sunflower market

sunflower market

Sunflower market is not as big around the world as maize because the crop is not as widely spread out. It is grown essentially in Europe, Argentina, United States and India. In fact, sunflower is used only for oil production. Thus, sunflower market frequently competes with other local crop which have higher productivity levels in their country: groundnut, rapeseed, soja and so on.

Sunflower market number one in Europe is France iwith 770 000 sown hectares (in 1999). Romania has remained very close to agriculture. Turquey and Hungaria have also high sunflower surface areas, respectively 600 000 and 575 000 ha. Spain isn't a major hybrid sunflower market. In fact, with 960 000 grown hectares, less than a half is sown with hybrids.

Sunflower market global areas in Europe are quite stable from one year to to other. In France, the sunflower market is well balanced although there has been a slight domination of rapeseed in 99. The rest of Europe is divided in two parts : rapeseed grown in northern countries and sunflower in the south. This segmentation in the sunflower market has increased these past years.