Chicago wheat set for 6% weekly rise on Black Sea supply worries

Chicago wheat eased on Friday but were poised for a 6%weekly gain, as Russia launched a hypersonic missile at a Ukrainian city, raising concerns over potential disruptions to exports from the breadbasket region.

The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) Wv1 was down 0.1 at $5.69 a bushel, as of 1230 GMT, up 6% so far this week.

The contract was pressured on Friday by a better than expected crop outlook in Western Australia, a major exporter of the cereal, than a month ago.

Soybean futures Sv1 were down 0.2% at $9.75-3/4 a bushel, with outlook for rising global supplies set them on course for a 2.2% weekly decline while corn Cv1 gained 0.5% to $4.29 a bushel, set for a weekly gain of 2.4%.

In a further escalation of the 33-month-old war, Russia fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at Dnipro on Thursday in response to the U.S. and the UK allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons, and warned that more could follow.

The International Grains Council has trimmed its forecast for 2024/25 global wheat production by 2 million metric tons to 796 million tons, driven partly by a diminished outlook for the European Union.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed private sales of 198,000 tons of U.S. soybeans to China and another 135,000 metric tons to unknown destinations, all for delivery in the 2024/25 marketing year.

Argentina’s 2024/25 soybean planting progressed by 16 percentage points in the past week, reaching 35.8% of the 18.6 million hectares projected for the season, according to the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange.

China granted Brazil permission to export sorghum, fresh grapes, sesame and fish products to Chinese buyers, the Latin American country’s agriculture ministry said on Wednesday.

In France , farmers had harvested 82% of this year’s grain maize crop by Nov. 18, up from 71% a week earlier, and sown 90% of the expected soft wheat area for next year’s harvest, against 78% a week earlier, farm office FranceAgriMer said on Friday.

Commodity funds were net sellers of Chicago Board of Trade soybean, soymeal, soyoil, corn and wheat futures contracts, traders said.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Mei Mei in Beijing and Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Subhranshu Sahu and Chizu Nomiyama)