Wheat continued its run of frail Fridays. But it wasn't such a walkover this time, despite a series of forces ranged against the grain.

One of these was an across-the-board headwind, for dollar-denominated commodities at least, in a greenback which soared 0.8% against a currency basket, making them less competitive to buyers.

"The outside forces are weaker, with the energy market continuing to be weak and the US dollar much stronger," Darrell Holaday at Country Futures said. And, indeed, crude was down 1.3% at $73.45 a bushel in late deals.

The movements reflected a flight to safer assets, continuing a trend blamed on weak US jobless and factory data on Thursday.

Cooler Kiev

But wheat had specific setbacks too. Improving hopes for autumn plantings in the former Soviet Union are one, with rain forecast for dry areas of Russia in the next 10 days, and in Ukraine a continuing fall in temperatures.

"In Kiev it is 14 degrees Celsius this morning. Rain covers the country and certainly improves planting conditions," Agritel, the consultancy, said.

Also in Russia, government officials strengthened their denial of reports that they were targeting imports of 5m tonnes of grain in 2010-11. No imports were expected in calendar 2010, the government said, blaming the reports on "dishonest" merchants.

And in Canada, official statisticians came up with a wheat crop estimate which was, at 22.7m tonnes, more than 2m tonnes higher than many analysts, including the US Department of Agriculture, have been estimating.

"Stats Canada's production numbers were negative," Mr Holaday said.

Disbelief 

Wheat had two factors on its side.

One was some scepticism at all the above claims. As Roy Huckabee at Linn Group said, "we all know that's not right", that Russia will not need imports.

The Canadian Wheat Board warned earlier this week to distrust Stats Can numbers, given that they were based on a survey done last month in fast-moving conditions.

And a leading European commodities house, which prefers to remain nameless, noted that "confidence in meteorologists is no greater in Russia than it is here".

Seeding of winter crops is reported at a minimal 21,000 hectares in Russia so far, compared with 571,000 hectares a year ago.

Grain roulette 

The second factor was sheer wariness of pushing the grain down further, given its resilience shown in the last half of the week, at least.

"There doesn't appear the appetite to sell. It's quieter all round," a UK trader told Agrimoney.com.

"It's as if people have placed their bets and are waiting while the wheel spins."

At FC Stone's European desk, Jaime Miralles said: "It would appear as though the recent found period of consolidation is holding."

Chicago wheat for November closed 0.3% lower at $6.79 a bushel. Paris wheat for November lost 1.4% to E209.75 a tonne, while its London feed peer closed down 1.1% at £149.60 a tonne.

Yield question 

This at least let the lid off corn, which had been held back by the reversal of sell wheat, buy corn spreads put in during wheat's spike.

And that allowed the grain to benefit from growing expectations, stoked by the ProFarmer tour of Midwest crops, that the American corn crop will not be as large as the US Department of Agriculture has forecast.

"Confidence is growing that corn yields will be disappointing versus the USDA [forecast]," US Commodities said.

In fact, ProFarmer revealed that is expected a corn yield of 164.1 bushels per acre, and harvest of 13.3bn bushels, compared with the USDA's 165.0 bushels per acre and 13.4bn bushel guesses.

The data were revealed after Chicago had already closed, with corn up 1.7% at $4.21 ¼ a bushel.

Where's China? 

Soybeans were not so lucky, ending down 0.7% at $10.09 ¼ a bushel for September and 0.8% at $10.04 a bushel for November, in part down to expectations that ProFarmer would come up with a big US yield figure.

They were right. The tour pegged the yield at 44.9 bushels per acre, with production of 3.5bn bushels, higher than the USDA numbers of 44.0 bushels per acre and 3.4bn bushels.

Furthermore, as Mr Holaday said, "China has been absent from the US soybean market in the last week and that has made the market a little nervous".

Shift to surplus 

Among softs, sugar was a star performer closing up 2.7% at a five-month high of 19.95 cents in New York for October in an upward move that puzzled traders, but may put the commodity onto the radar of fresh fund buyers.

In London, white sugar for October ended up 3.0% at $575.40 a tonne.

Cocoa also had a notable day, but for the opposite reason. London's September contract closed down £5 at £2,061 a tonne, the lowest for a spot contract since November, while the better-traded December contract closed down 0.7% at £2,000 a tonne, its weakest for nearly a year.

Better hopes for harvests in West Africa, and notably top producer Ivory Coast, were blamed.

"Farmers from the Ivory Coast are projecting this season's cocoa production will show a large increase over last year," Terry Roggensack at Hightower Report, said.

"Even the late season production may see a minor jump in production as some of the new crop may be ready early.

"The shift to a world production surplus for the coming season after a few tight years is likely to keep the price trend down unless there are developments in outside markets or the supply disappoints."

New York cocoa for September dipped 2.1% to $2,790 a tonne.