BLBG: Corn, Soybean Futures Decline as Rains in U.S. May Help Ease Crop Stress
Corn and soybean futures dropped on expectation that rains in the Midwest, the largest U.S. producing region, may help ease crop stress in the world’s largest exporter of both. Wheat also declined.
Corn for December delivery lost as much as 0.7 percent to $7.205 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade and was at $7.2225 at bushel at 3:54 p.m. in Singapore. Soybeans for November declined 0.6 percent to $13.5850 a bushel.
The western Midwest will have increasing showers over the next few days, and that pattern may shift into the eastern Midwest during the weekend, helping support corn and soybeans in a region that has been “trending drier during the past couple of months,” Telvent DTN Inc. said in a forecast yesterday.
“Rains at this sort of critical crop development are always good,” Victor Thianpiriya, an agricultural commodity analyst at Australia & New Zealand Group Ltd., said by phone from Melbourne today. Still, he said, concerns linger over the state of the crop in Iowa and Illinois.
Low Yields
Corn yields in Illinois, the second-largest U.S. grower, may be smaller than a year earlier and trail a government forecast because of unusually hot, dry weather, Top Flight Grain Cooperative said yesterday.
Yields in five central Illinois counties near Decatur-based Archer Daniels Midland Co. averaged 148 bushels an acre, down from 173 bushels a year earlier, according to the Monticello, Illinois-based cooperative, which sampled more than 120 fields on Aug. 16 near the company’s 13 grain elevators and rail terminals. That compares with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimate on Aug. 11 that yields would rise to 170 bushels, from 157 bushels.
“What the trade really needs to see some pressure on prices is some really good rains in southeast Iowa through central Illinois because those are the areas that are still abnormally dry,” ANZ’s Thianpiriya said.
Wheat for December delivery slipped 0.7 percent to $7.53 a bushel, after losing as much as 1 percent. Futures advanced to a two-month high yesterday on speculation that dry weather in the U.S. Great Plains will cut acreage of winter crops set to be planted next month.
To contact the reporter on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net
