Sunflower Highlights

Post Date: Dec 02 2019

Crop Progress

Harvest progress in the Dakotas and Minnesota remains behind the five-year average pace. In the High Plains, harvest is close to wrapping up and ahead of normal.

Crop Progress - Monday, December 2, 2019

State	This Week	Last Week	Last Year	5 Year Average
North Dakota
Harvested	51	41	86	94
South Dakota
Harvested	71	60	81	94
Minnesota
Harvested	87	79	100	100
Kansas
Harvested	97	94	88	93
Colorado
Harvested	98	97	89	96
Texas
Harvested	94	90	89	91

Seed Quality

High Plains	2019	2018
Oil Content	39.7%	40.2%
Foreign Material	6.8%	5.0%
Moisture	6.8%	8.7%
Test Weight	28.4 lbs	28.2 lbs
Northern Plains	2019	2018
Oil Content	42.6%	44.0%
Foreign Material	6.0%	3.1%
Moisture	11.7%	10.7%
Test Weight	42.6 lbs	30.6 lbs

Grower Report

Lemmon, SD producer Lance Hourigan still has about 1,700 acres of high oleic sunflower to harvest, but harvest is at a standstill after a Thanksgiving blizzard that brought several inches of snow to his farm in northwestern South Dakota. But, Hourigan says yields are good in the sunflower he did get harvested.

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Markets

A late harvest has crush plants searching for seed supplies. This is a bright spot for farmers looking to market this year’s crop as nearby prices are stronger than normal for this time of the year. Nearby prices have gained 30 to 40 cents per cwt. 2020 new crop prices have seen some upward movement as well gaining 20 to 45 cents. Seed quality remains generally very good. However, the longer the crop remains unharvested the more susceptible it will be to harvest and quality losses. Many producers are harvesting the crop and drying it to get to acceptable moisture levels for storage or delivery to processing plants. Harvest progress in the Dakotas and Minnesota remains behind the five-year average pace. In the High Plains, harvest is close to wrapping up and ahead of normal. In the past week, producers harvested an additional 116,000 acres pushing 2019 harvested acres to about 805,000 acres. This represents 66% of this year’s projected harvested acres and is behind the five-year average of 94%. House Speaker Pelosi said Monday that Democratic lawmakers are close to agreeing on a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, but that they need to see progress made in negotiations put into writing by the USTR office before voting on USMCA. There's very little time left on the legislative calendar for Congress to ratify USMCA before the end of the year so it may not get a vote until early 2020.