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PARIS/SINGAPORE — Chicago wheat fell on Wednesday after a three-session rally as participants digested developments regarding exports from Ukraine, including a deal on grain transit via Poland, while assessing rain forecasts for parched U.S. wheat belts.
Corn and soybeans also eased as the market monitored the U.S. weather outlook after a mixed start to U.S. planting.
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A stronger dollar and weaker crude oil created some pressure on grains.
Wheat markets rallied at the start of this week, recovering ground after hitting their lowest since 2021 in late March, as bans on Ukrainian grain announced by several eastern European Union countries and growing uncertainty over a Black Sea grain deal raised worries about a squeeze on Ukrainian exports.
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“The market is still oversold technically and there is still plenty of uncertainty on the availability of Ukraine grain in the world market,” commodities research firm Hightower said in a note.
Concerns were tempered by news that Poland agreed on Tuesday to lift a ban on the transit of Ukrainian grain, and by the resumption on Wednesday of vessel inspections under the wartime corridor deal for grain shipments from Ukraine.
Large expected Russian wheat exports were also helping to cap prices.
However, the Black Sea export deal, brokered by the United Nations, remains in doubt following warnings by Russia it could pull out of the arrangement in mid-May.
Weather forecasts pointed to rainfall next week in some drought-affected U.S. hard red winter wheat belts, along with mixed conditions for planting of corn, soybeans and spring wheat.
Showers expected in Brazil were maintaining favorable prospects for the country’s second corn crop, tempering worries about continuing drought in Argentina.
The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was down 1.3% at $7.00 a bushel by 1158 GMT.
Soybeans gave up 0.3% to $14.86-1/2 a bushel and corn fell 0.7% to $6.40-1/4 a bushel. (Reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore; Editing by Sohini Goswami, Elaine Hardcastle)
