Chicago wheat, corn, soybean slump on USDA report

Chicago Board of Trade(CBOT) agricultural commodities closed sharply lower on Wednesday as the U.S. government disappointed the investors with bearish supply and demand adjustments in its August crop report.

The most active corn contract for December delivery shed 19.5 cents, or 5.03 percent, to close at 3.68 U.S. dollars per bushel. September wheat delivery lost 15 cents, or 2.96 percent, to close at 4.9225 dollars per bushel. November soybeans dropped 61.5 cents, or 6.33 percent, to close at 9.10 dollars per bushel.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) raised its outlook for U.S. corn supplies for 2015/16 crop year by 154 million from July projection in the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report for August released on Wednesday, strongly undercutting corn futures.

Chicago soybeans led the downside charge with falling sharply by more than 6 percent as the same report showed U.S. soybean production for 2015/16 is projected at 3.916 billion bushels, up 31 million from last month as a higher yield offsets a lower harvested area. The USDA also raised its estimates of soybean ending stocks to 470 million bushels, up 45 million from the previous month.

Meanwhile, global wheat supplies for 2015/16 are raised 2.2 million tons by the USDA. Wheat stocks were raised another 1.7 million tons to a record 221.5 million tons.

"Additional fine-tuning of yield and acreage will no doubt occur in subsequent months, but barring a widespread early frost, our takeaway from the August report is that U.S. supply risks have been nearly eliminated," said AgResource company, a Chicago-based agricultural research institute. Endite