Grains, Soybeans Rise on Weather Concerns in Argentina, Brazil

November 1st, 2012

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Category: Grains, Oilseeds

(Bloomberg) – Corn and soybeans rose for a second day as adverse weather threatened South American yields, tightening global supplies and boosting overseas demand for U.S. crops. Wheat advanced.

About 45 percent of the grain and soybean fields in Argentina are excessively wet after getting as much as three times the normal rain the past two months, David Streit, the senior forecaster for Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a telephone interview. About 30 percent of Brazil is too dry for planting and germination with some showers expected during the next week, he said.

“It’s very soggy in Argentina, delaying corn and soybean planting and reducing yields for maturing wheat,” Brian Grete, the senior market analyst for the Professional Farmers of America newsletter in Cedar Falls, Iowa, said in a telephone interview. “Rains the next week in Brazil are more critical for corn, because it needs to get planted earlier than soybeans.”

Corn futures for December delivery rose 1.9 percent to close at $7.5575 a bushel at 2 p.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade, capping the first two-day gain since Oct. 19. Prices fell 0.1 percent this month.

Soybean futures for January delivery climbed 0.8 percent to $15.4875 a bushel in Chicago, paring this month’s decline to 3.3 percent.

Wheat futures for December delivery advanced 0.9 percent to $8.645 a bushel on the CBOT. The grain lost 4.2 percent in October, the first monthly drop since May.

Prices extended gains after Egypt announced buying 300,000 tons in a tender today from supplies in Russia, France and Romania, Grete said. Combined wheat harvests in Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan fell by 37 percent this year, helping send global stockpiles to four-year low, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show.

Corn is the biggest U.S. crop, valued at $76.5 billion in 2011, followed by soybeans at $35.8 billion, government figures show. Wheat is the fourth-largest at $14.4 billion, behind hay.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Wilson in Chicago at jwilson29@bloomber.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net.

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