By Dwayne Klassen, Commodity News Service Canada

Winnipeg – Canola contracts on the ICE Futures Canada platform were trading at mostly lower price levels at 09:31 EDT Thursday morning. Elevator company hedge selling, tied to increased farmer deliveries of canola into the cash pipeline, fueled some of the declines seen in canola, market watchers said.

The increase in canola movement on the Canadian prairies was tied to farmers cleaning out on-farm bins of old crop canola and the progressing harvest operations resulting in new-crop deliveries off the combine.

Activity in canola has been extremely thin so far, with it only taking a small amount of selling or buying to push canola values in either direction.

CBOT soybean and soyoil futures have traded on both sides of the plus/minus line so far Thursday, but the bias was to the downside, which was helping to put downward pressure on canola values, brokers said.

The absence of fresh domestic processor demand and the general firmness of the Canadian dollar against other foreign currencies was adding to the bearish price tone in canola, traders said.

Some underlying support in canola was linked to light chart-based speculative buying interest. The pricing of old export business to Japan was also helping to provide some underlying support.

As of 9:31 EDT, there were 828 canola contracts traded.

As of 9:31 EDT, there were no milling wheat, durum or barley contracts traded.

Prices in Canadian dollars per metric ton at 9:31 EDT: