(Bloomberg) – Soybeans dropped to the lowest level in more than a week on speculation that rising supplies from Brazil, poised to be the largest grower this year, will damp demand for the U.S. crop.
The oilseed for delivery in May lost as much as 0.6 percent to $14.3825 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, the cheapest price for the most-active contract since March 4. Futures traded at $14.40 a bushel at 11:49 a.m. Singapore time, after falling 2.2 percent in the past two days.
About 11.9 million metric tons of the beans and its products were scheduled for shipment at major ports in Brazil as of yesterday, according to SA Commodities and Unimar Agenciamentos Maritimos. U.S. exports sales of soybeans probably fell to a range of 225,000 to 475,000 tons in the week to March 7, from 609,702 tons a year earlier, according to four analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The U.S. government is set to release the sales report at 8:30 a.m. in Washington today.
“With harvest in Brazil advancing, there’s still quite a lot of room for more supplies to come into the market,” Joyce Liu, an analyst at Phillip Futures Pte, said by phone from Singapore today. “We may see export sales weakening, going forward. That’s definitely putting pressure on prices.”
Corn for May delivery fell 0.2 percent to $7.09 a bushel. That takes the price of soybeans at 2.03 times the cost of corn, compared with an average of 2.43 times in the past decade. Wheat for May delivery was unchanged at $7.10 a bushel.
Hard, red winter wheat was 52 cents a bushel cheaper than yellow corn yesterday at ports near Kansas City, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by Bloomberg. Wheat was on average $1.57 costlier than corn in the past decade.
