US spring wheat futures dropped 2 percent to a near 1-month low on Thursday after the US Agriculture Department raised its forecast for plantings and an improved crop weather outlook boosted prospects for a large crop this year, traders said.
Chicago Board of Trade soft red winter wheat also fell after USDA projected the largest wheat acreage in three years and said world wheat stocks will swell to a record 213.1 million tonnes by the end of the marketing year, up 6 percent from a year earlier.
"Wheat, we have abundant stocks world-wide," said Dewey Strickler, president of AgWatch Market Advisors. The higher acreage forecast for wheat - USDA pegged seedings at 58 million acres, up 3.6 million from a year earlier - raised the prospect of a large crop adding to already plentiful global supplies. Spring wheat acreage was expected to rebound in 2012 after heavy flooding in the northern Plains curtailed seedings in 2011.
At 11:44 am CST (1744 GMT), MGEX March spring wheat was down 16-1/4 cents at $8.02 a bushel. Prices bottomed out at $8.01-3/4 a bushel, their lowest level since January 25, earlier in the session. The benchmark CBOT March soft red winter wheat contract was down 6 cents at $6.38-1/2 a bushel.
Soyabean futures rose to a five-month high, helped by a weakening dollar, good export demand and concerns about crop production in Argentina and Brazil. CBOT March corn was down 3 cents at $6.35-1/4 a bushel while March soyabeans were 4-1/4 cents higher at $12.76-1/2 a bushel.
Soyabean prices peaked at $12.80, their highest level on a continuous basis since September 23. The International Grains Council on Thursday raised its forecast for the 2011/12 global wheat crop by 5 million tonnes to a record 695 million tonnes, mostly due to higher estimates for production in Kazakhstan, India and Australia.