Wheat, corn, soybeans, any of the US grain futures were struggling to find a pulse last night. The market dwelled on the tension in the Middle East and squaring up prior to the USDA WASDE report due out on Friday.

The weather in the US in benign, a winter storm due later this week is expected to produce rain turning to snow so business as usual.
This isn’t necessarily the case in Russia though. Unseasonably warm conditions have left much of the winter wheat with little to no snow cover to protect it from any severe cold that may occur in the short term.
Currently there is no threat of extreme cold with the above normal temperatures set to persist for the next two weeks. Rainfall numbers in central Russia have improved slightly but the Volga Valley remains exceptionally dry. This will become a major concern if it remains this way leading into the spring thaw.

Meanwhile in Argentina farmers are taking their tractors to Rosario in protest over the increase in export taxes on grain. The increases although only small basically mean at current world values that the government will be making more out of grain than producers. Some estimates indicate that while a producer stands to make a loss growing soybeans this year the government can’t lose and will still make an easy profit. Farmers predict as similar result as the great protest in 2008 when they bought the country to its knees.