Chicago ? The world’s appetite for meat, flour and ethanol is expanding faster than the supply of the crops needed to produce them, eroding inventories and increasing the chance of accelerating food prices.

Wheat stockpiles may slip to a two-year low as demand rises and a drought damages the crop in Russia, whose exports will plunge 84 percent, the Department of Agriculture said Thursday. Inventories of corn, used to feed livestock and make fuel, will be little changed from a year earlier, even as output rises to a record, the USDA said.

“The world doesn’t have enough exportable supplies to meet demand” for wheat and feed grains, said John Macintosh, 61, a vice president at Rand Financial Services Inc. in Chicago who has been trading agricultural commodities since he was with Continental Grain in 1973.