CHICAGO: Chicago corn futures ticked down and soybean futures hovered near unchanged on Friday with seasonal harvest pressure on the rise. Meanwhile, wheat futures notched up on dryness in some wheat-producing regions of the world, analysts said.

The most-active corn contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) settled down 4 cents at $4.01-3/4 a bushel. For the week, it fell 1.81%. Soybeans ended down $1-1/4 at $10.12 per bushel, with a weekly rise of 0.57%.

Most-active wheat contracts rose 3 cents to end at $5.68-1/2 per bushel, with a weekly drop of 4.91%. Wheat rose with worries about dryness in the Black Sea, the US Southern Plains and Argentina, said Arlan Suderman, chief Commodities Economist for the StoneX group. Suderman said he was “expecting to see more tightness in major exporting supplies, particularly as we get into the last half of the marketing year.”

Soybean prices drew some support from weekly US export sales that came in above trade expectations on Thursday, according to traders, but they were also pressured by the beginning of the harvest with expectations of large supplies.

The USDA also confirmed private sales of 121,000 metric tons of US soybeans to China for delivery in the 2024/25 marketing year. “They really don’t have a South American weather story to counter that,” said Suderman, noting that dry weather on the continent was not expected to harm the Brazilian harvest, as weather models show rains starting in October.

Although farmers would prefer the rains to come sooner, October would not be too late, Suderman added. In the United States, “corn yields are just very impressive,” Suderman said. With farmers undersold and a big harvest expected, lots of bushels are being pushed onto the market, Suderman added.