HRW wheat bids holding steady

Spot basis bids for hard red winter wheat in the US Plains held steady Friday with the harvest resuming in the Plains after rain slowed progress earlier this week.
The market reportedly remained sluggish both domestically and for export, with light farmer selling meeting with lacklustre demand.
The focus in the country was on bringing in bushels and gauging the extent drought and disease has damaged production potential.
But while yields were coming in very light as expected in southern areas, combining in northern areas of Oklahoma was leading to some surprises.
"In northern Oklahoma we're seeing better yields than some expected," said one Oklahoma merchant.
The merchant said one farmer whose insurance adjuster had estimated a field at 11 bushels an acre found the actual yield at above 40 bushels per acre.
The reports trickled into the futures market at the Kansas City Board of Trade on Thursday, helping pressure prices before the market ended 3 cents higher to 4-1/4 cents lower, with July down 4-1/4 cents at $4.83-1/2 per bushel.
Futures prices were called mixed at the opening Friday.
Speculation over production potential for the winter wheat crop continued with Informa Economics, a Memphis-based analytical firm, on Friday pegging US winter wheat production at 1.3 billion bushels, 23 million bushels below the government's current estimate, trade sources said.
US hard red winter wheat production was pegged at 700 million bushels, down from the US Agriculture Department's May estimate of 715 million, traders said.
In export news, the US Department of Agriculture reported Friday that weekly export sales of US wheat last week totalled 352,500 tonnes (old-crop/new-crop), above estimates for 200,000 to 350,000 tonnes.
Also on the export front, Egypt bought 30,000 tonnes of French wheat and Taiwan is set to tender on Tuesday for US wheat. Also, South Korea overnight bought 20,500 tonnes of US wheat, and India finalised contracts for the purchase of 800,000 tonnes of wheat from two firms, including Australia's AWB Ltd, against its tender for the import of three million tonnes.