Nearby prices at the crush plants were unchanged to up 15 cents last week. Sunflower harvest has started in the Dakotas and Minnesota. In Texas, harvest continues to move along ahead of the five-year average. In the past week, producers harvested an additional 115,000 acres pushing 2020 harvested acres to about 207,000 acres. This represents 14% of this year’s projected harvested acres and is significantly ahead of the five-year average of 3%. Harvest progress is about two to four weeks ahead of last year at this same time. Overall dry conditions are expected to continue the next two weeks in the sunflower growing region and will benefit ongoing harvest. Last week USDA released its latest grain stocks report. Old crop sunflower stocks in all positions on September 1, 2020 totaled 213 million pounds, down 26 percent from a year ago. All stocks stored on farms totaled 22.5 million pounds and off-farm stocks totaled 190 million pounds. Stocks of oil type sunflower seed are 158 million pounds down 27% from a year ago; of this total, 13.9 million pounds are on-farm stocks and 144 million pounds are off-farm stocks. Non-oil sunflower stocks totaled 54.4 million pounds down 23% from a year ago, with 8.62 million pounds stored on the farm and 45.8 million pounds stored off the farm. On October 9, USDA will give its first estimate of 2020 US harvested sunflower acres and total seed production.
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