For weeks now, farmers in the Corn Belt have been forced to sit idly by as storm after storm has turned their corn fields into something akin to a dark brown pudding.

In Missouri, for example, year-to-date rainfall through the middle of May was the highest on record since records first were kept almost 150 years ago. With this amount of moisture, it has been no surprise that planting progress for corn, as well as several other grains, has been much delayed this year.

As a result, corn futures have moved steadily higher as traders worry about lower yields if the late plantings force corn to germinate while the weather is hot. Hot weather makes germination difficult and typically hurts yields. Also pushing prices higher was the concern that farmers may eventually give up on their plans to plant corn and switch to soybeans, which can be planted later and require a shorter growing season.

Finally, weather forecasts started to show a dry pattern this week that could get the planting progress back on track.

By midweek, dry weather had already settled into western areas of the Midwest, with dry weather expected to move into the southern and eastern Midwest by the weekend. This potential break in the weather, which is expected to last for a week to 10 days, weighed on corn all week, as expectations for an increased rate of plantings rose.

After touching a high of $6.31 per bushel early Monday morning, prices fell all week before finally touching $5.92 by midday Thursday, a drop of more than 6 percent in just four days. Following this weather-induced sell-off, traders and analysts undoubtedly are going to be looking forward to Monday's Crop Progress report to see if the drier weather this week was enough to get planting progress back on track. If the report shows a failure to pick up the planting pace, some of the recent weakness in corn prices could disappear. However, if planting speed does pick up, more weakness could be seen in coming weeks.

The orange juice market hit a major slump this week, despite the lack of fresh information or data. It has been known for some time that this year's orange harvest in Florida will be the best in the past four years. For the previous three years, orange yields were depressed, due to two bad hurricane seasons and a season filled with disease problems.

This year, there was a distinct lack of disease and bad weather, so yields in Florida alone are expected to increase as much as 30 percent. As one might expect when harvests increase substantially, prices have been severely depressed in the orange juice futures market for the past few months. Prices are down nearly 30 percent since the beginning of the year, but this week saw massive losses all on its own.

After touching a high of $1.238 per pound on Monday, a massive wave of selling took hold with prices eventually reaching $1.10 by midday Thursday, a loss of 10 percent.

Despite the lack of fresh news to push the market into a sell-off, the market has been weak all year and it is possible that a new wave of speculation that prices will continue to fall contributed to the decline.

So long as the weather remains favorable and yield projections remain high, it seems unlikely that orange juice futures will be able to mount a sustainable rally in the short term.

Opinions expressed solely are those of the writer. Walt Breitinger is vice president of commodities at Wachovia Securities. He can be reached at (219) 738-6460.