The purchase will help Bunge expand its product line to include Corn Products’ starches, syrups and sweeteners.

The deal will help Bunge diversify its sources of revenue with a “solid cash-flow business,” Chief Executive Alberto Weissar told Reuters. Weissar expects the deal to be closed in the fourth quarter of 2008 with a bump in earnings coming as soon as late 2009 or early 2010.

The deal comes at a time when corn prices are soaring amid a run-up in global demand. Corn prices have surged about 75% over the past year and 17.5% since early June when flooding throughout the Midwest lowered the outlook for this year’s crop yield.

By broadening its operations and hosting a more diverse product line, Bunge is attempting erect a barrier between itself and soaring commodities prices. The deal will also help the company maintain a healthy cash flow, as the global market for starches and sweeteners alone is growing by approximately 5% each year, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Corn Products clientele includes some of the biggest beer and food makers in the world. A deal with Bunge gives it the platform to expand its customer base as well as its own operations.

“This merger puts us in a situation where in almost any spot in the world, we can handle the larger customers,” Corn Products Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Scott said in a statement.

They estimate annual cost savings of $100 to $120 million, primarily through the elimination of duplicate procurement and logistical expenses. Analysts agree that the deal makes sense.

“Our first take is that this is a good deal for both companies,” Citibank analyst David Driscoll said in a note to investors. “Corn Products gets a substantial premium to its prior closing price … and Bunge uses its very strong stock as its currency to do the deal.”

Source: Bunge Buys Out Corn Products for $4.4 Billion

“Corn is in trouble because of the wet spring that has drenched the midwest,” says Justice Litle in Taipan Daily.

Yesterday, the USDA said in a report that American corn output will be down significantly from last year’s estimate.

And that forecast was put together before the biblical drenching the Midwest suffered in the past week, when another 12 inches of rain flooded already saturated fields.

All this is sending corn futures soaring. Looking at the chart, you can see how corn has gone ballistic. Also, on the bottom of the chart, RSI (a momentum oscillator) has just given a bullish buy signal.

After this latest rainout, many corn farmers will switch to soybeans, which can be planted until the end of June with less impact on yields. And that means the corn that does grow will be much more valuable.

Jurojin already recommended our subscribers go long corn last week — after it bounced higher off of its 50-day moving average. Now, they’re racking up nice open gains, and our first profit target looms dead ahead.

Is it too late to get in on corn? Not by a long shot. We’ve seen this kind of horrible start to the crop year before — in 1993. Then, traders were slow to react to massive flooding.

The best way to play this is corn futures or options on corn futures. If you aren’t in the futures market, you could try the PowerShares DB Agriculture ETF (DBA), which tracks a basket of corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar.

“Corn is going to go higher,” says John Mauldin in his Outside the Box.

Bad weather has meant that not enough got planted, and that will probably hurt yields in the fall. This is going to mean even higher meat prices and ethanol prices. Corn ethanol is such a bad idea. This is what happens when government decides to mess with the market.

Anecdotal inflation note: I eat two chicken fajita pitas without cheese from Jack-in-the Box for lunch about three times a week (after the gym!). I throw away the pita bread and just eat the chicken at my desk. The last three days the price has been the same, but the amount of chicken is noticeably smaller, perhaps 25% smaller. Where’s the hedonic price adjustment in the BLS statistics for that? A friend of mine notes that the filet from his favorite steak house is now seven ounces instead of eight. But the steak is still the same price. Maybe portion control will finally get America to go on a diet.

You can see that corn looks ready to challenge its recent high — and on rising volume, too.

Now for the fundamentals behind this chart. The soil in parts of the country is too cool and wet for corn. This forces corn farmers to replant. Some investors think it will also force farmers to switch to soybeans (which can be planted later than corn), and maybe 10 or even five years ago, it would have. But nowadays, with farm suppliers practicing “just in time” inventories, farmers would have trouble finding the seeds for such a switch.

And too much rain means that farmers have planted only about 10% of the corn crop, compared with 20% at this time a year earlier. Over the past five years, the average for the date has been 35%.

Globally, corn supplies are already straining to meet demand. America is the world’s king of corn. If our crop is going to be light, that puts corn on the launch pad.

You can play corn with an exchange-traded fund: Corn is one-fourth of the holdings of the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (DBA:AMEX). The other parts are wheat, soybeans and sugar. But to really ride this agricultural rocket, futures or futures options are the way to go.

Be sure that any trade fits your risk profile, and run ideas past your investment advisor.

Good luck and good trades,

The Secret Order of Jurojin

Editor’s Note: The Secret Order of Jurojin of Taipan Publishing Group