(Resource News International) — The sunflower harvest in Western Canada has begun and while prices for the oil varieties of sunflowers may be easing, values for confectionary are expected to climb.
“The sunflower crop in the main producing province of Manitoba is the furthest ahead in the southwest region, where producers have already begun the process of desiccating the crop,” said Darcelle Graham, executive director of the National Sunflower Association of Canada, based at Carman, Man.
“In fact, some combines have already began to roll in some of the fields in that area.”
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There had been concern about both the oil and confectionary types of sunflowers in the province, Graham said, especially given the late start to planting in the spring and the cool, wet conditions during the crop’s development.
However, with the warm and sunny conditions of September, the sunflower crop in the province responded quite favourably and the expectation is that yields will be about average to above average, Graham said. “It’s a beautiful-looking crop at present.”
The desiccating process is a chemical spray which helps to eliminate any green matter still left in the plant and prepares the crop for combining.
Some producers still prefer to wait for a frost to essentially do the same thing. Other producers prefer to desiccate the crop sooner, however, in hopes of preventing disease from becoming an issue.
Bids for oil types of sunflowers have been easing slightly in view of the harvest and the fact that there was still a large carryover of those seeds from last year’s crop, Graham said.
However, for confectionary types of sunflowers very few bids are currently available, and the thinking is that prices for these varieties will only climb given the lack of carryover from the previous year and the fact that there were fewer acres planted to this crop in the U.S. than had been anticipated, Graham said.
Production and yield prospects for confectionary sunflowers in the U.S. also appear to be well below what had been hoped for, she said.
Prices for confectionary sunflower varieties in the U.S. are in the US22-23 cents per pound range, with bids reaching as high as 26 cents in some isolated areas. These values were little changed from the previous week but are below the year-ago value, in the US31-32 cent range.
Prices for oil-type sunflowers, based on data from Prairie Ag Hotwire, range from C9.5 to 13.6 cents per pound, down slightly from values that ranged from 11 to 14.5 cents at the beginning of September.
