Sunflower Highlights

Post Date: Sep 16 2024

Crop Progress - Monday, September 16, 2024

State	This Week	Last Week	Last Year	5 Year Average
North Dakota
Petals Dry	82	70	87	86
Bracts Yellow	56	25	63	63
Mature	21	1	25	24
South Dakota
Petals Dry	64	46	83	--
Bracts Yellow	31	13	44	--
Mature	9	--	6	--
Texas
Harvested	75	68	62	62

Crop Conditions - Monday, September 16, 2024

State	Timeframe	Very Poor	Poor	Fair	Good	Excellent
North Dakota	This week	1	4	29	62	4
	Last week	1	4	23	67	5
Minnesota	This week	0	1	20	62	17
	Last week	0	1	29	56	14
Colorado	This week	14	17	39	28	2
	Last week	24	27	30	18	1
South Dakota	This week	7	7	31	50	5
	Last week	6	6	24	59	5

Research grant applications being accepted

Research is an important part of the NSA’s mission. Each year, the NSA provides grants to public researchers to stimulate new or additional work that may result in lower production costs, increased quality, and higher yields. Pre-proposals for projects to be considered for funding in 2025 are now being accepted. 2025 NSA Research Priorities (sunflowernsa.com) to read more and to submit pre-proposals. Grant applications are due by October 1, 2024.

Grower Report

Onida, SD grower Ryan Olson says his sunflowers look fairly good. He says the red seed weevil was bad or worse than in the past. He sprayed 2 times. He had no real disease issues. Initially his sunflowers were behind but with the temperatures being in the 90’s -100’s lately it has sped up the process. Currently they are done blooming and have started to drop petals. He hopes to start harvesting the second week of October.

Markets

Nearby prices were unchanged to up 50 cents. According to the September USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) crop acreage report, area planted to sunflower in 2024 totals 715,200 acres down 46 percent from last year. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is using a planted acreage estimate of 898,500 acres. According to FSA, planted area of oil-type varieties is 594,000 acres with acreage of non-oil varieties, at 121,200 acres. NASS has pegged the planted area of oil-type varieties at 765,000 million acres and non-oil varieties, at 133,500 acres. Wet spring planting conditions resulted in 26,000 prevent plant acres in 2024 with South Dakota accounting for 13,000 acres of the total. 2024 U.S. sunflower production is still undetermined and will not be known until harvest gets rolling and some yield results are reported. In October, USDA will provide its first estimate for oil and non-oil sunflower production. On September 30, USDA will report old crop sunflower stocks. These USDA reports will give producers and industry a better picture of sunflower fundamentals heading into the 2024/25 marketing year. The weather forecast for the next two weeks is predicting above normal temperatures in the sunflower growing region, which bodes well for crop dry down. Getting the crop harvested several weeks early can result in lower drying costs, plus reduces late season crop and blackbird damage.

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