Grains are mixed at midday:

Corn -1 ¼ cents/bu (May @ 5.50)

Soybeans + 5 3/4 cents/bu (May @ 14.29)

Chi Wheat – 8 1/4  cents/bu (May @ 6.26 1/2)

Cdn $ +0.00155 (79.720 cents)

WTI Crude Oil + 3.08/barrel (60.84)

The EIA report was released this morning for the week ending March 19^th. This report showed that commercial crude oil stocks increased 1.9 million barrels to 502.7 million barrels, and ethanol stocks rose 0.5 million barrels to 21.8 million barrels. Ethanol supply is expected to have decreased 49 thousand barrels a day to 922 thousand barrels a day. This brings the marketing year to date total corn use for ethanol production to 2.715 billion bushels. This is 258 million bushels (-8.7%) from last year’s pace. This also falls short of the seasonal pace needed to hit USDA’s marketing year target by 23 million bushels.

In international news, a giant container ship, Ever Given, has been stuck in the Suez Canal for over a day now, blocking traffic from passing on both sides. About 30% of global container ship traffic passes through the canal daily. This is slightly impacting oil prices (supply concerns), but grains are relatively untouched as there do not seem to be many grain carriers affected.

As of yesterday, AgRural projected that Brazil soybeans are now 59% harvested (71.7% last year), while the Brazilian Safrinha corn crop is 90% planted (96% last year).

Traders are holding their worries of next week’s USDA reports as corn and wheat dip lower. The markets are worried that the USDA might have a bearish surprise in either the quarterly stocks report, or the planting intentions survey. Overall, soybean and soyoil stocks are tight, giving some flex-room for the report, and allowing futures to stay positive today.

The Export Sales report is due out tomorrow for the week ending March 18^th. Estimates are in thousand tonnes: