Wheat found some friends, and not only because Australia added to the list of production downgrades for the grain.

US Department of Agriculture officials, in a list of downgrades on Tuesday to wheat harvest estimates, missed out the southern hemisphere's top wheat exporter, leaving their forecast at 26.0m tonnes.

(European Union, Russian and US prospects were lowered.)

However, Australia's official Abares commodities on Wednesday said dry weather had lowered expectations for the domestic crop too, which it pegged at 24.1m tonnes, compared with earlier hopes of 25.7m tonnes.

'Run out of sellers quickly'

If that was a fillip to wheat bulls, another is a feeling that investors may have been too harsh on a grain, a feeling crystallised by its decline in the last session despite what were, ostensibly, mildly positive data from the USDA, published in their latest Wasde report.

"Interestingly enough, it was just a month ago that USDA put out a bullish report that was completely ignored by a market sitting near longer term lows," Jonathan Watters at Benson Quinn Commodities said.

"This time around we have fewer shorts and relatively minor supply and demand changes, but the market reaction is still worth nothing."

In fact, "late declines over the past four sessions may be directly related to the ongoing index fund roll", in which investors swap forward contracts for later ones to avoid being left with open positions during the expiry process, when futures gain powers over physical delivery.

"It still feels like the market could run out of sellers quickly as we make our way toward the end of winter wheat harvest."

'Rallies difficult to sustain'

Harvest is poor for prices in producing a spike in supplies which lower, if temporarily, the need for buyers to compete.

"Harvest is upon us, thus rallies are difficult to sustain," Mike Mawdsley at Market 1 said.

"Until harvest is more completed, downside pressure will exist."

However, there "should be a price low in wheat in the next two-to-four weeks. The seasonal trade is to buy wheat around July 1".

Prices rise

Will the rapid US harvest bring a quicker seasonal low?

Chicago soft red winter wheat, for July delivery, gained 0.7% to $6.20 a bushel as of 08:50 UK time (02:50 Chicago time) anyway.

Kansas hard red winter wheat for July added 0.5% to $6.43 ½ a bushel.

Unusually, wheat fared better than corn and even soybeans, which struggled under the weight of rain in US forecasts, boding well for yield prospects.

'Extremely tight result'

OK, the Wasde continued to attract bullish comment, as far as soybeans were concerned, in trimming expectations for US inventories further than investors had expected, citing improved export hopes following disappointing South American harvests.

Luke Mathews at Commonwealth Bank of Australia said: "US ending stocks for 2012-13 were also revised lower to 140m bushels. In our view, this is an extremely tight result which leaves no room for production downgrades later in the season."

Mr Mawdsley said: "Any weather scare could send soybeans to new contract highs."

However, the US weather outlook, after a hot spell this weekend, looks more benign, if models are to be believed.

'Crop-saving rains'

The European weather model "continues to show a major pattern change coming for the Midwest in the six-to-10 day outlook.

"The model shows a tremendous amount of rain coming for the entire Midwest and it is far wetter than the operational or current GFS model.

"In short, the European model is showing crop-saving rains for the drought areas of the eastern Corn Belt."

Soybeans for November dropped 0.3% to $13.33 a bushel and July by 0.1% to $14.34 a bushel.

Yield question

Corn prices were also hurt, but less so, having got a fair bit of selling out of the way in the last session.

Corn for July dropped 0.25 cents to $5.83 ¾ a bushel, and for December eased the same to $5.22 ¼ a bushel.

There are also still ideas that the USDA will need to lower its corn yield estimate from a record 166 bushels, an acre, with many analysts "factoring in a sub-165, probably sub-164 bushels per acre yield on new crop corn", according to Benson Quinn Commodities.

According to March Welch at Texas A&M University, analysis of official crop condition data released on Monday comes up with an "index score between where we were in 2009 on the way to a record yield and the last time yields were just above trend in 2008".

According to the USDA, the trend yield as it 164 bushels per acre, although many analysts have lower figures.