EU Wheat Close

November London wheat closed GBP4.00/tonne higher at GBP152.00/tonne, with November Paris wheat ending up EUR4.25 at EUR220.50/tonne.

Brussels granted export licences for 856,000 MT of soft wheat this week, the highest weekly total so far this marketing year. Cumulative 2010/11 export licences now total 2.68 MMT, ahead of last season's 2.59 MMT.

Early Russian winter grains planting progress is already well behind normal. Certainly some of last season's 18.5 million hectares isn't going to get planted, the question is how much? Around a third of it, or 6 million hectares won't get sown until the spring, that's the figure that the trade seems to be working on at the moment.

What rains have arrived have been largely confined to northern areas thus far.

At home the HGCA say that the domestic wheat harvest has advanced to 45% complete with yields averaging 7.6-7.8 MT/ha. That's somewhat better than the 10% fall from last season's 7.9 MT/ha average that many had been forecasting.

The wet August hasn't yet done too much damage as far as hagbergs or specific weights are concerned, they say.

The winter barley harvest is wrapped up with an average yield of 6.2-6.4 MT/ha and the spring barley harvest 35% done with yields below average. The OSR harvest is almost complete with yields averaging 3.7 MT/ha, a 12% increase on the five year average of 3.3 Mt/ha, they add.