Grain futures are mostly higher to close:

Corn -4 cents/bu (May @ 5.90) -Broke $6 again overnight (highest most-active contract since June 2013), but couldn’t sustain that before falling lower to close

Soybeans + 8 1/4 cents/bu (May @ 14.18 1/4)

Chi Wheat + 5 3/4 cents/bu (May @ 6.53 3/4)

Cdn $ -0.00085 (79.765 cents) -Also broke a key technical boundary of 80 cents, but fell to close

WTI Crude Oil +0.31/barrel (63.46)

Grains were not nearly as volatile today as we have seen lately, especially given the release of 2 USDA reports.

This morning we saw USDA Weekly Export Sales Report for the week ending April 8, 2021. Values are shown in thousand tonnes, and the results were disappointing overall (especially old crop corn which was under pressure for the rest pf the day). China cancelled a bit of corn, one cargo of soybeans, and 2 cargoes of new crop wheat. They did however buy 264,000mt of new crop soybeans, and 620,000 mt of old-crop sorghum and 65,000mt of new crop. This may allude to the fact that higher prices on U.S. commodities are finally starting to curb demand, and rationing is beginning and working. Marketing year soybean sales exceed the seasonal pace needed to hit USDA’s target by 103 million bushels (139 the previous week), wheat fell short of the seasonal pace by 15 million bushels (exceeded by 22 million bushels the previous week), and corn exceeded the pace by 417 million bushels (448 million the previous week).

The NOPA crush numbers were released today as well, and showed March 2021 soybean crush at 177.984 million bushels. This is down 2% from 2020, and below the average trade guess of 179.179 million bushels (the trade range was as wide as 15 million bushels though). This is still a big bounce back from the February crush numbers that were adversely affected by the Texas storm. Soyoil stocks are shown at 1.771 billion bushels, up from February, and below the average trade guess of 1.822 billion bushels. Soymeal exports were shown at 937,000 mt, down 4% from Mar 2020. Overall, the lower than expected crush number was bearish, and the oil inventories were tighter than expected (bullish), neutralizing any large swings either direction.

The USA southern plains saw decent rains yesterday, with the rest of the plains expected to see moisture over the next couple of days.  The Midwest was mostly dry, but the big weather story is the fact that temperatures are expected to stay much below normal for the balance of April, delaying early crop development.  The drought monitor is showing some improvements to the upper Midwest after some needed precipitation. Argentina was dry yesterday, but should see some rains develop this weekend and through the beginning of next week.  Brazilian rains look to be confined to northern areas, with dryness continuing to build in central/southern geographies.

The Commodity Weather Group is predicting an drier than normal month in the safrinha corn belt in Brazil. This has to potential to push the region to one of their driest years in over 4 decades. If realized, Brazil’s corn crop could see yields drop up to 30%, resulting in a potential of 1 billion less bushels of corn. A weather issue of this magnitude would significantly decrease the expected carryout for next year, as well as significantly increase the exports from U.S. for the upcoming marketing year.