The pressures driving grain prices to two-year highs will not subside for at least a year, the head of a leading agricultural trader has said in a warning that deepens short-term worries about food price inflation.
But Alberto Weisser, chief executive of Bunge, rejected a growing view that high food prices are here to stay.
The US-based company is one of the biggest traders of commodities such as soyabeans, giving its executives an inside view into global food markets.
Mr Weisser said tight grain conditions would persist well into next year. "For the next 12 months I think you will see volatility of prices," he told the Financial Times in an interview at company headquarters in White Plains, near New York.
Assuming a normal growing season in the southern hemisphere is followed by a healthy one in the north, he expected to see prices "starting to normalise" by 2012.
His caution comes amid wide concerns about food price inflation in emerging economies from China and India to Mexico. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's food index last month rose to levels last seen during the peak of the global food crisis in 2008 and officials fear prices will rise further.
Rabobank, a leading agricultural lender, has warned of a "tectonic" shift towards higher and jumpier markets as China and India buy overseas animal feed ingredients and the Black Sea region remains an unreliable grain exporter.
Mr Weisser, who became Bunge's chief in 1999, is unconvinced, however. "It doesn t worry me at all," he said. "I think there is enough land available. There is enough water available."
With corn above $6 per bushel and soyabeans nearing $14 per bushel, the highest prices in two years, Brazilian farmers will probably plant more, increasing supply, he said.
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