Chicago wheat futures dipped during Asian trading on Friday and were on track for a weekly decline as damage to crops in China from heavy rain is seen unlikely to dampen global supply.
Corn and soybeans also fell and headed for weekly losses as expectations of plentiful supplies outweighed worries about dry weather in the US Midwest.
The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) fell 0.3% to $6.09-1/4 a bushel, as of 0500 GMT, after a two-day rebound from a 2-1/2-year low.
“Certainly, a supply threat against Chinese wheat from flooding in production areas is supportive but not a major threat to global wheat supplies,” commodities research firm Hightower said in a report.
Excessive rainfall has damaged the wheat crop in top consumer China, which has already been buying record volumes from the world market this year.
China’s largest wheat-growing province of Henan is expected to be hit by more rain in the coming days, state forecasters said on Thursday, complicating efforts to harvest grain already damaged by wetter-than-normal weather in late May. Elsewhere, the supply of wheat is set to rise.
In Argentina, farmers in core growing regions have begun sowing wheat for the 2023/24 season after intense rain in recent weeks.
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The recent downpour in Argentina’s key agricultural farmland has improved expectations for the 2023/2024 wheat crop, after a historic drought crimped yields.
CBOT corn lost 0.6% to $5.89 a bushel and soybeans shed 0.3% to $13.25-1/2 a bushel.
“A classic bearish fundamental development”, Hightower said, was StoneX’s upward revision of Brazil’s corn production.
Brazil’s 2022/2023 total corn crop is now seen at 133.75 million tonnes, according to StoneX, up from its previous estimate of 131.59 million tonnes.
Capping losses in CBOT futures, Ukraine’s ministry of renovation and infrastructure said on Thursday the UN-brokered Black Sea grain export deal had been halted again as Russia had blocked the registration of ships to all Ukrainian ports.
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