Wheat is grown across the northern and southern hemispheres and traded globally, so US wheat futures respond to Black Sea, European and Australian conditions as much as to domestic ones. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which with Russia supplied roughly a quarter of world exports, produced the sharpest move in decades.
The CBOT contract is soft red winter, a milling wheat used for pastry and crackers. Different classes trade on different exchanges — see hard-red-winter-wheat — and the spreads between them price protein and quality.
Example: wheat at 580'0 is $5.80 x 5,000 = $29,000 per contract with a 35-cent daily limit worth $1,750. A 60-cent move on a Black Sea headline is $3,000 per contract.
Related: hard-red-winter-wheat, corn-futures, bushel, cbot, wasde