faced with rising prices, French grain farmers are planting sunflowers

With the war in Ukraine, sunflower oil is becoming rarer. Plantings increase in France, Saturday May 7. Sunflower prices have soared in recent weeks. “There it went down a little bit, but we were on 800 euros a tonne, compared to a sunflower last year which was around 250, 300 [euros]”, explains Guillaume Daudé, a cereal farmer who will plant sunflowers. This crop requires less fertilizer than maize, for example, which is more advantageous for cereal growers.

However, not everyone will be able to produce it. “In the region, we have a lot of attacks by pigeons, wood pigeons which are very detrimental for the emergence of sunflowers”, says Christophe Vogrincic, southern zone manager at Terres Inovia. Sunflower also requires regular plot rotation. Occitania has 200,000 hectares of sunflower, this area should increase by 15% to 20% in 2022.