Chicago | Reuters—Chicago Board of Trade corn futures turned higher on Wednesday after favorable U.S. crop conditions pushed prices to contract lows.
Soybean futures weakened for a third consecutive session amid uncertainty over U.S. trade prospects, while wheat futures finished nearly unchanged.
Short covering and bargain buying helped lift corn prices, analysts said, with the market recovering slightly from its recent losses.
Favorable U.S. crop weather continues to hang over grain futures, fuelling expectations for sizable corn and soybean harvests this autumn.
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The next 15 days will likely be the most critical period of development for the corn crop, and near-normal temperatures are expected in most areas of the Midwest, weather firm Vaisala said.
“It’s really good out west,” Jim Gerlach, president of brokerage A/C Trading, said about crop weather.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday that 74 per cent of the U.S. corn crop was in good or excellent condition, up one percentage point from a week earlier and the highest for this time of year since 2018.
For soybeans, the crop’s good-excellent rating was unchanged from the previous week but down from last year.
Soybean fields in the eastern Midwest received too much rain earlier this year, Gerlach said.
“There’s a lot of raggedy beans out there,” he said.
The most-active corn contract Cv1 finished up 1-1/4 cents at $4.15-1/2 a bushel. Soybean futures Sv1 ended 10-1/4 cents lower at $10.07-1/4 a bushel, while wheat Wv1 eased 3/4 cent to close at $5.47 per bushel.
“Early Wednesday trade showed a modest bounce across grains, likely driven by short-term bargain buying rather than any shift in the broader outlook,” Donatas Jankauskas, analyst with commodity data platform CM Navigator, said in a note.
Grain traders remain worried that tariff disputes with key trading partners may hurt demand for U.S. crops and exacerbate a glut in supply.
The USDA is slated to update monthly estimates for global grain supplies and demand on Friday.
—Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore
