Wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade fell to a one-month low on Friday on technical selling and spillover weakness from other commodity markets including energy and metals, traders said. As well, harvest weather has been good this week in the Midwest soft wheat belt, and US wheat is still seen as uncompetitive globally.
For the week, CBOT September wheat fell 42-1/4 cents, or 7.6 percent, its third straight weekly decline. USDA said exporters sold 104,350 tonnes of US wheat to Taiwan for 2015/16 delivery, including 56,550 tonnes of hard red spring wheat, 36,550 tonnes of hard red winter and 11,250 tonnes of white wheat.
CWB, the former Canadian Wheat Board, projected a year-on-year drop in Western Canada spring and durum wheat yields following a crop tour. However, CWB raised its estimates for Western Canadian all-wheat production due to better-than-expected prospects in eastern portions of the Prairies. Wheat output in France, Europe's top producer, looks bigger than expected, with trade forecasts for the soft wheat crop around 37.5-38.5 million tonnes, up from around 36.5-37 million during a heat wave in mid-July. Algeria's state grains agency bought about 300,000 tonnes of durum wheat seen likely to be sourced from Mexico and France in a tender, European traders said. Russia is on track to harvest at least 100 million tonnes of grain in 2015 despite dry weather in several regions, Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev said.