As farmers are cleaning out their bins of 2012 sunflower crop, deliveries to the processing plants have been larger than normal and that has impacted nearby seed prices.
Local NuSun prices for October delivery ranged from $18.65 to $18.70 per hundredweight while November delivery prices ranged from $18.75 to $18.80/cwt.
“A relatively quiet birdfood market has added further pressure to old and new crop prices,” said John Sandbakken, executive director of the National Sunflower Association in the organization’s weekly market newsletter.
USDA released its final quarterly Grains Stocks report for the 2012-13 marketing year. Traders were expecting lower corn and soybean stocks than USDA reported which led to price pressure.
“With the potential for a large U.S. corn and soybean crop looming stocks are expected to build in the months ahead,” Sandbakken said.
In its report, USDA pegged old crop sunflower stocks in all positions on Sept. 1 at 339 million pounds, up 78 percent from a year ago. All stocks stored on farms totaled 45.1 million pounds and off-farm stocks totaled 294 million pounds.
Ending stocks of oil-type sunflower seed were 276 million pounds, up 174 percent from the same period last year. Of this total, 37.0 million pounds are on-farm stocks and 239 million pounds are off-farm stocks.
Non-oil sunflower stocks totaled 63.2 million pounds in the USDA report, a decrease of 30 percent from a year ago, with 8.10 million pounds stored on the farm and 55.1 million pounds stored off the farm.
“Given the size of the 2012 sunflower crop, the increase in oil-type seed stocks was expected by traders,” he said.
“In the world oil market, palm oil is struggling to find a bottom and is taking soybean oil along for the ride,” he continued. “Palm oil stocks are expected to rise in the next three months giving buyers ample supplies. Crude petroleum prices have also decreased which is adding pressure to soy oil values as well.”
He added that sun oil values are closely tied to soyoil values and that’s resulted in a drag on old crop seed prices.
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