05/19/08 Farm bills and wheat prices; friendly cattle marketings

Market Line May 19, 2008 Wheat futures closed slightly higher at Chicago and Kansas City Friday, lower at Minneapolis. Pakistan announced two tenders for a total of 250-thousand tons of wheat. The U.S. will provide 500-thousand tons of food aid to North Korea over a 12 month period starting next month. Not that history always repeats itself but a graph displayed at a meeting of the Washington Wheat Commission last week showed that after the U.S. gets a new farm bill implemented wheat prices drop like clockwork. On Friday Chicago July wheat was up four cents at 7-75 ½. July corn down eight at 5-91. Portland August new crop soft white wheat up a dime at $8 to 8-10. August HRW 11.5 % protein seven to 10 cents higher at 9-06. August DNS 14% protein down eight cents at 9-79. Barley at the coast 198 dollars a ton. Cattle futures closed lower Friday ahead of USDA's Cattle on Feed Report. A bullish number in the report was April marketings which USDA analyst Shale Shagum says were up 11 percent from April 2007. Shagum: "It is a sign, hopefully, that we are starting to get caught up in our cattle that had been building up on feed. When we look at the amount of cattle placed in April we were down two percent. And that left us with an on feed number on April 1st about one percent lower than a year ago." Ahead of the report, June live cattle futures were down 47 cents at 93-87. August feeders down 20 at 113-07. June Class III milk up 23 cents at 19-90. I'm Bob Hoff and that's Market Line on the Northwest Ag Information Network. Now this.