Wheat futures declined for a second day as weather conditions improved in growing areas including the U.S. and as Russia returns to the export market, increasing supplies. Rice futures advanced. September-delivery wheat lost as much as 0.9 percent to $6.215 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, extending yesterday’s 1.3 percent slide. The contract traded at $6.2425 at 12:07 p.m. Singapore time. Warm temperatures and some showers were forecast in the 10 days from July 6 in the Dakotas and northern Minnesota, benefiting spring-wheat and corn crops, while scattered rains and cooler temperatures in Western Europe may aid winter-wheat crop development, Telvent DTN Inc. said in a forecast yesterday. “Better weather and the possible re-introduction of Russian grain into export markets have combined to place downside pressure on prices,” Rabobank Group wrote in a report e-mailed today. Exports of all grains from Russia’s southern Black Sea port of Novorossiysk will probably reach more than 600,000 metric tons this month, Moscow-based researcher SovEcon said yesterday. Shipments resume this month after the government ended a ban on exports first implemented in August last year, after the nation had the worst drought in at least half a century. Corn, Soybeans Corn for December delivery was unchanged at $6.085 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, after losing as much as 0.5 percent. The higher U.S. estimates last week on acreage and stockpiles are helping push prices lower, Rabobank said. U.S. farmers planted 92.282 million acres of corn this year, 1.8 percent more than projected by analysts in a Bloomberg News survey, and the second-highest since 1944, the Department of Agriculture said June 30. Stockpiles as of June 1 were 3.67 billion bushels, 12 percent higher than forecast. Soybeans for November delivery gained 0.3 percent to $13.2225 a bushel. Rice for September delivery advanced as much as 1 percent to $15.73 per 100 pounds in Chicago, before trading at $15.65. The contract gained as much as 3.3 percent to $15.79 yesterday, the highest for the most-active month since Feb. 14. Farmers in the U.S. planted 2.676 million acres this year, down 26 percent from 2010, as they shifted to other crops and floods damaged fields, the government said on June 30. Plantings of long-grain rice plunged by 34 percent to 1.865 million acres. Prices are up 9.3 percent since the day before the report. -- With assistance from Marina Sysoyeva in Moscow. Editor: James Poole To contact the reporter on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net

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