EU Wheat Closing Comments

EU wheat futures closed firmer Thursday, although the euro hitting an eight month high against the US dollar capped gains in Parisian futures.

November Paris milling wheat ended up EUR0.50 at EUR120.00/tonne, whilst London November feed wheat closed up GBP2.50 at GBP95.00/tonne.

UK wheat took a boost from the release of the Defra June census, which pegged the English domestic wheat area at 1.68 million hectares, down 13.2% on the 1.935 million ha planted in 2008.

That figure is significantly lower than the 1.76 million ha reported by the HGCA last month, and potentially implies a UK wheat crop of around 14 MMT this year.

Just to confuse matters further Strategie Grains increased their EU soft wheat production estimate to 130.1 MMT, and their UK output forecast to 14.8 MMT.

It seems that despite the fact that the UK wheat harvest is all but over, nobody really has a clue how big this season's harvest is.