08/28/08 The Iranians; did they or didn't they buy U.S. wheat?

Farm and Ranch August 28, 2008 Iran's Minister of Commerce is quoted on a foreign news wire as saying his country has not purchased any wheat from the United States. Masoud Mirkazemi is quoted as saying "We buy wheat from the European countries and Canada, but so far we have not directly buy the crop from the U.S. That is not how the USDA sees it. Department grains analyst Jerry Norton says the actual sales figures say otherwise. Norton: "Based on the latest export sales information we have at USDA through August 14th, we indicate the Iranians have had shipped 274-thousand tons of hard red winter wheat from the U.S. and are on the books to receive another 904-thousand tons of hard red winter wheat. This is information reported by major U.S. grain exporters based on the country they intend to make these shipments to. So, those are the official numbers the USDA has at this time." Norton says there is no reason to doubt those numbers and U.S. trade officials are puzzled as to why the Iranian Commerce Minister would deny the purchases from the U.S. U.S. Wheat Associates Vice President of Overseas Operations Vince Peterson says they have kept Iran's buyers informed about the U.S. crop. Iran's wheat imports are up sharply this year because of a severe drop which the USDA says cut the nation's wheat crop buy one-third. The U.S. wheat purchases are the first in 27 years by Iran. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.