This is Bob Larson with the Market Line Report for Thursday, Feb 7th. A slowing of the Russian wheat supply gives U.S. a boost in Wednesday trading. From the floor of the CME in Chicago, here’s Virginia McGathey.

McGATHEY … “Wheat was also firm. Those Russian supplies are expected to slow down. Now, that has been one of the big issues for wheat and that’s given the market a little bit of a lift. So, we are well above that $5 benchmark that we were looking at for a while, but positive news abroad really sometimes caps any kind of rally for the wheat, but domestically we’ve got to watch these calendar spreads because the actually look like they’re going to push a little bit higher. Now, we’ve some kind of crazy weather back and forth so we’re going to watch that completely. Now, with this deep-freeze that we’ve had we always expect that there could be some winter kill, but every time that expectation really moves into the market, then we find at the end it really didn’t do anything.”

Chicago March Wheat prices closed yesterday dn 1 ¼ at 524 ¼

March Corn was dn ¾ at 380

Portland prices for soft white wheat of Ordinary Protein for Feb ended the day unch ranging from 6-35 to 6-58 Hard Red Winter wheat with 11 ½ % protein, prices for Feb were dn 2 ranging from 6-64 ¼ to 6-79 ¼ DNS wheat with 14 % protein, prices for Feb were dn 1 ¾ ranging from 6-68 ¼ to 6-78 ¼

Live Cattle for Feb were dn $.30 at 126.27 ½ Mar Feeder cattle are dn $.65 to 143.30 Feb Class III milk was up .01 cents at 13.92