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Sunflower Highlights

Post Date: Mar 09 2020

NSA board members go to Washington, DC

Several members of the National Sunflower Association’s board of directors spent time last week in Washington, DC. Members made visits to members of Congress from Kansas, Minnesota, North and South Dakota about Fiscal Year 2021 appropriations and implementation of the WHIP+ program along with discussing quality loss issues. In addition, the group met with officials from the USDA APHIS/Wildlife Services to discuss blackbird depredation concerns, USDA Risk Management Agency on adjusting losses in enterprise units when both oil and confection sunflowers are in the same farm unit and USDA Agricultural Research Service to support the National Sclerotinia Initiative.

$5,000 available for this year’s NSA scholarship

The National Sunflower Association is seeking applicants for the Curtis Stern Memorial Scholarship. In tribute to the dedicated work of Curtis Stern, an industry advocate and former NSA board member. Preference will be given to students who are in their last two years of undergraduate studies or in graduate level studies and have maintained at least a cumulative 3.0 GPA on a 4.0=A scale. Application deadline is April 1, 2020. A total of $5,000 is available for the scholarship this year. Applications can be submitted online. Click here to learn more.  Contact Tina Mittelsteadt at tinam@sunflowernsa.com with any questions.

Reserve your room for Summer Seminar

This year’s NSA Summer Seminar will be held June 23, 24 and 25 in Spearfish, South Dakota. A block of rooms has been reserved at the Spearfish Holiday Inn. Standard rooms are $124.99 plus tax; suites are $154.99 plus tax; pool side rooms are an additional $30 per night plus tax. Click here to make your reservation, visit . Use the group code NSA. The program is being finalized now and registration will open soon. Contact Tina Mittelsteadt at tinam@sunflowernsa.com with questions.

Markets

Old crop NuSun and High Oleic prices ended the week unchanged to up 55 cents as crush plants offer prices not seen since the end of January. Something else to consider is the oil premiums that crush plants pay on sunflower. Considering oil premiums that are offered at the crush plants on oil content above 40% at a rate of 2% price premium for each 1% of oil above 40%; this pushes a seed delivery with 45% oil content gross return 10% higher per cwt. A $20.50 March price increases to $22.55 with oil premium added in. New crop prices continued to drift lower as producers sign 2020 production contracts. Hybrid seed sales have been brisk in recent weeks as interest in sunflower production is very high and producers are taking advantage of the attractive prices being offered by crushers and confection processors. RMA has announced crop insurance prices for spring crops. Oil-type sunflower is $16.90 with confections at $22.60 per cwt. Both numbers are slightly higher than last year when oils were $16.70 with confections at $22.50. The 2020 prices for spring wheat, corn and soybean were all lower than 2019 prices. Spring wheat is down 21 cents, corn is down 12 cents and soybeans came in at $9.17 per bushel which is down 37 cents from 2019. In general, commodity prices continue to be traded on the coronavirus impact on US export demand and South American production prospects.