Eastern Europe Perspectives on Sunflower Production and Processing

Abstract

After the major producer, Argentina, turned to more soybean and corn in recent years, Eastern European countries, especially Ukraine and Russia, lead the production and crushing of sunflower in the world. Eastern European sunflower producers comprise the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Serbia, and others. While sunflower is one of the main crops in the rotation system and the main oil crop in Eastern Europe, European countries share only 14% of world's arable land areas, even including Russia's vast land area in addition to the Black Sea basin. All sunflower production in Eastern Europe is of the linoleic type, as opposed to the new trend for oleic-type sunflower in the rest of the world.