04/11/06 USDA trims wheat ending stocks

Farm and Ranch April 11, 2006 The USDA trimmed 10 million bushels off of U.S. wheat ending stocks for the current marketing year in its supply and demand report issued Monday and it raised world wheat carryover. Both U.S. and world wheat stocks however would be tighter than previous year levels. U.S. carryout is pegged at 532 million bushels, world stocks at 143 million tons. By wheat class U.S. hard red spring wheat carryout was cut by eight million bushels, white wheat by 18 million. Soft red winter wheat carryout was increased by 20 million bushels from last month's projection. Louise Gartner of Spectrum Commodities in Ohio says that means Chicago soft red, a competitor to soft white, continues to be the dog of the wheat market, while hard wheat, particularly Kansas City, will continue to lead. Gartner: "So once this crop report is behind it is all about weather. It has been about weather for several months now. As we are well into the growing season Kansas is off to a decent start but it has been a whole month now since we have had significant rain in the central Plains and they are calling for warm and dry conditions to return for the near term. So the market is very much trying to build some weather premiums back into this price structure and obviously very concerned about what yield prospects will be particularly in the western half of Kansas where it is starting to return to dry conditions." Next month USDA will make its first supply and demand projections for the upcoming 2006-2007 marketing year. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.