BLBG: Corn, Soybeans Advance to 30-Month Highs on Argentine Strike; Wheat Climbs
Corn and soybean futures advanced to 30-month highs as vessels carrying both crops from Argentina are blocked because of a strike by port workers at the nation’s main terminals, disrupting global trade. Rice and wheat gained.
March-delivery corn gained as much as 0.5 percent to $6.695 a bushel, the highest price for the most-active contract in Chicago since July 17, 2008. Soybeans for March delivery climbed as much as 0.5 percent to $14.4475 per bushel, the highest price since July 21, 2008.
Argentine port workers, who have been on strike since last week, are blocking between 20 and 30 soybean and grain-cargo ships from the country’s main terminals, Alberto Jacobson, head of the San Lorenzo Chamber of Commerce, said yesterday. More than 70 percent of Argentine soybean, soy oil and soy meal are exported from the ports outside Rosario.
“A significant amount of vessels are unable to load with grain and oilseed exports,” Luke Mathews, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, said by phone from Sydney today. “Buyers will continue to turn to the U.S.”
Wheat futures advanced, recouping yesterday’s losses, on speculation that North African countries may boost imports of the grain as storms hit parts of the U.S., the world’s largest exporter, and Australia.
March-delivery wheat gained as much as 1.2 percent to $8.46 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade after losing 0.6 percent yesterday. It traded at $8.445, up 1.1 percent at 12:10 p.m. Singapore time.
Algerian Buying
Countries in North Africa, particularly Algeria, are boosting grain purchases to build up stockpiles, lifting demand, Roger Janson, Cargill Inc.’s head of European grain and oilseed trading, said yesterday. Algeria bought 2 million metric tons of grains in the past 20 days, he said.
“The grain market is still grappling with the issues in North Africa,” Mathews said. “The market has taken a slightly more positive approach, after yesterday’s decline,” he said, referring to the buying that pushed prices higher today.
Unprecedented protests, which followed a revolt in Tunisia that ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14, have left more than 100 people dead in Egypt and roiled international stock, bond and oil markets. Unrest has spread to Jordan, where King Abdullah sacked his prime minister yesterday, and other countries including Yemen and Algeria.
Turkey bought 240,000 tons of wheat from the U.S. in a Jan. 11 tender, a unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a report posted yesterday on its website.
The country also bought 20,000 tons each from Kazakhstan, Germany and Ukraine, the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service said. The average price was $401.47 per ton.
‘Life-Threatening’
Importers are seeking more supplies from the global market as a storm, described by the Weather Service office in Oklahoma as “life-threatening,” hit parts of the U.S., while a category-five storm approaches Australia’s Queensland, which is still recovering from its worst flooding.
The very cold weather brought by the storm “increases the risk to winter-wheat” in growing areas in the Central and Southern Plains, while snowfall of between 12 and 24 inches is possible in the wheat-growing areas in the Midwest and the Delta region, Telvent DTN Inc. said in a forecast yesterday.
“Given the political instability in the world, this just makes it worse,” David Stroud, chief executive officer of TS Capital Fund LP, a New York-based commodity fund manager, said in an e-mail. The cyclone forecast to hit Queensland, may flood grain storage facilities, adding to concerns about shrinking supply of high-quality wheat, he said.
Rough-rice futures in Chicago traded above $16 for the first time since December 2009, as global demand was forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to outstrip output this year for the first time in four years.
Plantings in the U.S., the third-largest shipper, may drop 25 percent in 2011 from last year, according to a Bloomberg News survey of nine analysts and farmers published on Jan. 31.
March-delivery rough rice gained for a third day, gaining 0.9 percent to $16.08 per 100 pounds, the highest price for the most-active contract in Chicago since Dec. 16, 2009.
To contact the reporter on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Matthew Oakley at moakley@bloomberg.net
