Sunflower oil vanishes as Ukraine War Grinds On.

[Tomconroy]

Today's NYTimes:

First the coronavirus, then the war. Just as the pandemic caused shortages of essential items, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted important food supplies, driving up prices of staples like cooking oil in supermarkets around the world.

Before the war, Ukraine was the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil. The conflict has now paralyzed harvests and left many nations with limited stocks of edible oil and soaring prices for what’s left — worsening a food crisis in East Africa and leading to export restrictions in Indonesia. Some shoppers, most recently in Britain, are being limited in their purchases of cooking oils, as supermarkets and restaurants adjust to the climbing costs.

“Supply chains, already disrupted by Covid-19, have been further complicated by the war in Ukraine, which is causing shortages in some ingredients like sunflower oil and raising the price of substitute ingredients,” said Kate Halliwell, the chief scientific officer of the Food and Drink Federation, which represents Britain’s largest manufacturing sector.

“Manufacturers are doing all they can to keep costs down, but inevitably some will have to be passed to consumers,” she said.

Sunflower Oil ‘Vanishes’ as Ukraine War Grinds On https://nyti.ms/3Kq06ep

[riversedge]

1. I read yesterday that palm oil was in short supply also.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Hmmm.

What does a person use sunflower oil for? I've heard of it, but it's not something I normally use.
What am I missing here?

[Tomconroy]

3. Apparently it's a very popular cooking oil in other parts of the

world including the UK.

[airmid]

4. I use it in cooking as well as homemade lip balm and hand salve. Wonderfully

versatile oil really.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. I'll admit to being quite befuddled

by an oil that is used in cooking, as well as a lip balm and hand salve. Seems a bit like the 19th century medicines that claimed to cure everything. Cooking oil, plus lip balm, plus hand salve? Really?

[obamanut2012]

7. You can use olive oil and hemp oil in cooking and lip bam

As well. And in soap, lotions, and many other things.

Almost all plant oil can be used like this, it's nothing odd or befuddling.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. Why not?

Petroleum jelly is commonly used as a lip balm or hand salve, because the oil soothes chapped/cracked skin by not drying out. No reason you can't use a vegetable oil to do the same thing.

[blogslug]

10. Plant oils have been used in cosmetics for thousands of years

It's not befuddling at all.

[MerryBlooms]

14. I've used only plant based products for skin

Therapy for decades. Not unusual in the least. I'm from Oregon, maybe it's more common here. What do you use, petroleum products?

[keep_left]

5. Very high smoke point, similar to safflower oil. So it's good for...

...very high-temperature cooking like deep-frying and stir-frying. Far East wok cooking usually causes the food to briefly catch fire from the oil spray, etc. There may be some other reasons why sunflower oil is desirable as well, including availability.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. it was the most common cooking oil in the UK

The situation is acute in the UK as most of its sunflower oil comes from Ukraine. Before the crisis, sunflower oil represented about a fifth of the cooking oil market by value in UK supermarkets and 44% by volume, according to the data firm NielsenIQ.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/26/uk-supermarkets-rationing-cooking-oil-tesco-morrisons-waitrose-shortages-ukraine

Notice that it was quite cheap. Also, the picture at the start of that article, with the "limited to 3 per customer" notice, but full shelves behind it, is unrepresentative - a couple of weeks ago, my supermarket had half-empty shelves of all kinds of cooking oil, and this week, three-quarters-empty.

World figures:

From the world market point of view, sunflower is the third oilseed produced in the word, with 45?MnT per year on the period 2014–2018, representing 9% of the global oilseeds production, preceded by Soybean (60%) and rapeseed (12%) (Figs. 2 and 3). It comes in fourth position on vegetable oils market with 9.2% in 2017/18 (19?MnT/year), after Palm oil (36.5%), Soybean oil (27.4%) and rapeseed oil (12.5%) on a total world production of 205?MnT vegetable oils in 2017/18.

https://www.ocl-journal.org/articles/ocl/full_html/2020/01/ocl200028s/ocl200028s.html

[ProfessorGAC]

17. Quite Common Cooking Oil

Very high in polyunsaturated chains. Nearly 68% of the chains have 2 or more double bonds.
Peanut oil is a very good substitute, though.
Sunflower has more linolenein (3 double bonds among 18 carbons), but peanut has some, but more linolein (2 double bonds among 18 carbons.)
After refining, they're both low in flavor & have identical smoke points (450°F) making them both very good for pan frying.
Canola is another good replacement, though it has a lower smoke point.
I actually visited a sunflower seed processing plant in Martfu, Hungary 20-25 years back. Very modern & efficient.
Milling, crushing, oil extraction & oil refining. One oddity: farmers brought the raw material to the plant in everything from 40' hopper trucks & railcars to ox drawn carts. It was quite the dichotomy.

[WarGamer]

20. Safflower similar?

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Pretty Close, Yes

It's actually a bit more similar to peanut, in that it's very high in the C18:2, but lower in C18:3.
One big advantage of it is a VERY high smoke point. About 100°F higher than peanut or sunflower. It's extremely low in short chains so has lower volatility than most plant oils.
I'd say it would be a good substitute for sunflower.

[Model35mech]

11. The Ukraine war has paralyzed its harvest of sunflower? I'm surprised.

I had no idea that Ukraine grew sunflowers across winter and harvested them in spring.

I would have expected sunflower oil processing/bottling to be disrupted like all industrial activities, but harvest? That surprises me.

[blogslug]

12. Unattended crops make for a bad harvest.

I imagine the article is claiming that, because of the war, sunflower growers cannot take proper care of their fields, meaning a slim harvest in the fall. You can't harvest what doesn't exist.

[Model35mech]

13. Maybe, but it literally says the HARVEST WAS INTERRUPTED.

I know there are major issues with basic translation, propaganda and twisted narratives.

But the article was about CURRENT GLOBAL SUNFLOWER OIL availability, and it says INTERRUPTED HARVEST IS TO BLAME.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. You can't harvest what hasn't been planted

From a month ago:

The country’s sunflower shortfall is likely to compound tight global vegetable-oil supplies, with prices of rivals such as palm and canola trading near record highs. Ukrainian sunflower oil is typically shipped across Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Buyers are already bracing for shortages and shoppers are hoarding supplies.

Ukrainian farmers are expected to sow about 3.5 to 4 million hectares (8.6 to 9.9 million acres) of the oilseed this spring, down from 6.8 million last year, Kyiv-based analyst UkrAgroConsult said in an emailed note. It framed its planting estimates as “optimistic,” based on good weather and a rapid end to the war. Another researcher, APK-Inform, last week predicted plantings to fall to a 13-year low.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-22/ukraine-sunflower-planting-to-sink-with-crop-hit-hardest-by-war

[Model35mech]

16. No kidding

[Donkees]

18. The sunflower oil harvest is interrupted because the silos are being bombed, the oil extractors ...

can't access the stored seeds and the trade routes are blocked.

[WarGamer]

19. Safflower is a great replacement.

Leading producers are US, India and Mexico... followed by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.