Chicago Board of Trade corn futures ended lower on Monday on position-squaring a day ahead of a monthly US government crop report that is expected to project sharply rising domestic corn inventories, traders said.

CBOT July corn settled down 3/4 cent at $3.18-1/2 per bushel.

Ahead of the US Department of Agriculture' monthly supply/demand report on Tuesday, analysts surveyed by Reuters on average expected the government to show US corn stockpiles ballooning to nearly 3.4 billion bushels by the end of the 2020/21 marketing year, from 2.2 billion at the end of 2019/20.

An active US planting pace added pressure. Ahead of the USDA's weekly crop progress report due later on Monday, analysts on average expected the government to report the US corn crop was 71% seeded, up from 51% a week earlier.

Farmers are still assessing whether a weekend freeze in portions of the northern and eastern US Corn Belt damaged newly seeded crops.

Strong weekly export data lent underlying support. The USDA reported export inspections of US corn in the latest week at 1,334,686 tonnes, topping a range of trade expectations.

Copyright Reuters, 2020

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