By Julie Wernau

Cotton prices started the week in a slump Monday ahead of a weekly crop progress report.

Cotton for December delivery fell 0.6% to 68.68 cents a pound on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange, on track for its fifth straight session of losses.

"This week's crop progress report is likely to show strong harvest progress," said Louis Rose, founder of commodities-consulting firm Risk Analytics.

For the week ended Oct. 21, the USDA had classed 803,443 bales of cotton from this year's harvest thus far, with classing to date at 2,683,655 bales, or about 17% of government projections for the season.

Following heavy rains in east-central and southeastern cotton areas of the U.S. due to hurricanes and storms, cotton growing regions have dried in recent weeks, according to forecasting firm WeatherBELL Analytics in New York.

The firm said the weather is expected to be drier in most cotton areas over the next 10 days, which should aid harvests.

The USDA reports on the progress of U.S. crops at 4 p.m. EDT Monday.

Traders also said they are anticipating a less robust report of sales of U.S. fiber overseas in Thursday's export sales report. Despite strong sales in last week's report, futures received only a limited boost.

In other markets, raw sugar for March was up 1.7% to 23.10 cents a pound, cocoa for December fell 1.4% to $2,687 a ton, arabica coffee for December rose 1.1% to $1.578 a pound and frozen concentrated orange juice futures for November were up 1.1% at $2.0275 a pound.

Write to Julie Wernau at julie.wernau@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 24, 2016 11:14 ET (15:14 GMT)

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