It’s a quiet news morning with corn easing a bit lower in overnight price action and soybeans trading lower during most of the overnight session but firming into the break, while wheat followed the weakness in Matif wheat lower. Soybean oil posted solid gains in overnight action, following the continued sharp gains in Malaysian palm oil, which hit another all-time record high last night.
 Yesterday afternoon’s USDA Crop Progress update was pretty much as expected with corn and soybean crop conditions mostly unchanged and harvest advancing in line with expectations and ahead of average. Corn conditions were completely unchanged on the week at 59% good/excellent, which remain slightly below last year’s 62% g/e at this time and remain tied for the 2nd lowest of the last 9 years as of early October. Soybean conditions technically ticked a bit higher last week as, while combined good/excellent of 58% was unchanged, there was a 1% shift from good to excellent in the ratings. However, overall conditions remain decently below last year’s 64% g/e in early October and are the 2nd lowest of the last 8 years. Harvest is moving right along with corn now 29% complete vs 18% last week and 22% average, as IL is already 41% harvested vs 32% avg, IA 19% vs 11% avg and MN 20% vs 7% avg. Similarly, soybean harvest is now 34% complete vs 16% last week and 26% average as MN jumped to 62% from 30% last week/31% average, with IA 40% vs 18% last week/23% avg and IL 32% vs 10% last week/25% avg.
 U.S. winter wheat planting is 47% complete, in line with 46% average and last year’s 50% with all major HRW and SRW states’
progress mostly within a few percentage points of average.
 For full details of yesterday’s Crop Progress report, please see our Market Insights post at
https://portal.rjobrien.com/MarketInsights/Blog/Read/45371.
 Brazilian ag exporter association Anec sees the country’s October soybean exports being 2.68 MMT vs estimated Sept exports of 4.74 MMT and last year’s 2.42 MMT. Oct corn exports are estimated to be 1.42 MMT vs 2.53 MMT estimated for Sept and 6.36 MMT last year. Based on these ideas, marketing year to date (Feb-Oct) soybean exports of 81.2 MMT compare to 79.9 MMT during the same period last year, while corn exports of 10.8 MMT (March-Oct) compare to 22.4 MMT last year.
 Ukraine’s winter wheat crop is 46% planted vs 47% at this time last year.
ï‚· Ethiopia tendered for 300k tonnes of milling with offers due by November 9.
ï‚· There were no USDA sales announcements this morning.
