Related Keywords: Agriculture Email Print | December wheat was 8 1/4 cents higher overnight. The dollar was substantially lower. Commodity and equity markets generally started the week with gains. Wheat posted moderate gains to start the week with traders crediting the support to a lower dollar and strength across most of the commodity market sector. Welcome rains in the US central and southern Plains and in parts of the Midwest and Delta in recent days have boosted early crop development and prospects for the final stages of the planting season, although more rain is needed in many areas, especially in the south central and eastern Midwest. Rains in the southern Plains were much better into the end of last week with West Texas seeing up to 2 inches. In Ukraine, the Agriculture Minister reports that planting of winter wheat is complete at 6.3 million hectares. This is down about 7% from last year at this point. Morocco reported late last week that grain imports for the first 4 months of the marketing year stood at 1.1 million tonnes, up 31% from the same period last year. The Commitments of Traders report for the week ending October 19th showed narrowly mixed changes in positions held by funds. Trend-following funds were net sellers of 219 contracts to slightly increase their net short position to 38,457. Index traders were net buyers of 192 contracts. Non-Commercial and Non-reportable combined traders held a net short position of 36,279 contracts. This represents an increase of 738 contracts in the net short position held by these traders. Cash traders in Europe report that Tunisia bought 25,000 tonnes of durum wheat on a tender that closed on Friday. December wheat closed 2 cents higher on the session Friday but 33 3/4 cents lower for the week. An early break pushed the market to the lowest level since October 8th.