US markets found support from a hotter weak ahead. Temperatures across the corn and soybean belt will warm up early next week. Places like Iowa and Illinois are expected to see high’s in the mid 30’s while further south across Kansas and the HRW belt the mercury is expected to climb into the high 30’s from today through to early next week. The heat in the corn belt will follow some good falls of rain predicted for today and tomorrow. Storms are also expected to drift across the spring wheat belt south into the corn belt again on the weekend before heading into a much drier week next week.

In the FSU the weather continues to be mostly very favourable. The drier parts of Russia and Kazakhstan received some useful falls this week while further west both Russia and the Ukraine are seeing good heat and rain to keep summer crops pumping along and finishing off any late winter wheat nicely. Yields in the wheat crop are very good but quality is a little lower than average according to most reports. Not full of fusarium like some fields in France but not exactly Prime Hard quality either. The season has been soft.

Indian chickpea futures are not really worth watching at present since the government stopped trading there but it is interesting to watch how hard those that are trying to get out of existing contracts there are getting stung, it was up over $1600/t Oct last night.