Wheat, little changed, may advance on concern that hot weather in parts of the U.S. may hinder planting of the winter-crop in the world’s largest exporter.
December-delivery wheat traded at $7.87 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade at 2:43 p.m. in Singapore, set for a 3.4 percent advance this week, the fifth-straight weekly gain for the most-active contract.
The central and southern plains in the U.S. will continue to have hotter than normal conditions, draining soil moisture ahead of the planting season for hard red winter wheat, Telvent DTN Inc. said in a forecast yesterday.
“Triple-digit temperatures baking the southern U.S. were amplifying the effects of an historic drought in the region,” Lynette Tan, an analyst at Phillip Futures Pte., said in a report e-mailed today, referring to Fahrenheit. “Forecasts offered little hope for relief anytime soon.”
A yearlong drought from Kansas to Texas has created the driest conditions on record for farmers preparing to plant winter wheat, dimming the prospects for the U.S. crop for a second straight year.
In Texas, where agriculture losses from the drought were a record $5.2 billion, soil moisture is so depleted that plants may not emerge from the ground without more rain, Texas A&M University said in a report Aug. 23. Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma were the biggest growers of winter wheat in 2010 and supplied 28 percent of all wheat varieties produced in the U.S.
Hottest Summer
Corn for December delivery traded little changed at $7.4325 a bushel, taking the weekly gain to 2.5 percent. Soybeans for November delivery declined 0.2 percent to $13.8975 a bushel, set for a weekly advance of 1.6 percent.
The hottest summer since 1955 in Iowa and Illinois is eroding yield prospects for corn and soybean crops in the U.S., the largest grower and exporter.
Signs of diminished output appeared this week during a four-day, seven-state sampling of about 2,000 fields in the Midwest organized by the Professional Farmers of America, which will report its findings today. A Bloomberg survey of 25 tour participants showed all expected the government to cut its corn- harvest forecasts and 21 predicted a reduction for soybeans.
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