MGE wheat up in thin trade, yield reports

Hard red spring wheat futures at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange closed higher on Wednesday amid thin volume with crop tour reports barely average potential yields of US spring wheat this year contributing to the advances, traders said. "We were almost unchanged all day, extremely light volume," a pit source said.
MGE wheat closed unchanged to 2-1/2 cents per bushel higher. September was up 2 at $3.47-1/4 per bushel.
Wheat traders said there was some hesitancy to buy or sell wheat futures because of the recent and potential further volatility in row crop futures. Wheat has been closely following the ups and downs of soybean and corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade.
Some support may have surfaced from reports a crop tour was citing about average to below average yields in key spring wheat state North Dakota. Traders said the wheat futures market has pencilled in average to above average yields.
"They're a little below last year's yields but the results won't be out until Thursday so you can't make too big of a deal over it yet," a trader said.
Inspections of 13 hard red spring and durum wheat fields in north-west North Dakota showed lower yield potential than crops in the same area last year, the crop scouts said on Wednesday.
Head scab, a fungal disease, was the main reason for the lower projected yields, they said.
"It would have paid the farmers this year to put a fungicide application on," said Ben Handcock, executive vice president of the Wheat Quality Council, which organised the three-day tour.
"I never saw three fields in a row that bad. I have seen worse, but not for a long time," Handcock said.
The export arena overnight failed to generate any bullish enthusiasm for wheat futures. Japan purchased 16,280 tonnes of feed wheat, Syria said it had sold 50,000 tonnes of wheat and South Korea bought 21,600 tonnes of US wheat.
And another reminder of the competitive posture of Black Sea wheat surfaced on Wednesday. Traders in Singapore said Malaysian feed mills were attempting to buy feed wheat from the Black Sea amid dropping freight rates and aggressive offers.