Chicago corn, wheat futures fall; soy futures rise

JAKARTA: Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) corn inched lower on Monday, weighed by report of multi-year high stocks, despite expectation of lower planting in 2024.

The CBOT corn fell 0.62% to $4.39-1/4 a bushel by 0331 GMT. “For corn, despite the reduced acreage, the balance sheet still should be quite heavy,” a Singapore-based trader said. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in a quarterly grain stocks report last week said stocks of US corn as of March 1 swelled to 8.347 billion bushels, the most in five years. A separate report by USDA reported US farmers are planning to cut corn plantings by 5% from last year.

Wheat was down 0.36% at $5.58-1/4 a bushel while the most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) rose 0.5% to $11.97-1/2 a bushel. Soybean stocks rose to a two-year high of 1.845 billion bushels, while wheat stocks rose to 1.087 billion bushels, a three-year high, the USDA report showed. Meanwhile Ukrainian farmers could increase the area sown with soybeans this year by 23.5% to 2.199 million hectares from a year earlier, while reducing the corn sowing area by 4.5% to 3.863 million hectares.

Romania, the European Union’s fourth-largest wheat producer and the third-largest for maize, reaped 9.6 million metric tons of wheat in 2023, up 11% from 8.6 million tons in 2022. Its maize harvest stood at 8.52 million tons, up 6% on the year, while sunseed production was 2.02 million tons, down 3.7%.

Egypt has targeted procuring 3.5 million tonnes of local wheat during the 2024 procurement season, the country’s supply minister Aly Moselhy said.

Saudi Arabia issued a tender to buy 595,000 metric tons of wheat for June-July arrival, its state wheat buying agency, the General Food Security Authority (GFSA), said.

A vessel that was loaded by TD RIF, one of Russia’s key grain exporters, has left a Black Sea port after its cargo was certified as being free of pests and disease.

Rosselkhoznadzor, the country’s agricultural watchdog previously said there was a jump in applications from importing countries saying cargoes of Russian grain were not meeting quarantine requirements, including a shipment of TD RIF. LSEG data confirmed that the 21,964-dwt vessel had left Russia’s Black Sea Port Kavkaz.