The area planted with sunflower in the current campaign in the province of Cordova is 17% lower to which he dedicated himself to this same crop the previous year. So, according to the data managed by the agricultural organization Asaja, It can be estimated at around 21,000 hectares spread across various locations. of the Cordoba countryside. This figure is very far from other times, now remote, in which the planted area was around 46,000 hectares.
As explained to this newspaper Antonio Moclova, an Asaja technician specialized in the matter, the reason for the gradual reduction of land dedicated to sunflowers in the province is the lack of profitability of the crop. He assures that “many farmers have maintained it for, let’s say, romanticism and for being a traditional crop “which adapts very well to the type of soil in our province.” Furthermore, he points out that before there was specific aid from the CAP that awarded 50 eurosper hectare planted with sunflower, up to a maximum of 50 hectares, but it was withdrawn, which has caused many farmers to stop planting the oilseed.
This evolution had a trend change two years agothe expert continues to explain, with the start of the war in Ukraine, which is the world’s leading producer of sunflower, which raised hopes of improvement, because even PAC conditions were made more flexible, allowing planting in fallow areas. However, prices plummeted and made expectations of improvement disappear.
Antonio Monclova remembers that Córdoba is the second province with the largest sunflower area in Andalusia, behind Sevilleand that the areas where more sunflower spaces have been planted this year are in the countryside (Fernán Núñez, Bujalance, Baena, Cañete de las Torres, Valenzuela, Castro del Río, Espejo, La Carlota, Santaella) and some points in La Vega that have irrigation.
Regarding production forecasts, Asaja considers that It is too early to make an estimate because the last plots were planted a month ago approximately, so the state of the crop is uneven and there is a great difference in dates between the first plots planted and the last. Even so, given that the spring rains have been very timely and the temperature is mild, a medium to good production is expected, since the harvest in Córdoba usually begins at the beginning of August, and until then it is not known what will happen. climatologically speaking.
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