Freight & logistics continue to be the driver for old crop cash wheat with buyers hitting the limited number of bids at the gulf for HRW. Domestic HRW basis closed up 1-4 c/bu today. The SRW barge market came off an 8 ct/bu today in old crop on weaker barge freight & new crop J/J saw sellers hit the bids as well. The domestic SRW market had NW Ohio mills raise their bids today 5-10 ct/bu to +20 WK8 while to Toledo warehouse bid is +5 WN8 for A/M/J. The domestic spring wheat market traded down 30 ct/bu after yesterday’s 35 ct/bu up tick. The PNW market had a good run of business this week & the CCC tender for 40 kmt NS 14% protein traded at $306.00-$332.89/mt because the position was May 21-31, where exporters have limited export capacity. Despite the enormous price cash basis is unchanged on the bids, although exporters would pay much higher values for offers in the Apr/May positions.

The export sales report was worse than expected, old crop was actually a negative 67 kmt, & only 240 kmt were sold for new crop. Nearly all of the business was off the PNW & some of the old crop cancellations were rolled to new crop. The gulf market is doing virtually no business over the past few weeks, while the PNW still has its traditional buyers, thank GOD.

The bloom is off for MGEX with chatter some growers are talking about getting into the fields in MT. this weekend. Warmer/dryer weather is the theme & expectations the March 1 planting intentions are closer to the truth today than they were at the end of March when the report was released. Last week prices were testing those of March 1, when the survey was taken. The same was true for the MWU-CU & MWU-SX spread. The focus is back on HRW conditions & harvested area/yields, with a huge range of estimates & some discussion on whether Kansas production could be only 200 mbu or less. There are more & more reports of freeze damage in KS/OK/TX showing up on top of the impact from the drought.