Wheat markets are rising on the back of what looks like a repeat of last autumn's weather across the UK only this time across the Black Sea Region. The Russian Agricultural ministry said on Monday that rain will cut the area Russia sows for winter grains by one-fifth compared to the official forecast. This has fuelled further speculation that the 2014 harvest from this imortant wheat producing area will fall putting pressure on global supply.

Reuters reported that U.S. wheat was trading higher on Monday, partially on the worsening outlook for sowing in the Black Sea region.

Russia is expected to be the world’s fifth largest wheat exporter in 2013-14 after a recovery in its total wheat harvest to 50 million tonnes last season. But the risks for next year’s harvest are rising due to bad weather.

Winter grains for the 2014 crop were sown over 8.7 million hectares, or 53 percent of the planned area as of Oct. 7, compared with 12.8 million hectares at the same date a year ago, according to the latest Agriculture Ministry data.

Russia will sow about 13 million hectares of winter grains, instead of the 16 million hectares previously planned, agriculture minister Nikolai Fyodorov said on Monday.

Fyodorov said Russia had not endured such a rainy autumn for a long time. “One 70-year-old guy told me that according to his father the last time this kind of autumn was seen was in the 1930s,” he told the briefing in Moscow.

Black Earth Farming (BEF), a foreign-financed company that undertook considerable investments in the Russian agricultural sector, said today that the wet September has meant that BEF’s winter wheat area is lower than planned. It will be down from 72k hectares for 2013 harvest to  about 30k hectares for 2014. Unplanted winter wheat hectares are planned to be replaced with corn and sunflowers predominately. Land after beet will be mostly fallowed. As a result, 2014 planned crop area is approximately 220k hectares (-2% vs. 224k hectares in 2013). The wheat crops established were seeded early and are now emerged and in good condition.

No WASDE this month

The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report won't  be published this month as it becomes a victim of the US Government shut down. The report commissioned by the USDA  was due out on Friday 11 October. Traders have traditionally relied on this report with its estimates of world stocks and carryover to manage the market. However, without this data trader's are reported as saying that it "leaves the market in a bit of a fog".

The SouthWest Farm Press said that the USDA provides a “level playing field.” Without USDA’s data, most producers and small market players are at a disadvantage.