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By Tom Polansek
CHICAGO, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Chicago Board of Trade corn and soybean futures jumped on Friday on concerns about U.S. yields and as traders awaited final results from a major U.S. Midwest crop tour, analysts said.
Farmers and commodity traders are closely watching the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour at a time when bumper U.S. crops are needed to offset low global grain supplies. The tour has found that western growing areas like Nebraska and South Dakota suffered the impact of hot, dry weather this summer.
Pro Farmer is slated to release overall crop figures later on Friday, and traders are watching to see how the numbers compare to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Traders also want to see to what extent harvests in the eastern Midwest may offset crop damage in the west.
“I think it’s very tough,” said Don Roose, president of broker U.S. Commodities. “Iowa looks very variable.”
The most-active CBOT corn contract Cv1 was up 11 cents at $6.61 a bushel by 11:20 a.m. CDT (1620 GMT). CBOT soybeans Sv1 were up 19 cents at $14.49-1/4 a bushel, while wheat Wv1 rose 16 cents to $8.05 a bushel.
“The crop monitoring tour … does not lead us to expect much in the way of good news for this year’s U.S. crop,” Commerzbank analysts said of corn. “The risk of tightening supply should lend support to U.S. prices.”
European crops have also struggled with drought. French maize crop conditions declined last week to their lowest rating in more than 10 years, data from farm office FranceAgriMer showed, suggesting that recent rain has brought limited benefit to fields damaged by heatwaves and dryness.
In demand news, exporters struck deals to sell 146,000 tonnes of U.S. soybeans to unknown buyers, the USDA said. This week the agency also reported U.S. soy sales totalling 627,000 tonnes to China.
(Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago, Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu, David Evans and Grant McCool)
((Thomas.Polansek@thomsonreuters.com; https://twitter.com/tpolansek))
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
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