Wheat sales

As the 21 Wheat harvest continues across the state, the local wheat market is on a rollercoaster ride. Last week the State saw 20-22 cent surges. Market analyst Clark Johnston says the surge was expected. 

"The reason they went up is that spring wheat future was just going through the roof and it pulls everything up with it. While it was doing that we have seen the basis in Portland on soft-white wheat strengthen, it had fallen off about 20-cents but it now strengthen-up again. So between those two, we've seen pretty good cash prices and producers notice that, and producers started selling towards the end of last week and this week. 

'Locally with 22-cent wheat is it stay in there a while?' 

I think we are just going to trade a bit of range of few cents higher and a few cents lower. But we reached a point where producers were starting to sell wheat. That was the purpose of that market going up we needed someone to sell some wheat and that is what producers did. We say in that Southeast Idaho market, flour mills bought in their needs for August and September, so now their bids are for October forward and so the market did exactly what it set out to do: reach a point where producers would sell," said Johnston.