Chicago corn futures ticked down and soybean futures hovered near unchanged on Friday with seasonal harvest pressure on the rise.
Meanwhile, wheat futures notched up on dryness in some wheat-producing regions of the world, said analysts.
The most-active corn contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was down 3-1/4 cents at $4.02-1/2 a bushel by 11:55 A.M. CDT (1655 GMT), on track to fall around 2.6% for the week while soybeans were flat at $10.13-1/4 per bushel, on track for a weekly rise of around 0.72%.
Most-active wheat contracts rose 2-1/2 cents to $5.68 per bushel, but were on track for a weekly drop of around 4.62%
Wheat rose with worries about dryness in the Black Sea, the U.S. Southern Plains and Argentina, said Arlan Suderman, chief Commodities Economist for the StoneX group.
Suderman said he was “expecting to see more tightness in major exporting supplies, particularly as we get into the last half of the marketing year.”
Soybean prices drew some support from weekly U.S. export sales that came in above trade expectations on Thursday, according to traders,, but they were also pressured by the beginning of the harvest with expectations of large supplies.
The USDA also confirmed private sales of 121,000 metric tons of U.S. soybeans to China for delivery in the 2024/25 marketing year.
“They really don’t have a South American weather story to counter that,” said Suderman, noting that dry weather on the continent was not expected to harm the Brazilian harvest, as weather models show rains starting in October.
Although farmers would prefer the rains to come sooner, October won’t be too late, he said.
In the United States, “corn yields are just very impressive,” said Suderman. With farmers undersold and a big harvest expected, lots of bushels are being pushed onto the market.
(Reporting by Renee Hickman, Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Peter Hobson in Canberra; editing by Diane Craft)
