In the US the winner of the National Wheat Yield Competition was announced. A Warden county Washington crop yielded 223.08bu per acre. To those of us living with electricity and using a remotely viable numerical system this equates to 15.00 tonnes per ha, 6.07 tonnes per acre, 72.84 bags per acre. Which ever way you look at it it’s a lot. The crop was irrigated hard red winter wheat. The best dry land field yielded 170.63bu/ac, 11.47t/ha, also in the PNW in the state of Oregon, not bad for soft white wheat. The best of the spring wheat in N.Dakota yielded 117.60bu/ac, 7.9t/ha.

Overnight US futures markets saw slight gains, gains that are eroded by the stronger AUD this morning. There were gains in most grains at most exchanges both in the US and in Europe. Unfortunately rapeseed and canola did not share in that upside. Both Paris rapeseed and Winnipeg canola saw significant losses by the close, moving against the trend higher in US soybean futures.

The move in the AUD wasn’t restricted to the USD, the AUD moved higher again all of the majors. Exacerbating the decline in oilseed and pulse prices overnight. At the Delhi market chickpeas were back again, closing at 7203Rs/q, down 42Rs/q. When taking the AUD into account the decline is equal to roughly AUD$16.86 / tonne when compared to yesterday’s conversion. This takes the weekly decline to roughly AUD$34.24 / tonne.

Egypt confirmed the purchase of 291kt of wheat by tender from the Black Sea states of Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. Values were between US$273 and US$275.30 per tonne C&F. On the back of an envelope that’d be like selling wheat here on the plains for something close to AUD$290 XF. Australian wheat remains very competitive on the international market, as does Australian feed barley.