Spring wheat futures on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange closed narrowly higher on Thursday on supportive export news and local buying, traders said. Firm cash markets and a lack of harvest-related hedge selling added strength.
MGE September wheat ended up 1/4 cent at $3.50-1/4 per bushel, with deferred months up 1-1/2 cents to down 7. Volume was estimated at 4,260 lots, up from 3,783 on Wednesday.
Locals were buyers. UBS Warburg sold 200 December and 150 March contracts, and Country Hedging sold 150 September and 150 December, traders said.
There was bullish export news for US wheat, including an Egyptian purchase of 60,000 tonnes of US soft white wheat.
The US Department of Agriculture reported export sales of US wheat for last week at 862,300 tonnes, well above trade estimates for 350,000 to 550,000 tonnes.
About half of the week's sales were hard red winter wheat, a factor that buoyed hard red winter wheat futures at the Kansas City Board of Trade.
The HRW tally included a sale of 55,000 tonnes to Iraq.
But CBOT futures declined, in part because only 81,500 tonnes - less than 10 percent of the total - was soft red winter wheat, the class traded in Chicago.
USDA put spring wheat sales at 155,400 tonnes and durum sales at 51,800 tonnes.
In a bearish note, Japan bought 45,000 tonnes of wheat from Canada at its weekly tender, and none from the United States.
After the markets closed, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) forecast a smaller wheat crop for Canada's main crop region for the 2005/2006 marketing year but said exports were set to grow.
All-wheat production would drop to 22.7 million tonnes from 24.0 million in Western Canada, Canadian Wheat Board officials said.
Crop weather conditions for the maturing spring wheat crop were satisfactory in the northern US Plains, the Meteorlogix weather service said.
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