Recent events have proven them right. Some farmers located in the North of France had the idea of planting French sunflower to produce oil and possibly compensate for a shortage. Before the war, Ukraine provided half of the world’s exports until everything stopped. A yellow gold whose prices have not stopped climbing since the beginning of the conflict. Friday morning, count 1,000 euros per ton, a price multiplied by three in one year.
A crop so profitable that the area devoted to sunflower in France could even increase by 30% by the end of the year, according to the Federation of Producers in the north of France, near Cambrai. Farmers have embarked on the yellow flower for two years already. This is called having a hollow nose.
A flower that adapts to the northern region
“You are on the sunflower plot that we sowed a fortnight ago”, says Fabrice. For the moment, the plants are only a few centimeters high, but next July, a field of two and a half hectares of sunflowers will change the landscape. Fabrice, the operator, got into this niche just before the war in Ukraine and its shortage of sunflower oil.