Despite enjoying a whopping 90% of Canada’s sunflower acres, Manitoba is actively trying to encourage more people to grow sunflower.
Darcelle Graham
Executive Director, NSA of Canada
“With the wet spring season in 2022, we didn’t quite get in all the acres that we were hoping for, so confection acres were pretty small this past year. We’re hoping to grow those back to the place where they were,” says Darcelle Graham, Chief Operating Officer at the Manitoba Crop Alliance.
Manitoba had 72,916 acres of sunflower in 2022, with 4,492 being confections and the rest being oilseed. Compare that to around 80,000 acres the year prior, with 15,000 acres being confection sunflower, a noted shift in between confections and oilseeds.
Still, she notes that overall yields are going up, and growers are able to grow more sunflower on the same amount of land. She’s confident growers will see positive pricing for both confections and oilseed sunflower in 2023.
“We’ve had some positive weather in recent years that has helped the crop. In our drier years, we haven’t seen the kinds of disease levels that contribute to losses. Plus, the growers have access to more crop protection products that they’re able to use to protect their crops.”
