Chicago soybeans rise as China's buying of US beans falls in August
- The most-traded soybeans on the Chicago Board of Trade rose 0.7% to $13.12-1/2 a bushel
BEIJING: Chicago soybean futures edged higher on Monday as Chinese imports of US beans fell in August and traders await a meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, later this week.
Wheat and corn gained.
The most-traded soybeans on the Chicago Board of Trade rose 0.7% to $13.12-1/2 a bushel by 0240 GMT.
CBOT wheat gained 1.8% at $7.27-1/2 a bushel, while corn advanced 1.3% to $5.34-1/2 a bushel.
Market players await the Trump-Xi meeting, in which Chinese purchases of soybeans and other US agricultural goods will be among the trade issues in focus.
Chinese imports of US soybeans fell 12% in August from a year earlier, official data showed on Sunday.
The world’s largest soybean buyer brought in 12.14 million metric tons in total in August, down 1.1% from 12.28 million tons a year earlier and up 5.7% from July.
In the January-August period, US soybean imports fell 34% from a year earlier to 10.66 million tons, while shipments from Brazil rose 5% to 55.14 million tons.
China had also passed the halfway mark toward its 25 million-ton US soybean purchase target for this year, with shipments beginning in September.
The US Department of Agriculture, under its daily reporting rules, confirmed private sales of 111,000 metric tons of soybeans to China on Friday.
Meanwhile, traders continued to assess the impact of war disruption to Black Sea grain exports from Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine’s weekly exports of wheat, corn and barley in the period from September 10 to September 16 fell 9% from the previous week to 270,200 metric tons, APK-Inform consultancy said on Sunday.
CBOT corn, soybeans and wheat futures each hit multiyear peaks this month as conflicts in the Black Sea and Middle East disrupted commodity flows and market participants assessed the impact of stressful summer weather on US crop yields.
But much of that support had already been factored into prices.
Weather forecasts projected an easing in rainfall this week in parts of the US Midwest, tempering worries about corn and soy harvest delays.