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.
Chicago futures inch lower ahead of key USDA reports
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.
The state of French soft wheat crops remained stable last week, although still at their worst in four years, data from farm office FranceAgriMer showed on Friday.
Wet weather since autumn has disrupted planting and early crop development in France, the European Union’s biggest grain producer, and other parts of western Europe.
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