(BusinessWeek) – Corn fell to the lowest level in three years after the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimate for domestic stockpiles beat analyst expectations. Soybeans declined to the lowest level in six weeks.
The contract for December delivery fell as much as 0.3 percent to $4.4025 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, the lowest price for most-active futures since Sept. 1, 2010, before trading at $4.42 at 10:51 a.m. in Singapore. Soybeans lost 0.8 percent to $12.7225 a bushel, a level not seen since Aug. 16.
Corn slumped 37 percent this year, the most in the Standard& Poor’s GSCI Index of 24 commodities, as supplies outpaced demand. Inventories in the U.S., the world’s biggest grower, totaled 824 million bushels as of Sept. 1, 25 percent more than the 661 million bushels estimated this month, the USDA said yesterday in a report. Demand for U.S. corn fell the most since 1975 in the past year, government data show.
“The implication is that U.S. grain stocks are not as tight as previously feared leading into this season’s harvest, which is likely to be an all-time record,” Luke Mathews, an analyst at Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), said in a report.
U.S. corn consumption and exports fell a combined 10 percent in the year ended Aug. 31, government data show. Total supply after the harvest starts this month will rise 24 percent to 14.537 billion bushels, according to the average of 28 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Soybean inventories were 141 million bushels on Sept. 1, the USDA said yesterday, 13 percent more than the 125 million bushels estimated on Sept. 12. Wheat stockpiles were 12 percent smaller than a year earlier at 1.855 billion bushels, the USDA said. Twenty-five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News expected a 7.6 percent drop on average to 1.945 billion bushels.
Wheat for December delivery was little changed at $6.78 a bushel. Prices climbed 3.2 percent in the quarter ended yesterday, the first three-month increase in a year.
