BLBG:Wheat Poised for Best Week Since July as U.S. Drought Persists
Wheat rose in Chicago, set for the biggest weekly gain since July, as a lingering U.S. drought threatened this year’s harvest in the world’s largest exporter.
Drought probably will persist from southern South Dakota to northern Texas over the next three months because the dry earth isn’t getting soaked by winter storms, the Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said yesterday. Fields in Kansas, the biggest wheat-growing state, will need flood-like rain to restore soil moisture, industry group Kansas Wheat said.
“On the new wheat crop, traders remain concerned about the weather as analysts believe as much as 30 percent of Kansas’s wheat crop was destroyed after sprouting on dry land,” Arnaud Saulais, a broker at Starsupply Commodity Brokers, said today in an e-mailed report.
Wheat for delivery in March advanced 0.5 percent to $7.85 a bushel at 4:57 a.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade. The grain is set to climb 4 percent this week, the most since the five days ended July 20. Milling wheat for the same delivery month rose 0.5 percent to 249.25 euros ($332.97) a metric ton on NYSE Liffe in Paris.
Export sales of the current U.S. crop more than doubled to 536,200 tons in the week ended Jan. 10 from a week earlier on purchases by Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, and China, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said yesterday.
Corn for delivery in March rose 0.7 percent to $7.295 a bushel in Chicago, set for a 2.9 percent advance this week. Global inventories may drop to a nine-year low of 113 million tons by the end of the 2012-13 season as consumption outpaced production, the International Grains Council said yesterday.
Soybeans for delivery in March increased 0.4 percent to $14.355 a bushel. The oilseed is up 4.5 percent this week, on course for the biggest gain for the most-active contract since the period ended Aug. 24.
To contact the reporters on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net; Whitney McFerron in London at wmcferron1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
