Corn futures advanced, snapping a three-day losing streak, as the dollar weakened, making U.S. crop supplies more attractive to investors and importers. Soybeans and wheat also gained. Corn for December delivery rose as much as 0.6 percent to $3.675 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, after losing 3.9 percent in the past three sessions. The contract traded at $3.6625 a bushel, up 0.2 percent at 1:59 p.m. Singapore time. The Dollar Index, which tracks the value of the greenback, fell for a second day as traders increased bets the Federal Reserve with keep U.S. interest rates near zero to support a recovery in the world’s largest economy. A weaker dollar “may be encouraging some light buying in the corn market today,” Peter McGuire, managing director of CWA Global Markets Pty Ltd., said in an e-mail. The first shipment of U.S. corn into China in almost 15 years cleared the Asian nation’s customs “without delay,” the U.S. Grains Council said on its website. The cargo of 55,000 metric tons (2.2 million bushels) of U.S. No. 2 yellow corn is being unloaded at Longkou port in Shandong province and Chinese authorities haven’t made any “negative” observations about the shipment, the council said. “This is a very positive indication for future corn imports,” said Dan Keefe, a marketing specialist at the council. Favorable weather conditions in the U.S., the largest grower and exporter, may cap gains in corn prices, McGuire said. Midwest Weather Corn and soybean crops in the Midwest, the largest U.S. growing region, “should benefit from drier, warmer weather,” Telvent DTN Inc. said in a forecast yesterday. “This will allow fieldwork to resume in some areas that have not done much work recently.” September-delivery wheat added 0.4 percent to $4.775 a bushel, the first gain in five sessions, while soybeans for November delivery gained 0.3 percent to $9.265 a bushel. China, the largest soybean buyer, purchased between 17 and 25 cargoes, or as much as 1.5 million tons, in the past two weeks as crushers expect processing margins to improve, according to a range of estimates from three executives familiar with the trade. Chinese buyers had curbed purchases in recent weeks as port inventories surged, they said. Each cargo weighs 60,000 tons. Soybean planting in Brazil, the world’s second-largest producer, may be delayed by dry weather caused by the La Nina weather pattern, Paulo Etchichury, head of Sao Paulo-based forecaster Somar Meteorologia said yesterday. La Nina years are “among the worst for grain and oilseed crops” in Brazil, Etchichury said. La Nina, caused by cooling temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, can mean less rain will fall over southern Brazil during the soybean-planting season that runs from September to November. Soybean output in Brazil expanded 20 percent from a year earlier to 68.7 million tons for the crop harvested last month, according to the Agriculture Ministry. Southern Brazil accounted for 37 percent of total production, according to the government’s forecasting agency, known as Conab. To contact the reporter on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net

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