Chicago Board of Trade soyabean futures declined on Tuesday for a seventh straight session, dropping below $10 a bushel as hefty South American harvests threatened US soya export prospects, traders said. Wheat fell to a six-week bottom, but corn firmed, snapping a six-session slide on news of US corn sales to China. As of 12:41 pm CDT (1741 GMT), CBOT May soyabeans were down 7-1/2 cents at $9.98-1/2 a bushel after dipping to $9.92, the contract's lowest since mid-November.
May wheat was down 1 cent at $4.29-1/2 a bushel while May corn was up 1 cent at $3.62 a bushel. Soyabeans posted the biggest decline, weighed down by the ongoing harvest of a likely record-large crop in Brazil along with broad weakness in commodities. The 19-market Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index fell 0.6 percent.
Also seen as bearish was a survey showing US farmers are expected to plant a record number of acres to soyabeans this spring. A survey of growers released by Illinois-based research and brokerage firm Allendale Inc projected soyabean plantings at 88.8 million acres, up 6.5 percent from 2016.
The survey put corn plantings at 90.0 million acres and all-wheat seedings at 45.967 million acres. CBOT corn rebounded from a two-month low on news that importers in China booked about 195,000 tonnes of US corn for shipment in the late spring to early summer. Also, the Korea Feed Association bought about 65,000 tonnes of corn likely to be sourced from the United States, European traders said.
Wheat moved lower, but trade was choppy with the market rallying at times on short-covering and bargain buying. Cold temperatures in the US Midwest this week could threaten soft red winter wheat crops in some areas, the Commodity Weather Group said. In weekly crop reports released late Monday from a few states, the US Department of Agriculture rated 40 percent of the Kansas winter wheat crop in good to excellent condition, down from 43 percent a week earlier. Oklahoma's wheat was rated 42 percent good to excellent, down from 43 percent the previous week, while the Texas crop improved to 35 percent good to excellent, from 34 percent.