Corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade were weak early on Thursday, pressured by private forecasts that US farmers were harvesting their second-largest corn crop in history despite last summer's drought, traders said.
Private analyst Informa Economics on Thursday estimated the US corn crop at 10.970 billion bushels, above USDA's September forecast for 10.639 billion. USDA will release its next crop projection on October 12.
At 10:21 am CDT (1521 GMT), CBOT corn was down 1/4 to 1 cent per bushel. December was down 1/2 at $2.04-1/4 per bushel. Declines were slowed by supportive weekly export sales. USDA said export sales of US corn last week totalled 952,600 tonnes, above estimates for 550,000 to 750,000 tonnes.