U.S. grains: Wheat falls to decade low on ample supplies

Reuters — Wheat futures dropped to their lowest price in Chicago in nearly a decade on Friday, pressured by ample supplies and technical selling.

Corn dropped for the fifth straight session and soybeans lost ground for the fourth straight day, as a U.S. tour of mostly robust crops wrapped up.

The Chicago Board of Trade most-active December wheat dropped 16-1/4 cents, or 4.1 per cent, to $4.07-1/2 per bushel (all figures US$). The September contract dipped as low as $3.81 per bushel, the cheapest nearby price since 2006.

Technical selling and grain handlers’ efforts to move U.S. winter wheat supplies to buyers ahead of the corn harvest pressured wheat prices, said Roy Huckabay, executive vice-president of Linn + Associates, a Chicago brokerage.

Wheat shed 8.4 per cent for the week, its biggest such decline in two years.

Global supplies are abundant as well. The International Grains Council on Thursday raised its forecast for world wheat production in the 2016-17 season to a record high.

Egypt’s General Authority for Supply Commodities said on Friday it bought 180,000 tonnes of Russian wheat in a tender. No U.S. wheat was offered.

December corn shed seven cents, or two per cent, to $3.25 per bushel, losing 5.5 per cent for the week in its biggest weekly decline since late June.

November soybeans gave up 8-1/4 cents, or 0.9 per cent, to $9.67-1/4 per bushel, and lost 3.7 per cent on the week, their largest such loss in five weeks.

After the close, the Pro Farmer advisory service reported results of its four-day tour of the U.S. Midwest.

It predicted that U.S. average corn yields in 2016 will be 170.2 bushels per acre, or enough to produce a record-large 14.728 billion-bushel crop. Soybean production was seen at a record 4.093 billion bushels, based on an average yield of 49.3 bushels per acre, Pro Farmer said.

— Rod Nickel is a Reuters correspondent covering the agriculture and mining sectors from Winnipeg. Additional reporting for Reuters by Julie Ingwersen in Chicago, Naveen Thukral in Singapore and Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris.