CANBERRA, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Chicago soybean futures edged higher on Friday, but were headed for a seventh consecutive weekly decline due to disappointing weekly U.S. export sales and ample cheap supply from top producer Brazil, whose harvest is underway.
Corn and wheat fell, with all three futures trading near multi-year lows.
FUNDAMENTALS
* The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was up 0.2% at $12.05 a bushel by 0119 GMT and down around 0.4% for the week.
* CBOT corn was down 0.3% at $4.46 a bushel and roughly flat from last Friday's close, while wheat fell 0.1% to $6.00-3/4 a bushel and was also little changed from a week-ago period.
* Soybeans hit a two-year low of $11.87-3/4 and corn a three-year low of $4.36-1/2 on Tuesday. Wheat touched a three-year low of $5.40 in September and has remained near those levels.
* Soybeans slumped after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported old-crop U.S. soybean export sales in the week ended Jan. 25 at 164,500 metric tons, the lowest for any week since the 2023/24 marketing year began on Sept. 1.
* The low numbers imply traders largely shrugged off a separate USDA confirmation of private sales of 206,834 tons of U.S. soybeans to Mexico.
* U.S. beans face strong competition from Brazil, the biggest producer, where cash soybean prices have been falling as the harvest gets underway.
* Demand for soybeans from China, by far the largest soy importer, is also lacklustre due to a wobbly economy and a shrinking pig herd that is reducing demand for animal feed.
* Brokers StoneX lowered their forecast for Brazil's soybean crop to 150.35 million metric tons from 152.8 million a month ago.
* But Brazil's harvest is still better than it could have been without recent rains, and analysts expect good crops in Argentina and elsewhere in South America.
* Argentina's grains exports hit $1.25 billion in January, up 64% from a year earlier, industry data showed, after the country's new president devalued its peso currency.
* Corn markets are well-supplied following a record U.S. harvest, but brisk weekly U.S. corn export sales of more than 1.2 million tons, near the high end of trade expectations, lent support to prices.
* StoneX forecast that Brazil would harvest 124.5 million tons of corn, barely changing its previous estimate.
* Commodity funds were net sellers of Chicago soybeans and corn on Thursday and net buyers of wheat, traders said.
MARKETS NEWS
Global equity markets rebounded on Thursday on expectations that interest cuts by the Federal Reserve and other central banks were coming, though not as soon as hoped for, while Treasury yields slid again on concerns about regional U.S. banks.
(Reporting by Peter Hobson; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
