Nearby prices at the crush plants were unchanged to up $1.00 per cwt. 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 11,455 acres pushing 2022 harvested acres to about 56,025 acres. This represents 4% of this year’s projected harvested acres and is about half of what it was last year at this same time. Above normal temperatures 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. USDA pegged old crop sunflower stocks in all positions on September 1, 2022, at 295 million pounds, down 25 percent from a year ago. All stocks stored on farms totaled 45.5 million pounds and off-farm stocks totaled 249.3 million pounds. Stocks of oil type sunflower seed are 223 million pounds; of this total, 41.4 million pounds are on-farm stocks, and 181.7 million pounds are off-farm stocks. Non-oil sunflower stocks totaled 71.68 million pounds, with 4.1 million pounds stored on the farm and 67.6 million pounds stored off the farm. Stocks of oil type sunflower seed were 26 percent lower than last year. Non-oil stocks were down 24 percent from last year. Both figures were within average industry estimates. On October 12, USDA will give its first estimate of 2022 US harvested sunflower acres and total seed production.
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