Wheat falls as markets monitor Black Sea export prospects
- The most-traded wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was down 0.32% at $7.01 a bushel
BEIJING: Chicago wheat fell on Monday as traders weighed whether diplomatic efforts could ease disruption to Black Sea grain exports from Russia and Ukraine, two of the world’s biggest grain suppliers. Corn fell while soybeans were almost unchanged.
The most-traded wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was down 0.32% at $7.01 a bushel by 0140 GMT. CBOT corn fell 0.4% to $5.26-1/4 a bushel, while soybeans were flat at $13.19-1/4 a bushel.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that India, Turkey, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries were taking part in talks on unblocking shipping in the Black Sea.
Turkey has submitted proposals to Moscow on the security of shipping, but there were no substantive negotiations under way.
Traders hope a truce could lead to a recovery in cargo movements that are at a near standstill in the Black Sea region.
Russia could quickly restart up to 80% of its grain terminal capacity in the Black Sea if diplomatic efforts to halt mutual attacks result in a ceasefire, a Reuters analysis of industry data showed.
Ukraine’s grain stocks totalled 24.6 million metric tons, as of September 1, 10 million tons more than a year earlier, analyst APK-Inform quoted official statistics data on Friday.
The blockade of key Ukrainian Black Sea ports had caused a sharp drop in exports during the peak harvest period, according to analysts.
However, continued attacks on ports and vessels tempered expectations of a recovery in grain shipments.
Top wheat importers in Asia, the Middle East and Africa that rely on the Black Sea region for grain have struggled to secure supplies and looked elsewhere.
In France, a vessel loaded around 60,000 tons of wheat to send to Yemen, LSEG data showed on Friday, the first such shipment in four years as importers seek alternatives to disrupted Black Sea supplies.
In Argentina, farmers have benefited from the Black Sea shipment disruption, with corn sales above 1 million tons per week for four straight weeks and wheat export commitments climbing to their highest in five years for this point in the season.
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