Related Keywords: Agriculture Email Print | December wheat was 3 1/2 cents higher overnight. The dollar was mixed. While US wheat is not appearing in many of the major day-to-day export sales announcements, the weekly export sales report continues to show strong demand totals, especially higher protein hard red winter and hard red spring wheat. Sources in Pakistan indicate that the country may scrap plans to export 2 million tonnes of wheat this year. The difficulty may stem mainly from the loss of stored grains in areas that were flooded with damage to crops in the field apparently somewhat of a lesser concern. The government there has not announced plans to curb exports, but the political repercussions of exporting wheat could be substantial if inflations soars after a major national disaster. Neighboring India has a large surplus of wheat, but it has not removed its ban on exports yet due to food inflation in that country as well. US export sales came in at over 1.0 million tonnes yesterday for the third week in a row. Net sales for wheat were 1,077,600 tonnes, all for the current marketing year with the biggest sale to an ‘unknown’ destination. Sales of hard red winter and hard red spring easily outpaced sales for soft red winter wheat. Sales need to average 480,000 tonnes each week to reach the USDA forecast. The EU is also maintaining a brisk export pace. They cleared 856,000 tonnes of soft wheat for export this week, issuing the highest total licenses since the start of the current crop year on July 1st. Europe has gotten the lion’s share of soft wheat business that has been diverted from the Black Sea basin due to this summer’s drought in Russia while the US is picking up demand for higher protein wheat. The International Grains Council (IGC) lowered its estimate of 2010/11 world wheat production by 7 million tonnes from last month to 644 million. This was mainly due to a further reduction in Black Sea production where they lowered the Russian wheat crop to 44 million tonnes from 50 million last month. Some private forecasters have already lowered the Russian crop to as low as 41.5 million with the USDA’s latest estimate at 45 million tonnes. The IGC raised total world wheat usage to 657 million tonnes which is still below the USDA’s estimate of about 665 million. They also noted that poor weather in parts of the EU, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Australia could result in further reductions in the overall world wheat crop. Today is the last trading day for September wheat options and Tuesday will be First Notice Day for September futures.Bron:CME