Chicago | Reuters—Chicago Board of Trade corn futures set contract lows and soybean futures sagged on Friday on expectations that beneficial weather for U.S. crops will lead to bumper harvests, analysts said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a monthly report that kept its yield estimates unchanged from June, but traders projected they will rise if weather conditions remain favorable.
Big U.S. harvests would add to large output in rival exporter Brazil.
“There’s plenty of rainfall coming across the country, along with cooling temperatures,” said Chuck Shelby, broker at Risk Management Commodities. “That’s leaning us toward a bigger corn crop.”
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Most-active corn futures Cv1ended down 4-1/4 cents at $4.12-1/4 a bushel, near an eight-month low hit in late June. The market set contract lows in several futures months, including the December contract CZ25 that represents the crop that will be harvested in the autumn.
CBOT soybeans Sv1 finished down 6-1/2 cents at $10.07-1/4 a bushel and traded near a three-month low struck on Thursday.
CBOT wheat Wv1 closed down 9-1/2 cents at $5.45 per bushel, after rising earlier in the session to a one-week high.
The soy market faced additional pressure from a bigger-than-expected increase in the USDA’s estimate for how much of the oilseed will be left in storage before next year’s harvest, analysts said.
Soybean ending stocks for 2025-26 were seen at 310 million bushels, compared to 295 million in June and analysts’ expectations for 302 million.
“That’s driving disappointment,” said Ted Seifried, chief market strategist for Zaner Ag Hedge.
The USDA pegged 2025-26 corn ending stocks at 1.66 billion bushels, down from 1.75 billion in June. Analysts had expected 1.72 billion, according to a Reuters survey.
Following the agency’s report, traders quickly refocused on expectations for large harvests.
“We’re going right back to looking at weather and talking about how big yields could be,” Seifried said.
In other news, U.S. biofuel makers will consume more than half of all soybean oil produced in the United States next year, the USDA said.
—Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris, Naveen Thukral in Singapore and PJ Huffstutter in Chicago
