Soybeans were higher on technical and commercial buying, along with spillover from corn and wheat. Demand continues to look solid and the trade expects beans to lose some acreage this crop year. Contracts were down for much of the day as China’s purchase of 175,000 tons of new crop was largely considered old news following last week’s trade agreement. Soybean meal and oil were up modestly on that late bounce in beans. Taiwan’s Breakfast Soybean Procurement Association bought 58,000 tons of soybeans from Brazil.

Corn was mostly higher on commercial and technical buying. Farmer selling remains slow, keeping the near term supply tight, and according to Dow Jones Newswires, Japan’s purchased 1.8 million tons of U.S. corn over the last couple of weeks citing shipment delays from Ukraine. However, at this point, the trade expects a significant year to year increase in U.S. acreage, which put pressure on deferreds. Ethanol futures were firm. Commodity Weather Group, via Dow Jones, states South African corn growing areas will only see limited rainfall over the near term with USDA’s attaché in Pretoria estimating the 2011/12 crop at 12.1 million tons and 2012/13 at 11.4 million tons.

The wheat complex was higher on short covering and commercial buying. Export demand has improved with winter weather disrupting shipments out of the Black Sea region along with a shortage of available rail cars in Kazakhstan. Still, the overall global fundamental outlook is bearish, especially on the supply side. European wheat was up on Ukrainian production concerns following winterkill. Japan issued a sell-buy-sell tender for 200,000 tons of feed barley and 100,000 tons of feed wheat.