Farmers were tight-fisted with their remaining soyabeans but continued to deliver previously contracted corn and also make fresh sales, dealers said.
With the soyabean harvest mostly done and the corn harvest nearing completion, barge demand has eased and freight has eased, especially on the Illinois River. At Seneca, Illinois, corn and soyabean spot bids jumped around 10 cents per bushel.
The steadily improving basis during the last week has attracted some farmer and elevator selling, a dealer said. Barges remained more in demand on the Mississippi River near Dubuque, Iowa, and freight continued to pressure basis bids, another dealer said.
As farmers harvest what the US Department of Agriculture has forecast to be their second-largest corn crop on record, ground piles were becoming more common.
An elevator in central Iowa started putting corn on the ground during the weekend and expected to pile more than a million bushels outside, a dealer said. Some elevators continued to close temporarily their truck dumps to new deliveries because they were at capacity.
Loan deficiency payments (LDPs) for soyabeans disappeared throughout the Midwest on Wednesday after falling to 2 cents in Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska on Tuesday.
LDPs for corn were steady to 3 cents lower on Wednesday and ranged from 42 to 49 cents.
The US government offers LDPs to compensate for low cash prices. Farmers can claim LDPs without having immediately to sell their grain. Instead, they can store the crop and sell it later when prices rise in the cash market.
Chicago Board of Trade soyabean futures were called to open 1 to 2 cents per bushel lower in choppy, consolidation trade with the harvest weighing on prices, traders said.