Early Call On Chicago

09/03/11 -- The overnight grains were mixed with wheat recovering some of the past couple of days steep declines up generally 7-9c. Corn was 3-4c firmer and beans flat to 5c lower.

Crude is up again on reports of an oil storage facility in Libya being hit in an aerial bombardment by pro-Gaddafi forces.

"Kansas wheat received valuable precipitation in recent days, but there is a long way to go to restore field restore for spring growth and development. Oklahoma and Texas were largely bypassed by the storm," say Martell Crop Projections.

"Hard red winter wheat has received only 1.58 inches of precipitation since December 1, compared to 3.1 inches normally," they add.

China sold 1.4 MMT at this week's wheat auction, a notably larger volume than in recent sales.

India says that it has over 17 MMT of wheat reserves, far more than government set minimums and there's an anticipated 82 MMT crop on the way imminently.

France have upped the size of it's 2010 soft wheat crop from 36.8 MMT to 37 MMT.

Book squaring ahead of tomorrow's USDA report looks likely to be today's theme.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: Corn, up 3-5c, Beans up 1-2c, Wheat up 5-7c.