Wheat Inventories Fall, Wheat Futures May delivery Rose

Wheat inventories as of March 1 fell 16 percent to 1.201 billion bushels from a year earlier. The average estimate by analysts in the Bloomberg survey was 1.25 billion.

Wheat futures for May delivery rose 7.9 percent to settle at $6.6075 a bushel in Chicago, the biggest gain since Oct. 11. Most-active futures rose 1.2 percent during the past three months.

On the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, spring-wheat futures jumped the most in 10 months after the USDA said farmers will cut plantings to seed more corn, soybeans, barley and other crops.

Spring-wheat planting will fall to 11.976 million acres from 12.394 million a year earlier, the agency said. Analysts projected 13.35 million, on average.

“People expected more spring-wheat planting, and farmers say they want to plant other crops,” Dave Marshall, a farm- marketing adviser at Toay Commodity Futures Group Inc. in Nashville, Illinois, said in a telephone interview. “That’s a sign that prices are not high enough to compete.