Chicago Board of Trade corn futures rose early on Monday after the US Department of Agriculture surprised traders by lowering its estimate for the US corn yield in a monthly report. Soyabeans erased early gains after the report and wheat was narrowly mixed in choppy trade. December corn was up 5 cents at $3.72-1/2 a bushel. January soyabeans were down 4-3/4 cents at $10.32 a bushel and December wheat was up 1 cent at $5.15-1/2 a bushel, at the Chicago Board of Trade as of 11:45 am CST (1745 GMT).
Corn advanced, with the benchmark December contract rising above its 100-day moving average, after the USDA lowered its 2014 US corn yield estimate to 173.4 bushels per acre from 174.2 in October, but still an all-time high. The government also trimmed its forecast of 2014/15 corn ending stocks to 2.008 billion bushels, from 2.081 billion last month.
"The sticker shock is they dropped the corn yield number. Nobody expected that," said Joe Vaclavik, president of Standard Grain in Chicago. Soyabeans retreated after USDA raised its US soyabean yield estimate to 47.5 bushels per acre, from 47.1 in October, and left its forecast of 2014/15 ending stocks unchanged at 450 million bushels. "We were all expecting a bullish report (on soyabeans), and we didn't have it. There was talk of the yield being cut, and it wasn't," said Karl Setzer, a market analyst with the MaxYield Co-operative in West Bend, Iowa. Analysts expect the USDA in its weekly crop progress report later on Monday to show the US corn harvest at 79 percent complete as of Sunday, with the soyabean harvest 91 percent complete.
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