Chicago wheat futures at 10-month high

CANBERRA: Chicago wheat futures rose nearly 3% on Tuesday to their highest level since last July on concerns that adverse weather in top exporter Russia is reducing yields and tightening global supply. Soybean and corn futures also gained.

The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was up 2.9% at $7.17-1/4 a bushel, as of 0424 GMT, after rising as high as $7.20 earlier in the session.

Prices have leaped more than 35% from a 3-1/2-year low of $5.24 a bushel in March, when Russia was shipping record amounts of grain and appeared set for another bumper harvest this year.

Dry weather and bitter frosts have hit cropping regions in Russia’s south and little rain is forecast. Meanwhile, too much rain in Siberia has waterlogged soil there.

Consultants IKAR on Monday slashed their estimate for Russian wheat production to 81.5 million metric tons and exports to 44 million tons. Only a month ago, IKAR predicted production of 93 million tons and exports of 52 million tons.

Some 1.5 million hectares of Russian crops have been damaged by frosts, and the total figure may rise to 2 million hectares, the head of Russia’s Grain Union said.

Weather issues have also been creeping into neighbouring Ukraine, where traders union UGA downgraded its forecast for the country’s 2024 combined grain and oilseed harvest to 74.6 million tons from 76.1 million tons.

The downgrades in Russia will take cheap wheat out of the market and other suppliers with higher production costs such as the United States will have to increase exports to compensate, said Rod Baker at Australian Crop Forecasters.

But he said production in the US and other major wheat growers was looking solid. “The supply will be there,” he said. Elsewhere, the European Union crop monitoring service trimmed its outlook for this year’s EU soft wheat and rapeseed yields while upping its forecasts for barley and maize.

India is likely to receive above-average monsoon rains this year, the weather office said, retaining its April forecast and keeping alive the possibility of higher farm output. In other crops, CBOT soybeans were up 0.2% at $12.50-1/4 a bushel and corn climbed 1.2% to $4.70-1/4 a bushel.