Wheat markets and weather, August 10, 2011

      Amid discussions of oil and pork, corn and soybeans, one evening market report found good news today in the wheat market:


"For wheat, the briefing is viewed as less crucial, causing an average move of $0.14 a bushel, with much of the US crop already in the barn by now.

'Still some optimism'

And, indeed, the grain managed movement denied its peers, in an upward direction too, helped by its newly-rediscovered competitiveness against Russian wheat on export markets.

"There is still some optimism regarding wheat exports and that has supported wheat today," Mr Holaday said.

Furthermore, while some dry southern US wheat areas have received much-needed rain, the western wheat areas received nothing", leaving winter wheat growers facing the prospect of poor soil conditions for planting.

And the Rosario Grain Exchange pegged Argentina's wheat crop at 12.5m tonnes, lower than the current USDA forecast of 15m tonnes, taking some of the sting out of another upgrade for the French crop, this time from official farm bureau FranceAgriMer.

Big tender 

There was also evidence of demand in wheat, with Saudi Arabia tendering for 660,000 tonnes of hard wheat.

Chicago (soft red winter) wheat for September added 2.0% to $6.85 a bushel, while Kansas (hard red winter) wheat for the same month closed up 2.9% at $7.85 a bushel.

Minneapolis hard red spring wheat gained 2.5% to $8.37 ¼ a bushel.

In Europe, Paris wheat for November added 0.8% to E195.00 a tonne, with London's November lot gaining 0.8% to £162.00 a tonne."

Websites for wheat growers

     The world from the perspective of a wheat farmer often looks very different than from the perspective of someone who bakes now and then. Websites such as the Oklahoma Wheat Growers' Association (http://www.owga.org/index.cfm) publish periodic newsletters  that I've been checking out. One link (http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do;jsessionid=547D0079642060C62F1DC690D312AEB7.agfreejvm2?contentId=70013&parentId=-1) analyzes the possible effects of weather trends on this year's harvest and next year's plantings that will start in September of 2011 for the winter wheat crop of June and July in 2012. The Kansas Wheat Commission sponsors a web site oriented to both producers and consumers (http://kansaswheat.org/aboutpageid304_AboutKansasWheatCommission.shtml), with facts, games, and resources for everything from nutritional supplements and pet foods, to wheat crafts, and sources for flour, wheat berries, and tortillas.

     Links to other websites show how the harvest for 2011 is progressing, with most of the winter wheat cut by late July, and the spring wheat scheduled for harvesting starting in August. The weight per bushel of wheat (which is affected by the moisture content), the percent of protein and moisture in the grains, and comparisons to prior years are shown for the different types of wheat and different areas of the country -- hard winter reds from Nebraska and Colorado, and soft winter reds from western Maryland and northern Ohio have been harvested, but the spring wheats and durum wheat have yet to be cut.   (http://www.uswheat.org/reports/harvest/doc/B477AB717EBDA39A852578DC00626CD3?OpenDocument#).

     The National Association of Wheat Growers' web site http://www.wheatworld.org/wheat-info/ focuses more on educating the public. Recipes, information about planting cycles, maps, weather discussions, statistics for commercial wheat growing in the U.S. and world-wide populate the site.

     The most interesting link, hands down, is to http://www.allaboardharvest.com/, a site with blogs from families who travel from wheat field to wheat field harvesting the crop. It's up-to-date -- (http://www.allaboardharvest.com/2011/08/megan-harvest-flashback-to-the-1960s/ is the post for Saturday, August 6, 2011), personal, and immediate -- the effects of the weather on the work, the costs of the machinery, photos of the combines and fields and the moves from one farm to the next.

     Here's a quote from a recent post (http://www.allaboardharvest.com/2011/08/jada-rained-out-2/):

Jada: Rained out

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Jada Bulgin

Hoffman Harvesting just got rained out. Yesterday our crew that was cutting in Lemmon moved back to Gettysburg to began cutting spring wheat, while the crew on the farm was able to start harvesting our spring wheat. Unfortunately, things were put to a stop as we are getting rained out in both places. In Bowdle they  were cutting wheat yielding in the 40′s with and a test weight of 60 prior to the rainfall. The protein was 15.

Since I was unable to be in the field, here are some random photos I haven’t posted as of yet.

James cuts my way.

A combine dumps on the go as the sun goes down.

The sky made the day interesting today.