* Varying South American soy crop forecasts roil trade
* Market processing USDA crop production report
* Arctic blast brings snow, frigid weather to much of US
(Rewrites throughout, adds bullets, new headline, updates prices, new byline and dateline, previously CANBERRA/PARIS)
CHICAGO, Jan 16 (Reuters) -
Chicago soybean futures ticked up on Tuesday, rising from multi-year lows in the previous trading session, as the market wrestled with widely varying forecasts for South America's crop, traders said.
Corn and wheat also extended drops from the previous session - with the most-active wheat contract dipping to the lowest prices since Nov. 29.
Soybean futures continued to face pressure from Friday's
government report of larger-than-expected Brazilian crops, as well as bigger U.S. yield and production levels for the recently harvested crop.
But the report is in stark contrast to other, lower projections of Brazil's soybean crop, as farmers there have faced extreme weather and drought conditions this growing season, said Dan Basse, president of consultancy AgResource Company.
"That's the key fundamental that we're going to be struggling to figure out going forward," Basse said.
Aprosoja Brasil
, an association representing thousands of grain farmers in the world's largest supplier of soybeans, on Tuesday forecast 135 million metric tons of soybeans in the 2023/2024 production cycle - lower than recent
private forecasters' projections
,
Brazilian crop agency Conab's expectations
and a
U.S. Department of Agriculture projection.
The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was up 0.45% at $12.29-3/4 a bushel by 10:49 a.m. CST (1649 GMT) after slipping to $12.03 on Friday, its lowest price since November 2021.
The U.S. market was closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday.
An Arctic blast gripped much of the U.S. on Tuesday, with extreme cold stressing beef and dairy cattle herds, and causing concerns for poultry and hog operators who had to closely monitor the temperatures inside their barns, analysts said.
CBOT corn was down 0.73% to $4.43-3/4 a bushel, while wheat was down 3.1% at $5.77-1/2 a bushel. (Reporting by Peter Hobson in Canberra and Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris; Editing by Rashmi Aich, Sonia Cheema, Krishna Chandra Eluri and Paul Simao)
