Wheat prices closed flat on Friday as profit-taking ahead of the weekend trimmed early session gains, but values remained near this week's 13-month highs on concern about grain output in the drought-hit Black Sea region. Front-month September wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade settled 1/4 cent lower at $5.96-1/4 a bushel, up 1.5 percent in the week.
The contract peaked on Thursday at $6.10, the highest level for a front month since June 2009, and is up 28 percent in July, the biggest monthly rise since 1996. "The wheat market continues to be overbought, but there is enough concern out in the world production areas that people don't want to go into a weekend on the short side," said Shawn McCambridge, an analyst with Prudential Bache Commodities.
"If we see additional production losses, then the market could continue to reflect that tighter balance sheet and move higher." Wheat producers in the Black Sea region have been cutting 2010 production forecasts due to a harsh drought. Some in the market were uncertain about whether major exporters, such as Russia and Ukraine, would be able to meet export targets.
Rabobank, in a report on Friday, said wheat production in Russia could be below the 53 million tonnes currently forecast by the US Department of Agriculture. "While it will be some time before the true impact of Russia's heat wave can be fully gauged, we expected final production to come in somewhere closer to 51 million tonnes," the report said.
Moscow sweltered through its hottest day in almost 30 years on Thursday, a leading forecaster said, as a heat wave that has destroyed Russian crops over an area the size of Portugal showed no sign of abating. Milling wheat futures in Paris were modestly higher, with November up 1.25 euros at 180.00 euros a tonne as traders continued to keep a close eye on the harvest in France, the European Union's largest wheat producer.
Western Europe's wheat harvest has started, with first results confirming a drop in yields due to adverse weather, but it is too early to tell if the crop volume will fall as much as feared, traders and analysts said. Corn prices fell 1.4 percent on Friday, and nearly 6 percent in the week, amid mostly benign US weather as the crop progresses through pollination, a key period in July critical in determining yields. A firm dollar and weak crude oil and gold added pressure on Friday.
"We are going to get through this pollination stage with flying colours," said Terry Reilly, a grains analyst with Citigroup in Chicago. Uncertainty about US crop weather in August, a key month for soyabean development, underpinned soyabean prices on Friday in choppy, range-bound trade, but values finished the week nearly unchanged from last week.
Continued strong soyabean export demand was supportive after private exporters on Friday reported sales of six cargoes of new-crop US soyabeans to China and undisclosed destinations. CBOT September delivery corn fell 5-1/4 cents to $3.71-1/2 a bushel and August soyabeans rose 1 cent to $10.17 a bushel. Prices at 2:10 pm CDT (1910 GMT).
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