Wheat and corn both traded a wide range but eventually settled south of unchanged which is clearly more about profit taking rather than fundamentals. This rally was built on adverse (ie wet) conditions in the corn and wheat belt – well, if you look at the weather map, there is more of the same. In fact, wheat looks horrible – 4-8 inches in the backend through TX and OK which is surely causing some serious damage, despite the late crop. From a corn perspective the front end has rain in all the problem areas which, in the context of the next planting update, doesn’t look great. I heard last night my first extreme acreage loss of 15 m/ac of corn which sounds like a headline grabber. However, if you simply look at the 5 biggest producing states being Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota and South Dakota and extrapolate last weeks planting pace until the insurance cut off dates (which are next week in some areas) they would be 11.2m acs behind where they need to be. This is overly simplistic given some growers will plant past the prevent plant date and the pace maybe quicker than last week (hard to see) but, given this only looks at the potential loss in 5 states it is completely acceptable to see greater than 10m acs lost. We are in uncharted territory – this is one out of the box and, given we haven’t really started the debate around yield, this is going to be a bumpy ride.