-Good rain forecast weighs on corn/soybean supported by crop condition decline
-Optimism remains high for Chinese corn crop
-Argentine farmer selling remains respectable
-Brazil July soybean/corn exports expected below recent years
 Soybeans posted solid recovery gains overnight following yesterday’s plunge, garnering support from the 1% decline in crop
conditions reported yesterday afternoon vs expectations for unchanged conditions. Weather forecasts remain favorable, though, with good rains expected and no concerning heat across the majority of the belt for now. Overall soybean conditions, though, at 59% g/e are well below last year’s 71% g/e at this time and are the 2nd lowest of the last 9 years for early July. It’s still early for soybeans, obviously, but some stabilization/improvement in conditions would be quite welcome.
ï‚· U.S. corn conditions were unchanged last week at 64% g/e vs 71% g/e last year and are modestly below the most-recent 5-year and 10-year averages for early July.
 Spring wheat conditions were down another 4% g/e to only 16% vs 70% last year and are the 2nd lowest on record (better than only 1988). USDA will issue their first objective estimate of the spring wheat crop in Monday’s Crop Production report.
ï‚· Winter wheat harvest is now 45% complete vs 54% last year/53% average with KS 62% complete vs 72% avg.
ï‚· See our Market Insights post at https://portal.rjobrien.com/MarketInsights/Blog/Read/44448 for full details of yesterday
afternoon’s USDA Crop Progress report.
 While specific ideas continue to vary widely, the expectations for a solid increase in Chinese corn area and production this year are essentially universal. Widely-followed consultant JCI sees this year’s corn crop up 6.2% from last year with area up 3.9%. However, there are some private estimates reflecting corn area up more than 6% from last year, with the crop as much as 14.5% higher than last year. The USDA is currently estimating this year’s Chinese corn crop at 268.0 MMT vs last year’s 260.7 MMT (+2.8%), while China’s last official estimate of the crop was 271.8 MMT (+4.3%).
 Germany’s farmer association DBV said they expect this year’s total wheat crop to be 23.1 MMT, up 1 MMT (4.5%) from last
year, while the winter rapeseed crop is expected to be 3.7 MMT, up modestly from last year’s 3.5 MMT.
ï‚· South Korea passed on their tender for 138k tonnes of corn for Nov-Dec arrival citing offered prices being too high. They did buy 65k tonnes of feed wheat, priced at $286.39/tonne c&f, for Sept shipment.
 Argentine farmer selling of soybeans picked up a bit over the last week, with 788k tonnes reportedly sold according to the Ag Secretary, vs the previous week’s sales of 519k tonnes, putting total sales at 23.7 MMT (54.5% of the crop) vs last year’s 26.3 MMT in sales at this point (53.7% of the crop). Farmer corn sales reached 32.2 MMT (up 1.1 MMT from last week), reflecting 67% of the expected crop vs last year’s sales of 29.2 MMT at this point (57% of the crop).
 Brazilian ag exporter association Anec sees July soybean exports at 7.6 MMT vs 11.1 MMT exported in June and 10.0 MMT last year July (7.4 MMT 2019). Corn exports in July are estimated to be 2.370 MMT, up from only 128k tonnes in June, but below last year’s 4.0 MMT and 2019’s 5.9 MMT.
 Good rains were seen across S. MN and central WI yesterday, with more widespread coverage expected over the coming days. Most of IA, IL and IN are expected to see 2+†over the next 7 days, with 1-2†amounts in much of SD, MO and OH, as well.