Sunflower markets heat up

The rally in sunflower prices is heating up again at the crush plants with nearby prices adding another 10 to 30 cents per hundredweight a week ago. A late and slower than normal harvest has oilseed crushers searching for seed supplies. In the past two weeks, producers harvested an additional 75,000 acres pushing 2019 harvested acres to about 973,000 acres.

This represents 80% of 2019’s projected harvested acres. Sunflower harvest in the High Plains states is wrapped up. The remaining 20% of the crop still in field is in the Dakotas and Minnesota and may not be harvested until spring. Producers leaving sunflower harvest until spring mention high moisture as the reason for the harvest delay.

The USDA will soon issue an important monthly USDA report which will include updated U.S. and World Supply and Demand tables, U.S. Winter Wheat plantings, and Quarterly Stocks. In the report, USDA will release its latest 2019 sunflower production estimate. Most traders expect USDA to lower yields and total production due to the difficult harvest conditions producers faced this past growing season.

On the Chicago Board of Trade, trading has been driven by positioning ahead of the USDA reports. Talk of higher palm oil prices have been helping soyoil prices. Traders have also been talking about South American weather and how U.S. demand prospects will shape up going into the late winter, early spring time periods.