Wheat and soybeans ease, corn steady as weather eyed | July 25, 2024

PARIS/CANBERRA, July 25 (Reuters) — Chicago wheat and soybeans eased on Thursday while corn ticked up, as investors weighed a dry spell in part of the U.S. crop belt against favorable field conditions so far this year.

The dry weather in a swath of the northern United States and Canada supported two-week peaks for corn and soybeans this week. But high yield estimates from a U.S. spring wheat crop tour this week tempered concern about potential damage.

Plentiful global supply and export competition from cheaper South American and Black Sea suppliers were also capping U.S. grain prices, which remain near their lowest since 2020.

The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was 0.3% down at $10.61¼ a bushel by 1120 GMT.

CBOT corn inched up 0.1% to $4.18¼ a bushel. CBOT wheat fell 0.6% to $5.43½ a bushel.

“These markets are pretty sell supplied, soy and corn in particular,” said independent Australian analyst Tobin Gorey. “The weather issues we have now are material but not large enough to really shift perception that supply is comfortable.”

U.S. spring wheat in northwest and north-central North Dakota is expected to produce the highest yields since at least 1994, scouts on an annual field tour said.

Concerns over Chinese demand, which have weighed on wider commodity markets, also hung over grain markets.

China said on Wednesday that its soybean self-sufficiency rate has increased by nearly 4 percentage points in two years.

But large speculative short positions were leaving grain markets prone to short-covering rallies, as seen earlier this week, analysts said.

(Reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Peter Hobson in Canberra; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu, David Goodman and Maju Samuel)