Further upside in US wheat futures was a combination of technical short covering and some fundamental strength from the extensive flooding on the northern plains.
There has been some big falls of rain and snow across the Dakota’s and down into Nebraska, the NW corner of Iowa is also pretty wet and the water has to go somewhere on its way to the Mississippi and the Gulf. There were 300mm – 400mm in a few location with even heavier weekly totals reported in pockets.
The unseasonably cool weather across the US is expected to give way to spring over the next week or so. Spring field work is still some 3 – 4 weeks off for most farms and at this stage there is no real delays to worry about. Further falls or cold weather will start to see spring sowing windows begin to shrink though, especially in the far south where sowing has already started in some fields.
Corn futures will be the first to react to weather delays.

Fundamentally the bulk of the northern hemisphere crops are in good shape. It’s still early days yet but France’s SRWW crop is rated 85% good to excellent, that’s back 1% on last week but 5% ahead of this time last year.
In the US only about 5% of the winter wheat crop is still rated as being in drought. Most of the Upper Midwest is seeing the exact opposite of drought.