US soya rises

US soya rose on Friday and flirted with two-month highs on continued aggressive exports of US soya and lingering support from a bullish soya plantings report released by the US government early in the week. Soya has had a bullish week with Tuesday's data showing the switch to soyabeans out of corn this year was far less than expected, followed by Thursday's report that said soya export sales for the marketing year were near the high end of trade expectations.
"I think the driving force in beans continues to be the hangover from Tuesday's plantings. Also the export pace remains strong and soya stocks in the US are declining," said Don Roose, analyst and president of US Commodities, Des Moines, Iowa. Wheat also climbed because excessive wet weather and flooding threatened to trim seedings of top quality high protein spring wheat, a crop that has not yet been planted.
Corn was firm, following soya, but gains were limited by profit-taking and as farmers kept selling corn after the market soared to nearly a 2-1/2 month high on Tuesday, led by surging soya. At 10:40 am CDT (1540 GMT), May soya was up 5 cents per bushel at $9.82, May corn was down 2 at $4.00-1/2 and wheat for May was up 6 at $5.56-1/2 per bushel.
Some traders and analysts said soya also may be finding some support from low yields in the early harvest of South American soya. A drought cut the soya crop in Brazil, Argentina and in Paraguay the world's second, third and fourth largest soya exporters respectively. The Paraguay government on Friday forecast the country's 2008/09 soyabean crop at 4.15 million tonnes, down almost 40 percent from last year. Reductions also have been made for Brazil and Argentine production.
"I think the yields in South America are pretty old news that have already been dialled in (to the market), we've known about the drought for a long time," Roose said. Toby Hassall, an analyst at Commodity Warrants Australia, said outside markets continued to dominate trading but traders were also keeping an eye on weather in the United States as farmers prepare for spring plantings.
"Those macro-forces remain a big driver of the grains markets but as we get closer to the planting window for corn and soya the weather conditions in the US will have quite an increasing effect as well," said Hassall.
A forecaster said on Friday that US spring fieldwork and early corn plantings will be delayed as another storm moves through the weekend. Stock markets were slightly weaker on Friday but the Dow Jones Industrial Average remained over 1,000 points above its 2009 low, leading to banter that the global recession may be easing. Crude oil was lower and the dollar was firm, factors that are bearish for grain prices.