US corn futures shrugged off poor weekly export sales data to close higher. The prospect of more rain in an already saturated eastern corn belt has the punters thinking what corn is in the ground is what they’re going to end up with. The key to it all now is how much of that corn will make it to harvest.

Interesting to note a big take up on the latest Chinese corn auction out of their reserve stocks. 2.54mt was sold which represents almost 64% of total corn offered. Weather across the N.China plain has been a little below average this summer but Chinese officials continue to predict a big harvest, a harvest that is already part way through. In southern China where the most harvest progress has been made the weather has been much drier than average, northern parts were closer to average.

At Chicago soft wheat futures found spill over support from the corn pit and managed to climb higher. Both HRW and spring wheat futures were both higher by the close but by a lesser amount than soft wheat which stands to take the most advantage of the expected smaller corn harvest.
Talk of Argentina producing a record wheat crop this year is flattening S.American values. Production has been raised to almost 22mt representing a 13% increase year on year.