Sunflower Highlights

Post Date: Mar 03 2025

NSA Board Members Go to Washington, DC

Several members of the National Sunflower Association’s board of directors recently visited Washington, DC. Members made visits to members of Congress from Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, North and South Dakota about the upcoming Farm Bill and Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations. In addition, the group met with officials from the USDA APHIS/Wildlife Services to discuss blackbird depredation concerns and USDA Agricultural Research Service regarding research needs.

Members shown, left to right: Cameron Peirce (Hutchinson, KS), Josh Greff (Regent, ND), Tom Kirkmeyer (Brighton, CO), Chuck Todd (Onida, SD), Tom Dowdle (Kennedy, MN)

Sunflower Production Conference Video Link Available

If you missed the ‘2025 Getting-it-Right in Sunflower Production,’ video conference you can access it on-line. Topics covered ranged from hybrid data, soil considerations and plant nutrition, updates for blackbird, weed, disease and insect management, and a market update. The program was conducted by North Dakota State University Extension. Recording and resources are available at https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/ag-hub/getting-it-right, scroll to the conference video section and click the sunflower meeting link. Each individual talk has its own video clip. Additional publications and resources are available under the sunflower conference resources.

Markets

Nearby sunflower prices took a breather this week from the recent rally and were unchanged at the crush plants. New crop was unchanged to up 25 cents. RMA has calculated crop insurance prices for spring crops. On the sunflower side, the projected price is 1% higher than last year at $24.00 for oil-type sunflower and 12% higher for confection sunflower at $32.20. USDA updated its statistical guesses at its annual Agricultural Outlook Forum last week. USDA pegged soybean acres at 84 million acres, which would be 3.1 million less acres than 2024. USDA forecasts soybean production to rise to 4.37 billion bushels. Ending stocks for 2025/26 are projected at 320 million bushels, down 60 million bushels from the 2024/25 season. USDA expects higher corn acres for the 2025/26 crop year with 94 million acres planted which is 3.4 million acres higher than 2024. USDA is projecting a 15.585 billion bushel crop. Ending stocks are expected to be higher for the 2025/26 crop, at 1.965 billion bushels. Total wheat planted acres are projected at 47 million acres, up nearly 900,000 acres from the 2024/25 crop. Wheat production is expected to be 1.926 billion bushels. Ending wheat stocks are expected to rise to 826 million bushels. The first estimate of 2025 sunflower acres will be in the USDA March Planting Intentions report.

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