BRANDON – The agricultural commodities boom is coming at just the right time for sunflower growers.
Not only are U.S. corn prices dragging sunflower prices higher, but they are doing it as farmers start looking for sunflower delivery contracts before deciding whether to seed the big-headed crop this spring.
“There’s some real opportunity out there,” Grant Fehr of Keystone Grain told sunflower growers during a session at Manitoba Ag Days.
“If you need to sell some off of the combine, you can get a decent contract. This is a good time to be at least booking something.”
Read Also
Canada-U.S. trade relationship called complex
Trade issues existed long before U.S. president Donald Trump and his on-again, off-again tariffs came along, said panelists at a policy summit last month.
A few months ago the outlook wasn’t so bright for 2007 sunflowers. Farmers still had a big crop sitting in bins across central Manitoba, west into Saskatchewan and south into the Dakotas. With crop prices sleepy during the harvest period, things didn’t look great.
“We weren’t sure how far the carryover was going to carry us this year,” said Fehr.
But now that corn demand for ethanol is consuming that crop and raising prices, buyers of all other competing commodities must step in to buy acres. If buyers want to ensure sunflower supply, they’ll have to make sure it can compete against corn, canola and soybeans, all of which have been swept higher recently.
Canadian sunflower growers have benefited from the steady shrinking of U.S. sunflower acreage since the 1990s, Fehr said. American subsidy programs do not favour sunflowers.
There are two sunflower markets, with some buyers wanting quality seeds for the human consumption market, known as “confecs,” and others a higher oil content seed for bird food.
Confec buyers also differ in the types of seed they like. North American buyers whose customers pop the unshelled seeds in their mouths and then spit out the shells prefer a shorter, fatter seed. Consumers in other countries like a longer, thinner seed that can be cracked and the seed extracted before it enters the mouth.
The actual price levels heading toward spring will be established soon as the Argentine crop comes off and the market sees how much it has available. Fehr said Argentine acreage appears to be about the same as last year and a recent storm may have reduced yield.
This year’s market should be lucrative for sunflower growers and Fehr hopes a good acreage is seeded. In 2004 production problems hurt yields, and supplies were short. That caused prices to spike, but drove many buyers away who are returning only now.
If farmers get an average crop this year, they’ll probably find buyers at profitable prices.
“Anything that can be produced in North America, there’s a market for it,” said Fehr.
