Chicago | Reuters — Chicago Board of Trade corn futures slumped on Monday to an eight-month low after the government announced that China canceled some purchases of U.S. supplies of the grain.
The cancellations, which also weighed on wheat and soybean futures that hit one-month lows on Monday, highlighted concerns about weak demand for U.S. agriculture exports due to massive harvests in Brazil, traders said.
“The United States is just kind of not real competitive and that is a big deal at this time of year,” said Jim Gerlach, president of A/C Trading. “We are supposed to be moving corn like crazy right now.”
Read Also
Alberta crop conditions improve: report
Varied precipitation and warm temperatures were generally beneficial for crop development across Alberta during the week ended July 8, according to the latest provincial crop report released July 11.
Private exporters reported that Chinese buyers canceled purchases totaling 327,000 tonnes of corn, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Monday morning.
In a separate report USDA said weekly corn export inspections totaled 913,813 tonnes. That was down from 1.237 million tonnes a week earlier.
Soybean export inspections of 374,960 tonnes were near the low end of market expectations and wheat export inspections that totaled 363,826 tonnes were in line with trade forecasts.
CBOT July corn futures were down 7-3/4 cents at $6.07-1/2 a bushel after falling to $6.04-1/4 a bushel, the lowest on a continuous basis for the most-active contract since Aug. 18, during the session (all figures US$).
CBOT July soybeans dropped 13 cents to $14.36 a bushel.
CBOT July soft red winter wheat settled down 16 cents at $6.57 a bushel, with the market shrugging off concerns about the end of the deal allowing for shipments of Ukrainian grain from some Black Sea ports and worsening crop conditions in the U.S.
The head of the Russian Grain Union said on Monday the Black Sea grain deal to facilitate Ukrainian agricultural exports had not yielded anything positive for Russia or helped facilitate supplies to the global market.
After the close, USDA said good-to-excellent ratings for U.S. winter wheat fell one percentage point to 26 per cent, the lowest for this time of year since 1989. Corn planting advanced to 14 per cent complete and soybean planting to nine per cent.
— Reporting for Reuters by Mark Weinraub in Chicago; additional reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg.
