs in the past week or so.
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An implosion that appears to have started in the gold market last Friday spread throughout the commodities complex on Monday, with everything from crude oil to soybeans falling.
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That the dollar cost of commodities from wheat to meat to soybeans all skyrocketed alongside oil signaled that far from a problem of scarcity, commodities were becoming expensive thanks once again to a weak dollar.
Oh, sure, ADM operates factories that crush oil out of soybeans and sunflowers, grind wheat into flour and turn cocoa beans into powder.
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Whether it be copper in Chile, oil in Venezuela, soybeans in Paraguay or tourism in the Caribbean, too many countries are overly reliant on a single commodity or industry.
The National Biodiesel Board says that less than 1 percent of the 60 billion gallons of diesel fuel used each year comes from biodiesel, most of it produced from soybeans, animal fats and recycled oil.
The rising cost of imports added significantly to the overall figures, as iron ore imports were up 83 percent in value during the quarter, with soybeans up 25 percent, crude oil up 39 percent, and metal-cutting machinery up 72 percent in value.
The note consists of futures of contracts of seven agricultural commodities (soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton, soybean oil, coffee and sugar) and tracks the return of the Dow Jones-UBS Agriculture Total Return Sub-Index.
Brazilian farmers and trading companies ship raw soybeans over to China while Argentina ships the more expensive soymeal and soybean oil.
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Any plant-derived oil qualifies, but most biodiesel in the U.S. comes from soybeans.
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