Corn Climbs on Signs of Increased China Demand; Soybeans Gain

April 26th, 2012

By:

Category: Grains, Oilseeds

(Bloomberg) – Corn rose for the first time in three days on signs of increased Chinese demand for U.S. supplies. Soybeans and wheat also gained.

U.S. exporters sold 682,500 metric tons of corn yesterday, including 262,500 tons to China and 420,000 tons for unknown destinations, the Department of Agriculture said. The sale was the third in as many days, bringing total purchases this week to 1.28 million tons.

“There was a sale of over 600,000 tons to unknown destinations, which I suspect will turn out to be China,” saidAdam Davis, a Melbourne-based commodity trader at Merricks Capital Services Pty. Earlier this week, the USDA announced exporters sold 480,000 tons to unknown destinations for delivery before the end of the marketing year on Aug. 31 and 120,000 tons for unknown buyers after Sept. 1.

Corn for July delivery rose 0.6 percent to $6.045 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade by 11:26 a.m. in London. Futures fell 1.9 percent in the previous two days after the U.S. reported the first case of mad-cow disease in six years, raising speculation that feed use may drop.

China may have purchased 2 million tons of new-crop U.S.corn since last Thursday that will be delivered in the 2012-2013 marketing year, state-owned researcher Grain.gov.cn said today, without saying where it got the information.

Soybeans for July delivery gained 0.2 percent to $14.785 a bushel in Chicago. Yesterday, the price touched $14.9675, the highest since July 18, 2008. Exporters sold 165,000 tons of soybeans to unknown buyers on April 23, according to the USDA.

Soybeans rallied “on the back of aggressive buying from China and reduced crop prospects from South America,” which has suffered from drought and freeze this year, INTL FCStone risk management consultants Rory Deverell and Jaime Miralles said in a report.

Wheat for July delivery rose 0.6 percent to $6.305 a bushel. In Paris, November-delivery milling wheat increased 0.5 percent to 201 euros ($265.62) per ton.

To contact the reporter for this story: Phoebe Sedgman in Melbourne at psedgman2@bloomberg.net; Whitney McFerron in London at wmcferron1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:John Deane at jdeane3@bloomberg.net

Add New Comment

Forgot password? or Register

You are commenting as a guest.