Old crop and New crop black oils have been firm lately on both fronts, and here are a couple factors to keep in mind when talking to your customers about higher prices:

1.           Oil Sunflower planted acreage is lowest since 1990 (2010 was second lowest)

2.           Carry through stocks from 2010 are almost nonexistent, so we have nothing to fall back on

3.           Overall Crop quality is still uncertain for 2011 – early frost possibility is still a factor (sunflowers should be fine, but an early freeze could kill a lot of the later plantings of corn and beans, fueling the fire for the bulls)

4.           Farmers are flush with cash from high corn / wheat / beans prices and not interested to sell their sunflowers

5.           Outside markets have been very volatile, and commodities are an attractive investment alternative to speculators

All of these factors have kept sunflower prices on the rise, but remember, there is a top to this market and eventually prices will come back down.  The question is when.  Some say it will be 2012 new crop before we see some relief, others say we need a strong recovery in outside markets (DOW,Real Estate, etc.) to influence investors to move money away from commodities.

Regardless, we will have new crop sunflowers come November 1, and there will be people interested to sell.  Expect to see some relief then, but I doubt we will see a huge drop-off in price any time soon.