Chicago grains fall on firmer dollar; Black Sea corridor in focus

Prices of wheat, soybeans and corn dropped on Monday, pressured by a firmer U.S. dollar and as traders continued to monitor negotiations after a wheat shipment left Ukraine as part of the Black Sea grain deal.

The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) Sv1 was down 0.9% at $13.83-1/2 a bushel, as of 0523 GMT, wheat Wv1 gave up 0.2% to $8.49 a bushel, and corn Cv1 lost 0.8% to $6.78-3/4 a bushel.

The dollar index =USD strengthened 0.3%, making greenback-priced commodities more expensive for overseas buyers.

Ukraine said a ship carrying 40,000 tonnes of wheat departed on Sunday from Chornomorsk bound for Yemen, but uncertainty remained over whether the Black Sea exports corridor could extend beyond the Nov. 19 deadline.

“The market seems to think that the corridor will be extended,” Tobin Gorey from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia said in a report.

Wheat production in Australia is forecast at 34 million tonnes in 2022/23, down from the record-breaking 2021/22 crop of 36.3 million tonnes, but still the second-largest in history, the U.S. Department of Agriculture attache said in a report.

Meanwhile, China’s soybean imports in September jumped 12% to 7.72 million tonnes from a year earlier, customs data showed, reversing a months-long trend of low arrivals.

“(Chinese) crush margins have been weak this year which has limited imports, but crushers ultimately needed supplies and so there has been an uptick in imports and buying,” said Darin Friedrichs at Sitonia Consulting.

China’s economy rebounded at a faster-than-expected pace in the third quarter, beating forecasts.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Mai Nguyen in Hanoi; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)