US wheat futures continued higher, ignoring a technically bearish US wheat USDA report on Friday. The lastest WASDE, although a little bearish US wheat, with increasing ending stocks there, was fundamentally a benign to slightly bullish report for international wheat.
The US wheat futures market has been shorted by speculative money for some time now. With dry conditions persisting across much of the US HRWW belt, the desire to stay short may be waning. The seven day outlook for rain across the US HRW belt remains poor, with little to no rain predicted for NW Texas, western Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.

StatsCanada dusted off their crystal ball and predicted that Canadian farmers will sow 3% less canola this year. The report also predicted the same acreage of wheat as last year. The data suggest that spring wheat area will decline slightly. Better prices for durum at the date of survey possibly drawing acres away from spring wheat, a 5% (6.34m acres) increase in durum area is expected. It will be interesting to see if the recent sudden fall in international durum values will have a major influence on this data come May / June when sowing of durum gets under way. The increase in durum area, if realised, would result in the largest Canadian durum area in 24 years.
Although canola acres are predicted to be lower, at 21.4 million acres it can hardly be considered a small plant.

Turkey cancelled their recent tender to sell 150kt of durum wheat. Bids to buy against the tender were best at US$327 FOB for 50kt of 70% HVK, from Casillo. French values fell around AUD$5.00 overnight. French FOB values are indicated at $358 FOB for No1 grade. Canadian values are roughly US$288 FOB for 1CWAD13. Offer values were considered too low for TMO to consider the sale of durum at this time.