CHICAGO, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Chicago Board of Trade corn, soybean and wheat futures fell on Friday, with traders taking some money out of the market after prices for all three commodities surged to multi-year highs earlier in the week.
Wheat futures had risen to their highest since 2014 overnight on support from prospects for rising U.S. exports after leading world supplier Russia said it planned to double a wheat export tax, fanning concern about reduced global availability.
"This is going to reduce Russian exports," said Nathan Cordier of consultancy Agritel. "The response of the market is in a way to stifle demand (with high prices)."
At 11:26 a.m. CST (1726 GMT), CBOT March soft red winter wheat was down 5 cents at $6.65 a bushel. The most-active contract peaked at $6.93, its highest since May 2014, overnight.
K.C. March hard red winter wheat was off 3/4 cent at $6.35-3/4 a bushel. K.C. futures, which track the crop that makes up the bulk of U.S. exports, overnight hit their highest since December 2014.
Russia plans to impose a wheat export tax of 50 euros a tonne from March 1, increasing an initial 25 euro levy due to apply from Feb. 15, its economy minister said on Friday, in another push to cool domestic food prices.
CBOT March corn futures were down 2-3/4 cents at $5.31-1/2 a bushel and CBOT March soybeans dropped 12-1/4 cents to $14.18-1/4 a bushel.
Both corn and soybeans hit 6-1/2-year highs this week after the U.S. Department of Agriculture's reduced forecasts for U.S. corn and soybean supplies in widely followed data this week.
But the market was waiting for more bullish news before driving prices above those levels.
"We pulled back from the spike highs," said Matthew Wiegand, broker at FuturesOne. "We are just kind of drifting." (Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Louise Heavens and Dan Grebler)
