Wheat falls as market eyes US, Russia weather

SINGAPORE — Chicago wheat slid on Monday, on track for its biggest three-day fall since mid-December, although worry over lack of protective snow cover in the US and Russia limited decline.

Soybeans edged lower after hitting a three-week high on Friday on concerns that dry weather would curb yields in the world’s third-largest supplier Argentina.

The Chicago Board of Trade’s most-active wheat contract gave up 0.30% at $ 4.29-1/2 a bushel by 0314 GMT, after ending Friday down 0.80%. Soybeans fell 0.10% to $ 9.69- 3/4 a bushel, having firmed 0.30% on Friday, when prices also marked their highest since Dec. 14 at $ 9.77 a bushel. Corn eased 0.10% to $3.51 a bushel.

Wheat prices have been supported against further drops by fears that cold weather might damage crops across US producing regions, now already struggling with persistent dry weather.

With stiff competition from a last year’s record Russian wheat crop, the European Union’s soft wheat exports in the 2017/18 season reached 10.6 million tons by Jan. 2, down 20% from the 13.3 million tons exported by the same time in the previous season.

Drought in Argentina’s bread basket province of Buenos Aires has raised the risk that some of the 18.1 million hectares expected to be sown with soybeans this season will go unplanted, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange and analysts warned.

Still, benefited by good weather, Brazil’s 2017/18 soybean crop, which farmers are now beginning to harvest, is expected to surpass 110 million tons, the secondlargest in history, according to the average of 11 forecasts in a Reuters poll on Friday. —