Chicago wheat futures dropped to a 2-1/2-week low on Friday on outlooks for rains by this weekend that should alleviate stress on some crops in the parched US Plains growing region, traders said. CBOT May contract wheat settled down 11 cents at $4.67-3/4 per bushel, bringing the losses for the week to more than 6 percent - the biggest weekly decline since August.
Wheat had fallen below several moving averages on Thursday, triggering selling. Rains on Sunday and Monday will benefit the northeastern half of the Plains wheat belt but will likely miss the main drought areas in southern Kansas and Oklahoma, according to meteorologists and analysts. At the same time, favorable weather ahead of spring grain sowing in Black Sea producers Russia and Ukraine is bolstering the chances of another large wheat harvest due to good levels of soil moisture, analysts and industry officials said.
CBOT May corn settled down 4 cents at $3.82-3/4 per bushel, the lowest since March 1. Corn largely tracked losses in wheat in relatively light trading volume. CBOT May soyabeans settled up 8-3/4 cents at $10.49-1/2 per bushel, rising for the second straight session on fund buying linked to expectations of a smaller soya and corn harvest in Argentina due to drought.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission after the close of trading on Friday said speculative investors as of Tuesday slightly cut their net long in soyabean futures and increased their corn net long. The Rosario Grains Exchange on Thursday cut its estimate of Argentina's soya harvest to 40 million bushels from 46.5 million previously. That was also well below the 47 million tonnes forecast by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) this month.
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