CHICAGO- Chicago soybean and grain futures turned lower on Friday as improving growing weather led investors to anticipate that US Midwest crop conditions will improve, traders said.
Corn and soybean futures had a particularly choppy trading session as a flurry of bearish signs prompted investors to shed risks at the end of the week.
The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) settled 10-3/4 cents lower at $13.07-1/2 a bushel. Corn settled 9 cents lower at $4.87-1/4 a bushel and wheat closed down 11 cents at $6.26-3/4 a bushel.
Soybean futures had been mixed earlier in the session and corn firmed, after the US government forecast that dry conditions early in the growing season would mean smaller harvests of both this fall.
But forecasts from the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report fell below market expectations.
The corn crop, if realized, would be the second biggest on record due to large acreage and as growing conditions improved during the key development month of July.
Then traders shrugged off USDA news that farmers participating in US crop subsidy programs reported “prevented plantings” by Aug. 9 of 1,421,488 acres of corn, 458,915 acres of soybeans and 640,761 acres of wheat. – Reuters
