BEIJING: Chicago wheat firmed on Friday, poised for a more than 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) was up 0.09% at $5.70-4/8 a bushel, as of 0355 GMT.
Soybean futures were up 0.18% at $9.80 a bushel, but outlook for rising global supplies set them on course for a 1.9% weekly decline.
Corn gained 0.11% to $4.37 a bushel.
“(Wheat) supplies held by major exporters Russia and France are much smaller than the world has gotten used to the last several years, and the two major exporters in the Black Sea growing area, Russia and Ukraine, remain at war with tensions escalating again,” Bergman Grains Research said in a note.
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 US 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 UK wheat area for the 2025 harvest is forecast to rise by 5%, while rapeseed sowings are seen falling by 17% to a 42-year low, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board said in provisional results of its early bird survey.
Chicago wheat higher
The US Department of Agriculture confirmed private sales of 198,000 tons of US 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.
Commodity funds were net sellers of Chicago Board of Trade soybean, soymeal, soyoil, corn and wheat futures contracts, traders said.
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