Early Call On Chicago

The overnight markets closed mixed, with beans mostly 3-4 cents higher, corn 1-2 cents higher and wheat one up to one down.

Crude oil is a little weaker around USD76.50/barrel and the dollar slightly easier too.

The API said yesterday that US crude stocks fell by 1.7 million barrels last week, but that has more to do with the weather in the Gulf than demand. The Energy Dept are expected to follow suit and call inventories down around 2 million barrels this afternoon.

Again European weather again seems to be one of the main driving forces, with harvesting in Russia ahead of normal as farmers get their crops in before the drought situation gets worse.

Germany, Hungary and Ukraine cut their grain production estimates too today.

It looks like quality wheat will be in short supply in 2010/11, which suits the US just fine as they have plenty of it. HRW cash prices are reportedly running at six month highs, and hopes are up that US wheat might get a look in when Iraq announces the results of it's recent tender.

It's a good job that wheat harvesting in the South is all done, temperatures hit 108 in Kansas yesterday.

China say that they'll have another nice corn and wheat harvest this year, but then you wouldn't expect anything different would you?

Early calls: Corn called 1 to 3 higher; Soybeans called 3 to 5 higher; Wheat called 1 to 2 higher.