Soya jumps to six-month high

US soyabeans rose for the third day in a row on Thursday to a six-month high on more evidence of export demand shifting to the United States from South America where drought has decimated crops in Brazil and Argentina. A weak dollar and firm equities also contributed to the bullish fervour in soyabeans and grains, as did technical fund buying across the board.
"It's a combination of the South American crop size coming down, the big sales to China, and farmers aren't selling anything," said Don Roose, president of US Commodities, Des Moines, Iowa. Corn rose nearly 1-1/2 percent on spillover buying from soaring soyabeans, and wheat leaped over 2-1/2 percent to its biggest one-day gain in over six-weeks. CBOT May soyabeans closed 18-3/4 cents per bushel higher at $13.69, May corn was up 10-1/4 cents at $6.69 and wheat for May delivery was up 21 at $6.63-3/4.
A drought early in the year trimmed South American soybean crop size at a time when China, the world's largest importer of soyabeans, was buying soya. Some of the soybean sales made to China likely would have been locked up by Brazilian or Argentine exporters, but the United States has been getting the lion's share of the business. The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) weekly export sales report released on Thursday showed that export sales of US soyabeans last week far exceeded analysts' estimates.
The USDA data showed US export sales of soyabeans at 1,393,700 tonnes, above the range of estimates for 650,000 to 900,000 tonnes. It was the third largest weekly sales number for soyabeans since September. And the export sales report included 368,200 tonnes for China for the old-crop (2011/12) marketing year and 669,000 tonnes to China for the new-crop (2012/13) marketing year.
Old-crop May corn futures were adding premium to new-crop December since US old-crop corn stocks have been pegged at a 16-year low, and there have been forecasts for this year's US corn seedings to be the most since 1937. The May/December spread was at $1.00 per bushel premium May versus 78-1/4 cents a week ago for a 28 percent gain in the spread. Current weather conditions in the United States do indicate that farmers may plant corn fence row to fence row this year.