Unexpectedly good sunflower oilseed harvest

In Germany, UFOP reports that sunflower seed, the second most important oilseed crop in Europe, accounting for one third of the 2018 cultivation area, was affected less severely by unfavorable growing conditions that hit winter-planted crops and rapeseed extremely hard this year.

Conditions at the timeof sowing in spring were good and around 4.2 million hectares across the EU were devoted to sunflowers for the 2018 harvest. This was only a very slight decline from the previous year. What is more, the hot and dry summer did not harm the sunflowers by any means. Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft mbH (AMI) has indicated that the crop also benefited from the absence of quality-impairing rain towards the end of the season. In fact, sunflower seed is one of the few field crop species where harvest came in better than forecast. Consequently, in a comparison over several years, 2018 yields were even higher than average.