May 4 (Bloomberg) -- Soybean prices rose to a seven-month high on signs that declining output from South America is boosting demand for U.S. inventories that the government says will drop to a five-year low.
Drought damage to crops in Brazil and Argentina is helping to boost the value of vegetable oil, including palm oil, which jumped 30 percent in April, the most since December 2001. World soybean inventories on Sept. 30 will drop 14 percent to a five- year low of 45.8 million metric tons, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on April 9.
“The world balance sheet could get intolerably tight,” said Joe Vaclavik, a broker at Advantage Traders Group in Chicago. “Until prices rise high enough to choke off demand, prices will continue to firm.”
Soybean futures for July delivery rose 12.5 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $11.035 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. Earlier, the price reached $11.27, the highest for a most-active contract since Sept. 29.
U.S. exporters sold 31.79 million tons (1.17 billion bushels) of soybeans from Sept. 1 to April 23, up 10 percent from a year earlier, the USDA said on April 30.
U.S. supplies on Aug. 31, before the next harvest, will drop 20 percent from a year earlier to a five-year low of 165 million bushels, the USDA said on April 9. That would be equal to 33 days of consumption, the second-lowest in 30 years.
Soybeans inspected for export in the week ended April 30 more than doubled to 18.181 million bushels from a week earlier, the USDA said today.
“The U.S. can’t afford to keep selling soybeans,” Vaclavik said. “We’ve already seen a major drop in inventories.”
Soybeans are the second-biggest U.S. crop, valued in 2008 at $27.4 billion, government figures show. Corn is the biggest at $47.4 billion.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Wilson in Chicago at jwilson29@bloomberg.net
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