Spot basis bids for corn and soyabeans held mostly steady around the US Midwest on Thursday, with corn bids firming at a handful of interior markets, as country offerings of each commodity remained light, grain merchants said. Farmer sales were nearly non-existent amid choppy and little-changed futures. CBOT soyabeans rose narrowly, touching a new five-month high. However, cash prices remain below the psychological level of $13 per bushel, capping sales.
Corn bids climbed 2 cents in Blair, Nebraska, and were narrowly higher at a rail terminal in the southern US Plains. Bids for the grain in central Illinois and northern Ohio remain at the highest levels since early September. Soya bids were largely unchanged with the basis in the eastern Midwest holding near its highest point since December. Bids in the western Midwest, where supplies are typically more plentiful, were the lowest in a month. Soft red winter wheat bids eased 5 cents in Toledo, Ohio, and have declined at one elevator in the region two days in a row.
CME Group variable storage rates for wheat are poised to decline in the coming days after the spread between the March and May wheat contracts narrowed to less than 50 percent of full carry, making holding the grain less attractive. CBOT wheat fell Thursday 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. That would be up 6 percent from a year earlier. Lower global crop prices to ease food inflation - USDA. Slowing US fuel demand will pinch ethanol use - USDA. US ethanol stocks edge higher, output drops - EIA. China's demand for US corn seen rising after latest buy - analysts.