Chicago Board of Trade rough rice futures settled sharply higher on Tuesday on heavy commercial buying of new-crop contracts, brokers said.
"We were limit-up at times on strong buying of September by Man Financial," said one CBOT rice trader. "Man Financial also aggressively rolled contracts from July to September".
CBOT rough rice settled unchanged to up 45 cents per cwt, with July rice unchanged at $10.17 and September rice up 45 cents at $9.45.
Talk of a $2.00 per ton week-on-week bounce in Vietnamese prices and a halt in Indian rice exports also supported new-crop CBOT rice prices, rice traders said. Vietnam is the second-largest global rice exporter.
"The new ruling party (in India) is indicating it won't be subsidizing rice and wheat exports," said Bill Nelson, AG Edwards grain analyst.
"Since India's internal prices are much higher than world prices, the policy change effectively halts most of its exports other than what was booked before".
The USDA last forecast India would export 2.75 million tonnes of rice in 2004/05, compared with US rice exports of 3.52 million tonnes and Vietnamese 2004/05 rice exports of 4 million tonnes.
Thailand, the world's top rice exporter, was forecast to export 8 million tonnes.
After Tuesday's CBOT close, the US Department of Agriculture reported that the weekly market price for long grain rice was $5.85 per cwt, steady with last week's price.
The CBOT rice gains were recorded despite an improvement in the US rice crop's condition, brokers noted.
The USDA reported late Tuesday that the US rice crop was 66 percent in good to excellent condition by Sunday, up 4 percent from the previous week. The crop was 91 percent emerged, up from the five-year average of 89 percent.
CBOT rough rice estimated volume on Tuesday was 1,108 contracts, compared with Friday's volume of 436 lots. Options trade totalled 113 lots.