By Kirk Maltais


--Corn for March delivery rose 1.5% to $4.48 1/2 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on Tuesday, in reaction to the USDA revising its 2024/25 ending stocks projection lower for U.S. corn, by more than grain traders and analysts were expecting.

--Soybeans for March delivery rose 0.5% to $9.95 1/4 a bushel.

--Wheat for March delivery rose 0.5% to $5.61 1/2 a bushel.


HIGHLIGHTS


Reduced Inventories: Corn stock piles in the U.S. and abroad were shown as falling in the USDA's latest WASDE report released Tuesday. The agency projected U.S. corn stocks for the 2024/25 marketing year ending at 1.74 billion bushels, a drop of 200 million bushels from 1.94 billion bushels projected by the USDA last month. It's also less than the 1.89 billion bushels projected by analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal last week. The miss of analyst forecasts helped propel the futures contract in afternoon trading.

Unchanged View: The outlook for South American soybean production was left mostly unchanged by the USDA in Tuesday's WASDE report, in turn giving traders little fuel for hopes that drought conditions in Brazil and elsewhere will derail what's otherwise expected to be a record-sized crop. "Beans have a bearish outlook unless South America production estimates start to fall significantly," Doug Bergman of RCM Alternatives said in a note following the report's release. The less-than-optimistic outlook for prices kept a lid on them throughout the trading session.

Pulling Back: U.S. ethanol production may continue to decline after posting an all-time record high two weeks ago, analysts surveyed by Dow Jones said. They forecast average daily production of 1.044 million barrels a day to 1.082 million barrels a day, versus last week's 1.073 million barrels a day, with most expecting production at the low end of that range. Should production keep shrinking it would extend the losing streak seen since daily ethanol production posted an all-time high of 1.119 million barrels a day for the week ended Nov. 22. Higher ethanol production has been a factor supporting corn futures in recent sessions.


INSIGHT


Change to the Method: Chinese and Egyptian officials are changing the way that Egypt imports Russian wheat - important as Egypt is a major wheat buyer and Russia is the world's largest wheat exporter. Russia is now expected to continue shipping wheat to Egypt as Egypt's military agency Mostakbal Misr takes over from the country's General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC), which has for decades been the authority importing wheat for Egypt's state-subsidized bread, according to media reports.

Adjusting the Approach: China's Ministry of Agriculture raised its forecast for domestic soybean production by 0.5% to 20.65 million metric tons, while slashing expectations for soybean imports by 7.5% to 94.6 million tons for the marketing year which, like the U.S., begins on Sept. 1 and ends Aug. 31 of the next year. The data appears to signal China's move toward self-sufficiency in crop production, which in turn would hurt the U.S. export business.


AHEAD


--The EIA will release its weekly ethanol production and stocks report at 10:30 a.m. ET Wednesday.

--The USDA will release its weekly export sales report at 8:30 a.m. ET Thursday.

--The CFTC will release its weekly Commitment of Traders report at 3:30 p.m. ET Friday.


Write to Kirk Maltais at kirk.maltais@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

12-10-24 1556ET