Soyabean spot basis bids fell sharply at US Midwest river terminals and rose sharply at processors around the region on Wednesday while bids for corn were weak along the river and mostly steady interior, grain merchants said. Farmer sales were nearly non-existent as futures ended mostly flat and growers prepared equipment for harvest.
Ongoing harvest in US Delta pressured rivers bids for both crops. Fresh corn and soyabeans from Louisiana and Mississippi helped to replenish supplies at US Gulf, allowing exporters to pull back bids for supplies from the Midwest. But tight soya stocks still underpinning bids at Midwest processors, with some crushing plants bidding aggressively for the oilseed as they come online after seasonal downtimes.
Soyabean bids eased at 19 cents on the Illinois River and rose 20 to 25 cents at Iowa processors and 30 cents at an Indiana plant Dealers noted harvest of some early-planted corn fields in the east-central and southern Midwest. Harvested corn had heavy amounts of damage from excessive moisture in central Illinois, a merchant there said.
The soyabean harvest is at least a week away in much of the region, dealers said. Traders expect US Census Bureau to show early on Thursday soyabean crush in July roughly steady with June's crush of 129.17 million bushels. Barge freight costs continued to rise on Midwest rivers amid good demand for empty vessels and also a shortage of vessels as many barges are stuck at the Gulf waiting for fresh corn to blend with the existing poor quality supplies.