High-protein grain used in bread reaches highest in four years Egypt said to buy cargoes from Russia, Romania, shunning U.S. Spring wheat prices posted wide swings after reaching a four-year high as traders weighed prospects for an intensifying drought in the High Plains against signs that U.S. supplies aren’t competitive in world export markets.
On the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, spring wheat for September delivery fell 1.7 percent to $8.0225 a bushel at 11:56 a.m. local time.
The commodity then slumped as much as 5.1 percent, pushing 60-day volatility to the highest since August 2015.
Much of Montana and the Dakotas were in moderate to extreme droughts as of June 27, and the area for all varieties of wheat planted for 2017 is the smallest on record since data starts in 1919, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
wheat is pricing itself out of the world market,” Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at INTL FCStone in Kansas City, Missouri, said in a telephone interview.
On the Chicago Board of Trade, soft red winter wheat futures for September delivery fell 1.3 percent to $5.4775 a bushel after earlier reaching $5.745, the highest since July 14, 2015.
Aggregate trading for this time more than doubled compared with the 100-day average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
In Chicago, hard red winter wheat futures for September delivery fell 1.1 percent to $5.535 a bushel after reaching $5.7725, the highest since July 10, 2015.
The U.S. is the world’s top wheat exporter.
The soft red winter grade is used to make flour for cookies and cakes, and the hard red winter variety is also used to make bread.