CHICAGO, July 24 (Reuters) -
U.S. wheat futures surged 8.6% on Monday, rising their daily maximum at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) after Russia attacked Ukrainian ports and grain infrastructure, including the first attack on Danube River grain warehouses.
The attacks targeted a vital export route for Kyiv in an expanding air campaign that Moscow began last week after quitting the Black Sea grain deal.
Corn and soybeans followed wheat futures higher, with outlooks for hot weather this week in the U.S. crop belt adding support.
As of 12:19 p.m. CDT (1719 GMT), CBOT September wheat was up its 60-cent daily limit at $7.57-1/2 per bushel, its highest in a month. Benchmark December corn was up 32-1/2 cents at $5.68-3/4 a bushel and November soybeans were up 24-1/4 cents at $14.26 a bushel.
The attacks on Ukraine's export routes sharpened traders' focus on long-term threats to global grain supplies and food security.
"Russia continues to dump cheap wheat on the world market, and Brazil’s record harvest has the world well-supplied with corn near-term," StoneX chief commodities economist Arlan Suderman wrote in a note to clients. "But the longer-term implications of destroying the export infrastructure of a major world exporter have bigger implications," Suderman said.
Russia has been pounding Ukrainian food-exporting ports almost daily, with another attack on Sunday on Ukraine’s grain export port of Odesa.
Ukraine has hugely expanded grain exports overland via the EU since Russia's invasion last year, with around 1 million tonnes a month exported. Major volumes have been exported from Romanian ports and along the Danube river.
In other news, the European Union's crop monitoring service further reduced its crop yield forecasts for this year's harvest, citing dry and hot weather.
Ahead of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's weekly crop progress report, analysts surveyed by Reuters on average expected the government to rate 58% of the U.S. corn crop as good to excellent, up 1 percentage point from a week ago, while soybean ratings were seen unchanged at 55% good to excellent. The United States is the world's No. 2 exporter of corn and soybeans, after Brazil. (Reporting by Julie Ingwersen; additional reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Jan Harvey)
