Corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade held firm early on Wednesday as outside markets continued to surge, with slow US corn seedings adding further support, traders said.
Traders also said Canada's elimination of a $1.65 per bushel tariff on imports of US corn was supportive. However, some analysts said the amount of corn that may be exported to Canada is not large.
At 10:16 am CDT (1516 GMT), CBOT corn was up 1-1/2 cents per bushel to down 1 cent, with May up 3/4 cent at $2.40 per bushel. New-crop December was up 1/2 at $2.72-3/4 per bushel.
ABN Amro bought 1,500 July, pit sources said. Corn seedings have been slowed by wet weather, but farmers in the US Midwest should be able to make better progress planting their corn crop over the next week or two, a private forecaster said on Wednesday.