The weather continues to set the mood in the soybean and corn markets. The belief that rain will bring relief has disappeared in the soy market, but there still seems to be hope for corn. Due to the drought, the condition of wheat, corn and soy has deteriorated over the past week.
The September wheat contract on the Matif closed €2 per tonne lower at €239 per tonne on Tuesday. At the CBoT in Chicago, where trading resumed after the long weekend, the July wheat contract was on the rise and the September contract also rose in value. The first contract closed at $6,96 per bushel and the second at $7,07 per bushel. The condition of the winter wheat is unchanged at 38% good to excellent. Spring wheat is deteriorating slightly and was 51% good to excellent last week, a decrease of 9 percentage points.
US wheat prices are also performing well due to better demand. For example, Algeria bought 630.000 tons of wheat, mainly from Russia. A Japanese tender for 92.529 tonnes of wheat from the United States, Canada and Australia closes on Thursday.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an acceleration of grain shipments from Ukrainian ports while the Black Sea Agreement still applies. The UN also seems to partly accept the end of the agreement.
Rain doesn't help anymore
The July soybean contract closed higher at $14,77 per bushel and the August contract closed higher at $14,08 per bushel. The soy market is still a weather market. Despite forecasts that more rain will fall before the weekend, it is not expected that this rain will revive the lost production. On Tuesday, the USDA announced that the soy condition on June 18 was good to excellent in 54% of the cases, 5 percentage points less than a week ago.
Last week, the US exported 185.184 tons of soybeans. Total exports for the year so far are roughly 49,03 million tons. That is 3,8% less than the same period last year.
The July corn contract closed higher at $6,35 per bushel, while the September corn contract lost some value to settle at $5,93 per bushel. The weather forecasts for corn are both bullish and bearish and it remains to be seen which weather system will pass over the corn belt. However, little rain is expected in the short term. Corn crop condition was 55% good to excellent last week, compared to 61% a week earlier.
US corn exports last week totaled 877.310 tons, so far this year 31,98 million tons of corn have been exported, down 30,7% from the same period a year ago.