Sunflower markets remain steady

Trading on the Chicago Board of Trade was very light with low volume during the holiday week. CBoT traders are concerned about U.S. soybean export demand and a mostly favorable South America weather outlook. This has led to choppy trade on most days. With the USDA November production estimate in the market and harvest wrapping up in the Northern Hemisphere attention will continue to be more focused on demand news and to South America’s oilseed production prospects. Sunflower prices at the crush plants are expected to remain steady and little changed. Sunflower harvest continues to slowly move along in the U.S. Most states are trailing the five-year average harvest pace per USDA. Wet and below normal cold weather continues to hamper harvest progress in the largest production area of the Dakotas and Minnesota. In the past week, producers harvested an additional 96,000 acres pushing 2018 harvested acres to almost 894,000 acres. This represents 78 percent of this year’s projected harvested acres and is behind the five-year average. Last year at this time 92 percent of the crop was harvested. Seed quality remains generally very good. For most commodities, producer selling will likely slow down given current pricing unless storage is an issue with the hope of a rally occurring later this year or early 2019.