Grains were higher overnight with soybeans leading the complex by advancing above $10. Corn and wheat followed with more lackluster gains. In outside markets, crude oil dipped a bit while US equity futures were in positive territory to start the morning.
Spring wheat yield prospects are lower than last year in southern North Dakota and neighboring sections of South Dakota and Minnesota, scouts on an annual crop tour found on Tuesday. The Wheat Quality Council tour calculated an average yield for hard red spring wheat fields scouted in the region at 43.1 bushels per acre (bpa) on the first day of a three-day crop tour. That figure compares with the 2015 Day One yield of 51.1 bpa and the tour's five-year average of 45.0 bpa. Scouts on the tour sampled 177 fields overall on Tuesday, including 173 hard red spring wheat fields, four durum wheat fields and no hard red winter wheat fields.
Analyst UkrAgroConsult has raised its forecast for Ukraine's 2016 wheat harvest to 24.8 million tonnes from 23.3 million, it said on Wednesday. UkrAgroConsult said that the new outlook was based on a fresh government data on the sowing area, showing the wheat area had increased to 6.2 million hectares from 6 million hectares.
In weather, cool air currently moving into the US Corn Belt continues through the weekend, but also pushes heaviest rains the next five days south of the region; temperatures bounce back to 5°F to 10°F above normal next week, but yet another weekend cool-down likely to follow.
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