Wheat Slides as Rain Comes to Plains States

Rainfall in Kansas and other growing areas is helping send the price of wheat sharply lower.

The actively traded July contract for wheat lost 19 cents, or 2.7 percent, to settle at $6.90 a bushel Wednesday.

Wheat is still up 14 percent this year, as traders worry about dry weather jeopardizing the crop.

Corn also fell. The July contract slipped seven cents, or 1.4 percent, to $4.96 a bushel. Soybeans edged up 3 cents to $14.87 a bushel.

Brandon Marshal, a commodities analyst at Northstar Commodity in Minneapolis, said rain in the central Plains states was likely to alleviate some of the problems wheat growers had been having.

“It’s not as bad as people thought,” Marshall said.

In other commodities trading, June gold rose $11.10, or 0.9 percent, to $1,305.90 an ounce. July silver rose 23 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $19.78 an ounce.

July copper rose two cents, or 0.8 percent, to $3.16 an ounce. Platinum rose $29.70, or 2 percent, to $1,485.70 an ounce, and palladium rose $11.50, or 1.4 percent, to $828.80 an ounce.

This article appeared in print in the May 15th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.