Wheat firmed through the opening into mid session before hitting sales pressure later in the session to see Chicago and Kansas both close lower, and Minneapolis firm.

Markets are looking forward to Tuesday’s March World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report, with surveyed expectations pencilling in cuts to corn ending stocks on the back of the high export sales overall, even with today’s low figures.  Published survey figures had guesses for corn at around 1.47 billion bushels versus 1.5Bbu in Feb, soybeans nearly unchanged at 117 million bushels, and wheat at 840Mbu, nominally higher than February.
Regular export sales figures disappointed pretty much across the board, with only 220,000t of wheat, 116,000t of corn, and 334,000t of soybeans, plus a net reduction of 52,000t on sorghum.  Overall Chinese sales figures were up for corn by over 1Mt, but all on the back of switches from the large “unknown” sales, so it is not new businessSaudi Arabia’s SAGO came back to the barley markets last night, tendering for nine cargoes boats for last-half April and also May windows.Algeria’s OAIC durum tender results were reported in the US$370s range, which backs off about right to mostly North American origination.Ukraine’s government was calling for positive new-crop figures and a 21-22Mt export program on wheat into next year versus its estimate at 17.5Mt for the current marketing year.  Weather conditions across the Black Sea have remained fairly mild for most of this year, although some worries about ice crust and winter kill have picked up recently.South American weather maps are still holding dry for Argentine crop areas, with a few chances of 20-30 millimetres into the back half of the two-week runs, but dry in the short term.

Barley markets kicked up late yesterday with the SAGO tender hitting; the question is at what price it will trade, and how much remaining Black Sea barley works its way out with the Russian tax situation.

Other local markets quiet and slow, with a little new-crop wheat trading in fairly limited tonnages.

Weather maps continuing to fill in this rainfall event for central/northern NSW into next week, and latest runs are adding moisture further into the central half of the state with widespread totals of 30 millimetres or more forecast.