Early Call On Chicago

The overnights rebounded from last night's losses with wheat closing around 10-12 cents higher, beans up around 2-4 cents and corn up 1-2 cents.

Ukraine announced, as anticipated, that it will limit the export of grains to 3.5 MMT between now and the end of the year. The estimated 1 MMT already waiting for customs clearance at the docks will presumably now be allowed to leave, but will come off that total.

The USDA currently have Ukraine down to export 6 MMT of wheat and 4 MMT of barley in 2010/11. That now clearly looks unlikely.

Some reports suggest that Kazakhstan might also introduce some form of cap on exports as early as tomorrow.

That presents another opportunity for the US to offload some of it's weighty surplus. Patience is clearly a virtue, as they've been resolutely building these stocks for the past few years whilst steadfastly refusing to get drawn into a price war with the Black Sea five and dime store.

Egypt and the likes will be pretty glad that they did. Talking of whom, they are in the market again today for a cargo of US, German, Canadian or Australian wheat.

So it looks like we are in for another modest turnaround Tuesday with wheat called 8-10c higher, corn up 1-2c and beans up 2-3c.

Soybean ratings held steady at 66% good/excellent last night whilst corn fell two points to 69%, although still slightly ahead of last year. The spring wheat harvest was 10% behind the 5 year average at 34% complete as rain disrupts progress.

The Pro Farmer Crop Tour doing the rounds in the US found potentially better yields than last season in Ohio. They're into Indiana district 5 today, and so far report a potential corn yield 188.62 bu/acre with a pod count of 1233.5 on beans. Last year's numbers were 161 and 1218.5.

The USDA have today confirmed the sale of 121,920 MT of corn to Japan and 110,000 MT of beans to unknown destinations.