Corn and soyabean spot basis bids were steady to firm at elevators, river and rail terminals around the US Midwest on Friday as farmers largely delayed sales even as futures gained, grain merchants said. CBOT soya futures climbed 1 percent while corn futures climbed modestly but each contract failed to notch a new high, which kept selling interest at a minimum.
Many farmers continued to take advantage of unseasonably warm weather to prep fields and equipment for upcoming spring planting. Soyabeans rallied on worries of drought-reduced crops in South America while corn followed in a short-covering bounce. Basis bids for corn and soyabeans have modestly increased in recent days as the pace of fresh sales and deliveries of existing contracts slowed considerably. Gains in the basis were limited by relatively large stockpiles at many delivery points. Soyabean bids climbed 6-1/2 cents on the Illinois River, rebounding after a string of declines, as the soya CIF basis bounced to a three-week high after earlier this week hitting a two-month low.
Soya bids were also firm at an elevator in western Iowa while corn bids gained on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and at rail terminals in the southern US Plains. Trading was slow, both from farmers and commercials, as many market participants awaited the release in a week of USDA's annual prospective plantings report. US corn planted in the middle of April, which is the norm, is beneficial to yields while planting earlier than that generally results in a "flat yield response," according to agronomists at the University of Illinois at Champaign.
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