No Surprises for Wheat in Friday's USDA Reports

Friday the USDA releases both is Crop Production and World Ag Supply and Demand Estimate Reports. Washington State University Ag Economist and Tom Mick Endowed Chair Dr. Randy Fortenbery shares more report details and what it means for Pacific Northwest grain growers.

Fortenbery: "There were basically no surprises and if you look at the overall numbers. The market sort of trading that way as well. I think we were down a few cents in Chicago and maybe 4 cents for hard red winter wheat in Kansas City. Doesn't look like we have a big cash response yet -- although the cash bids may still be waiting to see how they want to react to the futures. What was a little bit surprising -- maybe -- is that despite a record size corn crop - corn ended up pretty good for the day and wheat did not follow it. We've had good separation of wheat from corn over the last few weeks and we have a pretty good premium off the soft red winter wheat in Chicago relative to corn - so that may explain some of that. But generally relative to the small grains report we received in September there were no surprises. The one thing I was a little surprised about was I thought that we maybe we'd get a bit of an increase in overall wheat exports because up through about two weeks ago we had aggressive export pace. But that did not happen for white wheat there was no charge in exports whatsoever."

He said to pay attention to the corn prices into the future relative to wheat prices as $2 premium of Chicago wheat to corn is something that the wheat market has not been able to sustain for very long in several years.