PARIS/SINGAPORE: Chicago wheat rose for a second straight session on Thursday, supported by hopes of renewed export demand and short-covering by investors assessing whether well-supplied grain markets have bottomed out. Corn inched down after a two-day rally that took prices to a near-two-week high on Wednesday, with the risk of crop damage in dry Argentine growing belts underpinning the market.

Soyabeans also ticked lower as traders weighed up South American weather forecasts that suggested generally favourable conditions in top exporter Brazil but raised the risk of rain delays to the Brazilian harvest and persisting dryness in parts of Argentina.

The Chicago Board of Trade most-active wheat contract was up 0.5 percent to $4.23-1/2 a bushel at 1259 GMT, after closing up 1.2 percent on Wednesday.

The contract’s one-month low struck on Tuesday, along with a three-year low for the dollar this week, have stirred expectations that importers and other buyers will turn to U.S. wheat.

“Buyers might finally have emerged given the U.S. wheat, via lower prices and a lower greenback, will have cheapened considerably over the past week,” said Tobin Gorey, director of agricultural strategy at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The wheat market will get an update on export demand from weekly U.S. export sales figures due on Friday.

Wheat has been under pressure from abundant global supplies, as well as a higher than expected government estimate of U.S. winter wheat acreage for 2018, and some analysts see little scope for a sustained rebound in wheat and grain prices generally.

“Current prices are at historically low levels but there are no signs of a trend reversal in this current benign climatic context,” consultancy Agritel said in a note. “(It was a) technical rebound yesterday in Chicago, mainly caused by the short covering from the funds.”

Commodity funds were net buyers of CBOT corn, wheat, soybean and soymeal futures contracts on Wednesday and net sellers of soyoil futures, traders said. Trader estimates of net fund buying in corn were in a wide range from 12,000 to 25,000 contracts. Corn edged down 0.1 percent to $3.52-1/2 a bushel, holding onto to most of its two-day gains and trading near Wednesday’s near two-week top of $3.53-1/4. Soybeans also ticked down 0.1 percent, to $9.67-3/4 a bushel.

Meanwhile, Germany’s Evonik and Siemens are teaming up to convert excess renewable power into chemical building blocks that would normally require oil, the latest attempt to deal with erratic flows of wind and solar power in the country.

Agencies