Early Call On CBOT

The overnights closed lower, with wheat around 8-10c easier, beans down 6c and corn 3-4c lower. Crude is also weaker.

European debt concerns are re-emerging, the Brazilian drought appears to have been broken with rains in southern areas spreading into the centre-west as the week wears on.

Rain is also moving into eastern Ukraine which has also been too dry, and some of the parched areas of Russia although more is needed here in particular.

Meanwhile almost all of the western corn belt in the US will see dry conditions for the next 10-14 days, which will help the harvest move on at a pace. Similar conditions in Canada will speed things up there too.

Brussels is set to release it's nigh on 6 MMT of grain intervention stocks onto the market starting in the spring (one or two reports say possibly earlier than that).

Egypt is in the market for wheat, given the weakness of the dollar US grain might fit the bill. Iraq are also shopping.

EU wheat futures are sharply lower with Paris hitting a five week low today.

China sold 35% of the corn it offered in it's weekly government auction today, that's a bit better than offtake of late, but nothing like what was being snapped up a few months ago.

Japan says that it probably won't need to issue it's normal Thursday tender for wheat this week.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: wheat down 8-10c, corn down 3-4c, beans down 4-6c.