Market Line September 8, 2009 As the northern hemisphere wheat harvest gets wrapped Louis Gartner for the Linn Group at the Chicago Board of Trade says the market will begin to focus on the southern hemisphere. She says Argentina won’t be a player for wheat because of their drought, but Australia will.

Gartner: “We do see some issues and have seen them in the northern New South Wales region and South Queensland. That has progressed that crop fairly quickly, the hot and dry conditions. We are already seeing some early harvest in Queensland at least a couple weeks ahead of normal. So probably we are going to see some yield declines there, but nevertheless the major producing areas of Australia, which would be western Australia and along the eastern seaboard looking quite good so far.”

Wheat futures were lower last Friday getting spillover pressure from the expected large crops of corn and soybeans. Chicago December wheat was down seven cents at 4-71 ¾. December corn down 9 ½ cents at 3-06 ¼. Portland soft white wheat steady to a nickel lower at mostly 4-70. Club wheat mostly 7-20. HRW 11.5 % protein three to four cents lower at 5-18. DNS 14% protein down two cents at 5-91. No Portland barley bids.

Cattle futures were mixed Friday in a very quiet trade. There were some cash fed cattle sales at 83 to 84 dollars, a dollar lower than the previous week. Pre-holiday weekend positioning was a feature in futures. October live cattle down seven cents at 86-65. October feeders up 17 at 98-55. October Class III milk was down 27 cents at 12-13.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Market Line on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

Now this.