Farmers in the country have sown soybean across 37,000 ha, over half of what was planted during same period last year. A delay in the onset of monsoon by around a fortnight in key growing areas of Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra, the top producers, has pulled down the overall sowing of the oilseed in the country.

Private weather forecaster Skymet has also suggested farmers to cultivate less of kharif crops, including soybean, due to lower availability of water for irrigation.

Farmers have not begun sowing in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, while operations were underway in Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and some minor growing states. Sowing has started in irrigated areas only. A lag in sowing is also due to the delay in announcement of minimum support price by the Centre. A higher minimum support price motivates farmers to add more area under a crop. The government had fixed a minimum support price of 3,399 rupees per 100 kg for the oilseed for 2018-19.

 

Corn futures closed off the highs in the front months up 1 to 3 1/4 cents, as new crop contracts saw 4 to 6 1/4 cent gains. Strength in soybeans was supportive. After the close, NASS reported the US corn crop at 92% planted by 6/16, in line with most estimates and lagging the 5-year average of 100%.

Emergence was at 79%, 18% below normal. Condition ratings were UNCH on the gd/ex scale at 59%, with the Brugler500 index down 1 to 354. USDA showed just 653,875 MT of corn shipments during the week that ended on June 13 via their Export Inspections report.

That was a 23.24% drop from the previous week and down more than 1 MMT same week last year. Agroconsult raised their Brazilian corn crop estimate by 0.8 MMT to 101.2 MMT, while revising the export projection 7 MMT higher from the previous number at 38 MMT.