THE BIG BUCKS
High demand for sunflowers pushes returns sky high
KEVIN Charlesworth might have been getting 9.6 tonnes to the hectare of sorghum, but he was still making plenty more money off sunflowers, even in tough years.
He reckons farmers were crazy not to at least look at sunflowers as a quick turnaround cash crop.
But he believed the biggest thing putting people off growing them was looking at the oilseed crush price.
Mr Charlesworth sold his farm in June after decades of growing sunflowers as his main cash crop and a long stint as president of the Australian Sunflower Association.
Since then his former farm, Mirradong, near Clifton, has gone over to cotton farming after nearly 30 years of growing sunflowers.
He said farmers took a glance at the $600/t price for sunflowers grown for oil and threw the idea out the back door.
With much of our country’s oil crush seeds coming from countries we couldn’t hope to compete with such as Argentina and the Ukraine, there was no point competing on an uneven playing field.
But with bird seed and horse feed producers paying a pretty penny for the premium end of the product, it was well worth the effort.
He said it would even shape up as an interesting year on the import front after Australia’s primary sunflower seed importer went into receivership late last year, meaning it was up to smaller private companies to pick up the slack and there was no
❝ I have got up to $1570 a tonne in previous years. — Kevin Charlesworth
guarantees they would.
That meant demand for local product would be right through the roof and when demand is up and supply is down, producers had the power to negotiate better prices.
“Unfortunately growers don’t have the full picture on prices and we don’t have the funds that some other grower organisations have to get them out there,” Mr Charlesworth said.
“They just look at$600/t delivered to Narrabri for oilseed crush is the price but I know bird seed packers with $900/t prices.
“They’ve got to look at the market.”
Mr Charlesworth said horse food was another premium market where people would pay whatever price was asked for the product, meaning farmers could even be paid up to $1200/t.
Demand in that market was currently only 15-20,000 tonnes, but at $1200/t it was still worth looking at.
That wasn’t just the upper estimate either.
“If we weren’t importing, and remember the main importer went into receivership last year, your normal Joe Bloggs packer is going to have to pay what they have to pay for Australian product.
“I have got up to $1570 a tonne in previous years when there have been shortages and this year I think we’ll have that situation again.”
He said in his time over the years with the industry body there were plenty of cost-benefit comparisons with other crops and sunflowers continued to outshine many other common cash crops.
He said they were very competitive with mung beans but without all of the additional crop care and concerns with weather.
“With sunnies you just put
’em in the ground, make sure you’ve got good weed control and then harvest them,” Mr Charlesworth said.
“People should just do the maths and the gross margins, because even when they were $800/t we were competitive with dryland cotton.
“We’ve done workshops where we’ve got the figures from people on the floor against the likes of sorghum, mung beans and cotton and they come up great every time.”
Mr Charlesworth said Downs farmers were also blessed with proximity to most of the country’s packers and processors, keeping transport costs as small as $15/t.
He said people could find out more via www.better sunflowers.com.au.