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Soybeans, corn detach from crude oil, drift lower, watching weather

Soybeans were lower on fund and technical selling. Brazil’s harvest is more than 80% complete, while the harvest is underway in Argentina. Stateside, the USDA is expected to report its first national soybean planting estimate of the season in next week’s crop progress and condition report. Export business with China continues to be slow because of trade tensions, Brazil’s prices, and lower meal demand by their domestic livestock producers, some of whom have switched to other feed ingredients. President Trump and President Xi are expected to meet face-to-face next month, but there’s no public date and these high-level negotiations have been delayed previously. Soybeans, and bean oil, largely decoupled from crude oil after some early spillover support. Crude was up most of Tuesday’s session on questions about supply linked to the ongoing military actions in Iran and the Middle East. Soybean meal was down on the generally bearish Tuesday sentiment in the soy complex.

Corn was lower on fund and technical selling. Corn is monitoring harvest activity in Argentina and second crop development weather in Brazil. The USDA’s next round of supply and demand estimates is out Thursday, which might not have a lot of surprises on the domestic side of things, but could have some adjustments for global projections. CONAB’s updated outlook for Brazil will be out April 13^th. The USDA says 3% of the U.S. corn crop is planted, a little bit ahead of average, with most of that in the south. Early delays are possible in some key U.S. growing areas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly ethanol numbers are out Wednesday.

The wheat complex was mixed, with Chicago up and Kansas City and Minneapolis down. The USDA’s first winter wheat good to excellent rating of 2026 was below a year ago, with soft red generally in better shape than hard red. Parts of the Plains could see much-needed rain later this week, but there are questions about coverage and it’d take a full pattern shift to erase the drought. Wheat’s also monitoring early spring planting activity in the U.S. and Canada, while assessing conditions for winter wheat in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere and planting weather in the Southern Hemisphere. The trade is also keeping an eye on Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine and its impact on trade in the Black Sea region.