Drought is spreading and intensifying in the Dakotas. There is still time to adjust your plans to take advantage of the market opportunities that drought tolerant sunflowers can offer. Late season planted crops like sunflower can perform well and markets will reward that production. The USDA planting intentions report had producers in seven of the eight major sunflower production states expecting a decrease in sunflower acreage this year. The report showed planting of oil-type acres much lower than expected by the trade. With lower than anticipated acres, diversifying market risk with some oil sunflower acres could be a good option in 2021. Seed supplies are still plentiful to add acres this season. If you are concerned about the drought impacting yields, crush plants are still offering Act of God (AOG) contracts for fall delivery. These ‘fail safe’ contracts have become very popular with farmers throughout the production region. It provides an opportunity to ‘lock in’ attractive prices now for fall delivery and removes that all important factor of ‘yield risk’ when uncertain growing conditions exist like this year. Additionally, vegetable oil prices have hit multi-year highs in 2021, lifted by a mix of production interruptions, recovering food consumption and an upbeat outlook for biofuel demand. The strong global vegetable oil prices and the possibility of less acres being planted later this spring are providing positive forward momentum to old and new crop NuSun and high oleic prices. Follow us on Twitter @NatlSunflower