EU wheat edges higher along with Chicago but strong euro weighs

PARIS: European wheat prices edged higher on Wednesday, supported by a rise on US markets but their advance was capped by a strong euro that hampers EU grains' competitiveness on the export market.

Front-month September on Euronext milling wheat futures settled 0.75 euro higher at 183.75 euros a tonne.

"There is some technical buying in Chicago but the euro keeps rising so we are not able to keep up," one trader said.

Most traded wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade was up 1.4% by 1635 GMT at $5.35 a bushel.

The French wheat harvest continued to show better-than-expected yield results as it progresses north, brokers said.

In Russia, farmers had harvested 29.3 million tonnes of wheat with an average yield of 3.49 t/ha by July 21, down from 3.75 t/ha on July 18 last year, data from the agriculture ministry showed on Wednesday.

With the wheat harvest approaching in Germany, traders welcomed dryer weather although rain is still forecast from the end of the week.

Wheat needs dry sunny weather to ripen in the final days of July with the harvest starting in early areas. But traders said isolated showers were not yet a major concern and that overall the sunnier weather was positive for Germany's wheat.

"The barley harvest in Germany is coming to an end and farmers normally then harvest rapeseed next so there could be another week or so before the wheat harvest starts on a big scale," one German trader said.

"The first early new crop wheat cuttings have been received from Poland, the Czech Republic and parts of east Germany."

"The first harvest samples are not really representative of the whole crop. But the quality of the first cuttings is good in terms of the main criteria such as protein content and falling numbers, so the new crop outlook is promising so far."