March Corn finished up 1 at 354, 5 off the high and 5 up from the low. December Corn closed unchanged at 389 3/4. This was 4 3/4 up from the low and 5 1/4 off the high.

    The corn market sold off to new lows for the year today, but recovered late in the session to finish marginally higher. Corn lost ground to wheat on the day, and it also lost to soybeans in the last minutes of the session. The firm close came despite sharp breaks in crude oil and equities and a higher dollar with some traders saying that recent sell offs in corn may have exhausted the available sell orders for now. The USDA announced a sale of 110,000 tonnes of corn to South Korea this morning. This continues the spate of strong buying by South Korea over the past 2-3 weeks. Weekly export sales for corn were near the high end of trade expectations at 926,200 tonnes. As of January 28, cumulative corn sales stand at 56.0% of the USDA forecast for 2009/2010 versus a 5 year average of 59.7%. Sales need to average 743,000 tonnes each week to reach the USDA forecast. The Buenos Aires Grains Exchange left its corn production estimate for Argentina unchanged this week at 18.4 million tonnes. This follows another round of good rains in most growing areas there. The USDA will issue updated supply/demand numbers for the US and world on Tuesday and traders see a jump in the world production estimate due to an adjustment higher in Argentina and maybe Brazil. The USDA last month had corn production in Argentina at just 15 million tonnes, up 1 million from December. Statistics Canada will release its December 31st grain stocks estimates tomorrow morning.

    March Rice finished down 0.195 at 14.18, 0.37 off the high and equal to the low.