Sunflower Highlights

Post Date: Apr 08 2019

SunOpta Hires New President and CEO

Joseph D. Ennen has been named chief executive officer of SunOpta Inc. He succeeds Katrina L. Houde, who had been serving as interim CEO. Houde will continue as a member of the board of directors. Ennen has more than 30 years of food and beverage experience, holding senior management positions at several companies, most recently as CEO. of Columbus Foods. Prior to Columbus Foods, he was senior vice-president of consumer brands at Safeway. Earlier, he was group vice-president of innovation and vice-president of marketing for core brands at Frito-Lay. He also has worked as vice-president and general manager of the Healthy Choice brand at Conagra Brands and as marketing director for Kellogg U.K.

Sunflower Hybrid Seed Production in California

California’s Sacramento Valley is world renowned as a premier location for sunflower seed production. Hybrid sunflower seed production must follow strict standards to meet California state export mandates for all certified sunflower fields. These include crop rotation, weed and disease control, simultaneous bloom of the male and female lines, and field isolation in time and space to ensure varietal purity. This publication addresses ass aspects of production for growing certified seed including, land selection, crop rotation, seeding rate and timing, pollination, soil fertility and fertilizers, irrigation, pest management, abiotic disorders, harvesting and processing, cleaning, grading, and marketing. This free publication is available to download here. Rachel Long, UC Davis Farm Advisor, was the inspiration and lead author of the publication, with co-authors indlucing Tom Gulya, Sarah Light, Khalid Ball, Konrad Mathesius, and Ronald D. Meyer.

Registration is now open for our 2019 NSA Summer Seminar, scheduled for June 26-27, 2019. This year’s Summer Seminar will be held in Medora, North Dakota. Click here to register on our website. You’ll find our tentative schedule too, as well as hotel information and more. Pre-registration will begin at $325 and golf at $145, so register early for the best price. Contact Tina Mittelsteadt at tinam@sunflowernsa.com with questions.

Markets

Nearby NuSun were down 5 cents to unchanged with high oleic prices up 10 to 25 cents this week at the crush plants. New crop was down 10 to up 10 cents. The USDA March planting intentions report gave producers a chance to see what others are thinking of planting this year and offers the ability to reset the crop plans if the market directs them to do this. USDA estimated producers will plant 1.2 million acres to oil type sunflowers in 2019 representing a minor increase of three percent from 2018. The estimate for oil type varieties was lower than industry expectations.Confection sunflower acres are expected to be equal to or slightly higher than last year. USDA also reported sunflowerstocks in all positions as of March 1, 2019, Seed stocks totaled 828 million pounds, down 33 percent from March 1, 2018. All stocks stored on farms totaled 343 million pounds and off-farm stocks totaled 485 million pounds. Stocks of oil type sunflower seed were 676 million pounds, down 35 percent from March 1, 2018; of this total, 293 million pounds are on-farm stocks and 383 million pounds are off-farm stocks. Non-oil sunflower stocks totaled 152 million pounds, down 21 percent from last year at this time, with 50 million pounds stored on the farm and 102 million pounds stored off the farm. Diversifying market risk with some sunflower acres could be a good option in 2019.