eCBOT Close, Early Call

The overnights closed firmer, with soybeans around 13 cents higher on old crop and 5-6 cents up on new crop. Wheat closed around 2-3 cents firmer, with corn up around a cent or so.

Crude oil is firmer after rebels attacked a pipeline in Nigeria, and the dollar is weaker after China again appealed for a new "super-sovereign" currency.

For soybeans, old crop stocks remain tight and China (and others) keep coming back to the trough keeping big front-end premiums.

For new crop it's a different story with the USDA expected to raise planted area next week to 78.305 million acres from 76.024 million in March, according to the average trade estimate.

With sharply higher plantings and output also expected from South America later in the year, the supply side should look a whole lot different in 2010.

For corn, the trade estimates the USDA coming out with a planted area of 84.158 million acres, down from 84.986 million in March, although some estimates are considerably lower (the lowest being 82.474 million).

The magnitude of exactly how much lower the USDA go than March will influence what happens to corn thereafter as it could potentially cut next year's ending stocks quite sharply, which would obviously be long-term bullish.

For spring wheat the average guess is 13.102 million acres got planted, down 202,000 from March, and a lot less than was being predicted back at the beginning of May.

Egypt bought snubbed US wheat in favour of French wheat last night. South Korea have bought 25,300 MT of US wheat.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: old crop beans up 10-15 cents, new crop up 2-4 cents; corn 1-2 cents higher; wheat 2-4 cents higher.