Call for farmers to rethink approach to sunflower

Recently the Oil and Protein Seeds Development Trust (OPDT) hosted a Sunflower Symposium at the CSIR in Pretoria, with the focus on sunflower quality and improving yields.

In spite of sunflower being an important grain crop, production had remained relatively stagnant over the past decade. The OPDT was a non-governmental organisation that promoted and developed the oilseeds industry in South Africa and aimed to improve the production, storage, processing and marketing of oilseeds, including sunflower, soya bean, canola, and groundnuts, through the financing of research projects and the provision of information and advisory services.

Topics that were presented at the symposium included planting dates; the potential of high-oil sunflower cultivars; yield improvements and quality; pollination; comparison between local and global sunflower perspectives; and new technologies.

According to Corné Louw, Applied Economics and Member Services Lead at Grain SA, the wealth of information on offer and the research results that were presented would definitely benefit the sunflower industry. He added that although much work had been done in the past on the fertilisation of sunflower, it was clear that this was a topic that needed more in-depth research.

Two principles that ran like a golden thread through the discussions were the influence that the application of nitrogen had on sunflower production, and the fact that farmers needed to see sunflower as a primary production crop and not only as a catch crop.

Approximately 80% of sunflower production in South Africa was concentrated in the Free State and North West provinces. Over the years, sunflower had been a popular crop under low-input farming and marginal cropping conditions. This was due to sunflowers’ ability to produce relatively consistent yields under dryland production. Many producers saw sunflower as a catch crop to plant in the event of it being too late to plant maize, and often preference was not given to optimal planting dates and climatic conditions for sunflower production. But farmers who planted sunflower as a focus crop and adhered to the optimal planting dates had achieved improved yields.

One of the key focus areas of the symposium was how to find the balance between high oil content and high yield in sunflowers.

Prof Ferdi Meyer, director of the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy, said sunflower production in South Africa had remained flat for the past 20 years, while global sunflower production had doubled from 25 million tons to 50 million tons.

Despite this, the oil content of sunflower in South Africa had declined, which was making the crop less viable for the crushing industry. The decline put crushing margins and the overall competitiveness of the industry under pressure.

Therefore, the development of high-oil cultivars were essential if farmers were to remain profitable. –