Chicago | Reuters—Chicago Board of Trade corn and soybean futures turned higher on Tuesday, reversing direction after a two-day slide, as investors tracked a heat wave moving across the eastern Corn Belt after the government reported a decline in U.S. crop ratings.
CBOT wheat futures also dropped to nearly two-month lows, as an advancing U.S. harvest and talk of good initial yields in Russia kept the focus on incoming supply in the northern hemisphere.
The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade Wv1 settled down 9-1/2 cents at $5.82 per bushel. It earlier fell to $5.80, its weakest since April 22.
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CBOT soybeans Sv1 ended up 12-1/4 cents at $11.74 a bushel, while corn Cv1 settled up 6-1/4 cents at $4.50 per bushel.
After the market closed on Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rated 72 per cent of the U.S. corn crop as good to excellent in its weekly crop progress report, down 2 percentage points from a week ago and on the low end of analyst expectations. USDA rated 70 per cent of the soybean crop as good to excellent, down from 72 per cent a week earlier.
The report came as National Weather Service forecasters warned a high-pressure weather system could bring record-breaking temperatures to the eastern Corn Belt this week.
While the high heat is not expected to have a significant impact on the current corn and soybean crop, traders and agronomists are watching for signs of field stress where farmers planted in wet conditions.
Much of the Midwestern crop is in the vegetative growth stage, which can handle the hot days and warm nights, said Daniel Quinn, assistant professor of agronomy at Purdue University. But if a crop was planted wet, and the roots are compromised, plant stress could showing up earlier than expected.
That has market participants looking ahead to what USDA will report for crop conditions next week, and whether conditions will further deteriorate, said Brian Splitt, a founding partner of AgMarket.Net.
—Reporting for Reuters by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Peter Hobson in Canberra
