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Chicago agricultural commodities close lower on bumper harvest estimates

Xinhua, August 30, 2016 Adjust font size:

Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) grains futures closed lower Friday, with wheat futures falling for a sixth consecutive session to a 10-year low, as ample global stocks and a regulatory clamp-down from the world's largest buyer of the grain dragged on prices.

Corn futures slid and soybean futures also dropped. Vast worldwide supplies of grain that will only increase with the fall harvest are weighing on markets, along with favorable weather forecasts, analysts observed.

The most active corn contract for December delivery was down 4.25 cents, or 1.31 percent, to 3.2075 dollars per bushel. December wheat delivery fell 10.5 cents, or 2.58 percent, to 3.97 dollars per bushel. November soybeans fell 3 cents, or 0.31 percent, to 9.6425 dollars per bushel.

Wheat slid after Egypt, the world's biggest wheat importer, reinstated on Sunday a controversial ban on wheat shipments containing even the slightest amount of a common grain fungus, ergot. The move baffled traders who had returned to the Egyptian market just last month when the ban was lifted.

"There is a big supply and uncertainty of demand," said Don Roose, founder of U.S. Commodities in West Des Moines,Iowa.

Analysts pointed to the grain piling up, with the bumper harvest estimates from USDA and the ProFarmer Midwest Crop Tour.

The Pro Farmer newsletter on Friday predicted that U.S. average corn yields in 2016 will be 170.2 bushels per acre, or enough to produce a record-large 14.728 billion-bushel crop.

Pro Farmer projected soybean production at a record 4.093 billion bushels, with an average yield of 49.3 bushels per acre. Its estimates topped the USDA's Aug. 12 outlook for a 4.060 billion-bushel crop with a yield of 48.9 bushels per acre.

After the CBOT close, the USDA rated 75 percent of the U.S. corn crop in good to excellent condition, unchanged from a week earlier, and 73 percent of the soybean crop as good to excellent, up from 72 percent the previous week. Both figures are historically high. Endit