(Reuters) – U.S. wheat slid for a third straight session on Monday, falling to its lowest in more than a week as plentiful global supplies dragged down the market.
Corn fell about half a percent, giving up last session’s gains amid harvesting of a record U.S. crop, while soybeans were little changed after rallying on Friday.
The Chicago Board Of Trade most-active wheat contract fell 0.3 percent to $4.13-1/4 a bushel by 0227 GMT, near the session low of $4.11-1/4 a bushel – the weakest since Oct. 13.
Wheat closed down 0.6 percent on Friday. Soybeans were little changed at $9.82-3/4 a bushel, having firmed 0.8 percent on Friday and corn lost 0.4 percent to $3.51 a bushel, having gained 0.4 percent in the previous session.
Analysts said dryness in some of the key producing regions is likely to provide a floor under the wheat market.
“We expected the higher prices to run into some selling eventually so the retreat is no surprise,” said Tobin Gorey, director of agricultural strategy at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, referring to the move wheat futures.
“U.S. hard red winter wheat country, parts of southern Russia and western Kazakhstan remain on the watchlist. Forecasters do not expect significant rainfall in either region in the next week or so.”
There are ample wheat supplies in the world but the focus is shifting to 2017 production.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said the U.S. soybean harvest was 62 percent complete by Oct. 16, while the corn harvest was 46 percent finished.
Argentina’s new free-market policies have spurred an expansion of the corn-growing area after decades of over-planting soybeans, but the potential for a record harvest may be limited by dryness related to the La Nina climate pattern.
At play from the weather phenomenon are more than 8 million tonnes of potential corn output, said Thomson Reuters Agriculture Research Senior Analyst Hong Xu, who forecasts the corn harvest at 28.4 million tonnes.
In news, Ukraine harvested 50.5 million tonnes of grains from 12 million hectares, or 84 percent of its sowing area, as of Oct. 21, Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry said on Friday.
Large speculators trimmed their net short position in CBOT corn in the week to Oct. 18, regulatory data released on Friday showed.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s weekly commitments of traders report also showed that noncommercial traders, a category that includes hedge funds, trimmed their net short position in CBOT wheat and raised their net long position in soybeans.
