US Plains HRW wheat mostly steady

US Plains hard red winter wheat basis bids were mostly steady Tuesday as the market absorbed sporadic intake of new-crop wheat through the Plains, wheat merchants said. Light yields, poor quality and rain delays kept activity slow in some central Kansas locations and in northern Oklahoma.
"It doesn't even feel like harvest hardly," said one Wichita, Kansas, wheat merchant. But in the western areas of Kansas, the top US wheat-producing state, better weather was letting the harvest accelerate.
Basis bids were mostly steady, though bids at the Texas Gulf for 12 percent hard wheat were withdrawn, and the basis was 5 cents firmer in Enid, Oklahoma. Kansas wheat yields and quality reports continued to be variable, though as progress moved west and north yields and quality were improving. Protein remained low, however, which led to a drop in premiums paid for railcar wheat to and through Kansas City.
A report issued Monday by an organisation for Kansas wheat growers said that custom cutters were in short supply. The report said new-crop wheat around Atwood, Kansas, showed yields ranging from 30 to 70 bushels an acre.
USDA said Monday that about 20 percent of the Kansas wheat crop was harvested, lagging the 49 percent five-year pace. Fifty-two percent of the Oklahoma crop was harvested, and 45 percent of the Texas crop was cut, both slower than the average pace, according to USDA.
Meanwhile, Canadian farmers planted less wheat and barley and more canola than traders surveyed ahead of the report had expected, a Statistics Canada report said Tuesday. Statscan said farmers planted 21.7 million acres of all types of wheat, well below average trade estimates of 23.4 million acres and from the 23.8 million acres farmers said they intended to plant in March.
Also, India on Tuesday issued a tender to import one million tonnes of wheat, but traders said it would have to pay close to $300 per tonne to buy grain, way above prices it dismissed as too expensive in a previous tender. The tender was expected to help boost wheat futures prices at the Kansas City Board of Trade 2 to 4 cents on Tuesday.