Sunflower harvest is largely finished up for the 2023 growing season across the country and remains mostly ahead of historical benchmarks as the season ends. In the past week nearby prices ended the week unchanged. With the 2023 U.S. harvest in the books, traders will increasingly look to South America for price signals in the coming months. Soybean production in Brazil even with all the country's weather issues, is still on track to be a record. According to USDA, production in the South American country is still pegged at 163 million metric tons in the 2023/2024 marketing year, which if realized would be up from the previous year's 158 million tons and the highest ever recorded. In addition, Argentina is expecting a significant rebound in soybean production from last year’s drought reduced crop. Given the potential of a much larger South American soybean crop, this bears watching as international trade would assume much of the impact and could affect new crop oilseed prices. USDA will release its supply and demand report next week. Traders are anticipating that any significant changes to production, stocks and usage will come in the January report. The next big report on the 2023 sunflower crop will come in the January 2024 WASDE and Crop Production reports, which will feature a final estimate of 2023 yield, acreage, and production. The USDA Grain Stocks report released that day will also provide fresh insights to final 2022/23 usage figures that will determine 2023/24 beginning stocks values.

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