Crops closed higher, but the gains were hardly emphatic, all things considered.

Chicago wheat for September closed up 0.8% at $6.80 � a bushel, pretty much at its day low, and losing more than half gains made earlier on news that Russia's grain export ban might be extended until the 2011 harvest is in, in autumn next year.

Weather remains a concern in the country, with rains modest compared with the drought they are providing some relief to, as it does in Western Australia, suffering a less severe dry spell.

"Recent rains were helpful to the wheat crops in Western Australia where it fell, but the forecast has turned drier keeping the state of this crop in flux," Benson Quinn Commodities said.

US Commodities added Australia's top grains state had seen "three months of dryness. The next 10 days is dry".

And this before concerns of a dearth of rain in western Argentina too, prompting the Rosario grains exchange to unveil a weak 9m-10.5m-tonne forecast for the harvest, let alone Thursday's firmer-than-expected US weekly export sales data, of 1.02m tonnes.

'Huge' sales 

The export data were even better for corn.

"Corn again was huge at 1.66m tonnes, versus estimates of 1.00m-1.30m tonnes," Benson Quinn said.

And the grain had the extra fillip of a firmer oil price (important for a crop used in making biofuels) a sale of 120,000 tonnes to Egypt, announced under the US Department of Agriculture's daily reporting system, as well as a downgrade overnight by FC Stone to expectations for the US crop.

Still, Chicago's September lot closed up only 0.2% at $4.33 a bushel, with the December contract adding the same to $4.47 � a bushel.

"The market reacted poorly to the FC Stone positive numbers," US Commodities said, but added that the market "has more confidence in" Informa Economics estimates, due out on Friday.

"The trade is braced for lower corn yields by 1-2 bushels per acre and unchanged soybean yields."

Soybeans managed a weakly positive close, up 0.3% at $10.07 � a bushel for September, and 0.4% to $10.09 a bushel for November delivery.

Time for caution? 

Traders came up with a range of explanations for the market's somewhat insipid finish.

Darrell Holaday at Country Futures flagged the importance to financial markets of US jobs data due on Friday.

Illinois-based broker Allendale said that "with a market holiday on Monday, we would expect some profit taking". US markets are closed on Monday for the Labor Day holiday.

US Commodities said that "index funds, surprisingly, have been taking money off the table", a dynamic noted towards the end of last month, and attributed then to the relative attractions of cashing in gains on grains rather than many other assets, which had suffered a weak period.

Coffee lift

In external markets, sugar benefited from a rash of weak news on crops, as discussed elsewhere on Agrimoney.com, with the sweetener ending in New York at its highest in nearly six-month high.

Coffee too had a good day ending up 1.3% at 184.85 cents a pound in New York, for December arabicas, lifted by concerns over dry weather in Brazil, the top producer of the beans, and within an ace of a 13-year high.

London robusta beans for November  delivery eased $6 to $1,641 a tonne.