4 day weekend, where do I start. Well it got to -13C across parts of NW Kansas prior to the break on Thursday. I’ve seen pictures of 2 metre snow drifts in Minnesota and North Dakota. There’s currently a freeze warnings, 27F or lower, in place at Kansas City, Kansas, where it’s currently just 13C at 5pm in the afternoon.
The latest USDA crop progress report doesn’t have any wheat out in head in Kansas but there is 4% headed in Missouri and 15% headed in Oklahoma. So the crop is well advanced, possibly more so that the USDA are assuming given the dry weather in Kansas.
This week’s winter wheat crop rating for Kansas has 33% of the crop rated G/E and 31% rated Poor / Very Poor. The two other major HRW states of Oklahoma and Texas are both in worse shape than Kansas. Oklahoma rated just 21% G/E and Texas 6%, with the Texas P/VP rating a massive 81%.

The other major influence to price at the moment, in the US, is the pace of corn planting. The USDA pegged it at 7% complete. This is actually 1% better than the average but after the weekend weather most punters don’t expect to see much sowing progress this week.
Further north in the Canadian durum belt we see Weyburn in SE Saskatchewan registering just 1C as the maximum today. Over the weekend minimum temperatures there fell as low as -15C, so no early start to the season there.

The continued conflict between Ukraine and Russia supports global values as slow or no Black Sea exports, from Ukraine at least, remain a major bullish factor and is expected to help reduce wheat and corn ending stocks in other major and minor exporters.