US Plains hard red winter wheat basis bids held mostly steady Thursday as new-crop cutting picked up. Farmer selling across the scale was active, elevators reported. Warm and mostly dry weather was helping accelerate the pace of harvest after recent rain-related delays.
Kansas City Board of Trade wheat futures saw a setback on Wednesday. The July contract ended down 7 cents at $5.03-1/2 per bushel, September lost 5-1/4 cents to $5.16-3/4 and December dropped 4-3/4 cents to $5.33-1/2.
The market was called to open down 2 to 4 cents Thursday in follow-through, traders said. On the export front, USDA reported Thursday that weekly export sales of US wheat for the 2007/08 marketing year totalled 347,700 tonnes. Trade estimates had been for 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes. USDA said 886,300 tonnes were carried over from the 2006/07 marketing year, which ended May 31. Meanwhile, India's Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said Thursday the government will import 5 million tonnes of wheat between August and December.
India's state-run MMTC Ltd on Thursday floated a tender to import 50,000 tonnes of wheat, with an option to buy an additional 50,000 tonnes for delivery in July/August 2007. Also, South Korean flour millers tendered to buy 23,900 tonnes of US No 1 wheat with shipment set between July 1 and July 31.