Wheat faces biggest weekly fall since mid-March on USDA forecast

SINGAPORE, May 11: Chicago wheat slid for a third consecutive session on Friday with the market set to post its biggest weekly decline in two months after the U.S. government estimated production above expectations.
Soybeans are poised for a second week of decline on pressure from slowing demand in top importer China, while corn is down this week following two weeks of gains.
The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board Of Trade slipped 4.3 percent this week, on track for its biggest weekly loss since mid-March.
In the previous session, the contract hit $5.00 a bushel, its lowest since April 27.
Soybeans are down 2 percent this week, and corn slipped 1.3 percent.
"Some investors may have decided that without another crop downgrade the rally in wheat prices has come to end. We agree with that view," said Tobin Gorey, director of agricultural strategy, Commonwealth Bank of Australia. 
"The USDA is also forecasting a hefty rise in spring, durum and other high protein spring wheat production."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture projected the total U.S. wheat crop for the 2018-19 marketing year at 1.821 billion bushels, above the average analyst estimate for 1.777 billion and up 5 percent from the prior year.
Winter wheat grown in the southern U.S. Plains has struggled with months of drought, but the USDA said combined production of spring and durum wheat would increase 34 percent from the previous year. 
The agency expects global wheat stocks to total around 264.33 million tonnes by the end of 2018-19 marketing year, down about 2 percent from its 2017-18 forecast of 270.46 million, an all-time high.
The soybean market is being dragged down by slowing demand in China, which buys more than 60 percent of the oilseed traded worldwide.
China will cut its soybean imports for the first time in 15 years in 2018/19, the agriculture ministry forecast on Thursday, as a trade spat with the United States pushes pig farmers in the world's top buyer to seek cheaper proteins.
The USDA projected 2018-19 soybean ending stocks at 415 million bushels. The figure was below most trade expectations. It forecast global corn ending stocks would drop to 159.15 million tonnes by the end of 2018-19, from 194.85 million in 2017-18 and below a range of trade expectations. REUTERS