By Kirk Maltais

-- Corn for December delivery rose 0.9% to $3.23 1/4 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade Wednesday in anticipation of the USDA reporting large export sales of corn in tomorrow morning's export sales report.

--Wheat for September delivery rose 0.5% to $5.10 3/4 a bushel.

--Soybeans for November delivery fell 0.3% to $8.78 3/4 a bushel.

HIGHLIGHTS

Hot Commodity: Thanks to a report of a flash sale of nearly 2 million metric tons of corn by the USDA last week, grains traders are expecting to see a sharp uptick in weekly corn export sales. Grains traders tell The Wall Street Journal that they expect corn sales to land anywhere from 2 million to 3 million tons for the week ending July 30. A figure falling in between those two amounts would dwarf the 609,400 tons of corn reported for the week ending July 23.

Back to Business: After a brief respite, China is back in the U.S. export market, giving CBOT soybean futures a lift Wednesday. China purchased 192,000 metric tons of US soybean exports for delivery in the 2020/21 marketing year, the USDA said -- the first sale announced to China since the USDA announced a nearly 2 million metric ton sale of corn to China on July 30. The announcement of a new sale to China comes at a tense time. "Political tensions are high between the U.S./China with Trump Administration China hawks seeing the blaming of China for the coronavirus as helping Trump's reelection," said AgResource.

INSIGHTS

Roadblocks: Ethanol production in the U.S. is down this week, dropping 27,000 barrels per day to 931,000 barrels per day. This is down 10.5% from the same time last year, and a sign that the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has stumbled. Meanwhile, ethanol inventory in the U.S. rose 74,000 barrels to 20.35 million barrels. Corn futures trading on the CBOT are up today, by 0.6%. However, they've been on a downtrend amid signs of economic recovery being stunted, as well as signals foretelling this year's bumper crop.

Negative Numbers: Farmer returns are expected to stay negative this year, even with the addition of aid payments from the U.S. government, according to the University of Illinois' Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics. In the projected balance sheet for farmers in northern and central Illinois, farmer returns for corn are expected to be minus $30 per acre, growing to minus $75 per acre in 2021. This is with an average price of $3.25 per bushel in 2020, and $3.40 in 2021. Meanwhile, soybeans are projected to give farmers a profit of $19 per acre in 2020 - falling to a loss of $50 per acre in 2021.

AHEAD:

--Animal vaccine producer Zoetis Inc. releases its second-quarter earnings before the market opens Thursday.

--The USDA will release its latest weekly export sales numbers at 8:30 a.m. ET Thursday.

--The CFTC releases its weekly commitment of traders report at 3:30 p.m. ET Friday.

Write to Kirk Maltais at kirk.maltais@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 05, 2020 15:44 ET (19:44 GMT)