Sunflower Highlights
Post Date: May 22 2017
Crop Progress
Minnesota growers made good progress in sunflower planting last week - 70% of that state's sunflower crop is already planted. That's well ahead of the 45% average for this time of year. North Dakota producers are ahead of the game too, with 31% of the crop planted there.
Crop Progress - Monday, May 22, 2017
State This Week Last Week Last Year 5 Year Average
North Dakota        
Planted 31 11 42 24
South Dakota        
Planted 12 1 12 6
Kansas        
Planted 2 1 0 5
Texas        
Planted 53 34 34 50
Minnesota        
Planted 70 28 68 45
Colorado        
Planted 4 2 5 7
Grower Report
Bismarck, ND grower Clark Coleman finished planting about 1,000 acres of high oleic sunflower late last week. Coleman says there hasn’t been any rain, so they were able to hit the planting hard. He wanted to get his sunflower planted early to avoid blackbird issues in the fall. He said many growers have applied insecticides for cutworms because of the early planting date.
Register Now for Summer Seminar
The NSA’s 35th Annual Summer Seminar is just over a month away. Join us in Rapid City, South Dakota June 27-29 for this informative and fun event. Register now on our website. Registration will increase to $350 on June 3, so register now! A block of rooms has been reserved there for June 27-28. Click here to make your reservation. Enter your check-in and check-out date. You also need to enter SA1 in the group code box. You can also call the Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn at 605-348-4000 and book your room. The block of rooms is listed under National Sunflower Association. Email Tina at with any questions.
Markets
It was a week of turmoil for the markets as political events in the US and Brazil impacted commodity prices. It has been a rough two weeks in the White House and this week the Brazilian president was under investigation of bribery. This sent the Brazilian Real sharply lower and triggered Brazilian farmers to start selling some of this year’s huge soybean crop. This led to selling in CBoT soybean futures contracts. Slow Brazil farmer selling to date has offered support to the US soybean market despite bearish world supply numbers. Traders fear that if the Real continues to weaken it could trigger an increase in farmer selling and flood the pipeline with cheap soybeans and take away US export opportunities. Sunflower prices weathered the storm well this week. Old and new crop prices were only down 5 cents to unchanged. On the plus side, the value of the US dollar has been on a downward spiral versus a basket of other currencies lately, dropping to the lowest level in six months. This is good news for growers and others who rely on exports. Weather and planting progress will remain the biggest short term question marks for traders. They will also look at the latest Oil World report as it dropped 2016/17 world soymeal use and increased world oilseed end stocks to a record 113.1 MMT versus 92.5 last year.
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