What’s up with Bulgaria and sunflower seeds?

21 comments

1. This is just how we do it. We sell cheap and buy high. Like a true trader.

2. What’s happening is likely we sell good quality stuff outside for higher prices and buy lesser quality for the motherland uses.

3. I don’t think it is just Bulgaria, but more like Eastern Europe in general. Sunflower oil is a popular cooking oil here (compared to for example olive oil in Greece and whatever is the “vegetable oil” they quote in cooking recipes in Western Europe). Agriculture is pretty well developed in Bulgaria and we specialize in several cultures where we are among the top producers.

   In any given culture the top producer is also a pretty big importer – for example India produces a lot of milk, exports a lot of milk products, but also imports a lot of milk products, the USA is one of the top oil producers globally, but they still import. In Bulgaria another similar culture is wheat where we are one of the bigger producers globally (which is impressive considering our size), producing more than twice the wheat we need for local consumption, but we still have sizeable imports.

   I am not sure why this happens, but I assume that most countries that are big producers in a given culture also have sizeable processing industry which doesn’t always work exclusively with local sources.

4. That’s very unclear look on the seeds market in Bulgaria. You have to keep in mind that:
   1) Bulgaria is producer of sunflower seeds, therefore exporter;
   2) We use many of sunflower seeds for production of food and oils for local market;
   3) Split import and export on average monthly;
   4) We have sea ports where we can buy cheap seeds from other countries around and resell them later.
   5) the price is fluctuating depending on the months, keep in mind when the sunflowers are ready to be harvested
   6) keep in mind that one bad year of productions is equal to less export products

   Literally the market has its own specifics and looking simply at import/export yearly quantities is giving you false information and deceiving you. Research more 🙂

5. С какво да гледам сериал а ?

6. It’s the same with all the agriculture. The so called farmers produce goods and get millions from EU funds. Then they “sell it” to a phantom company abroad and then we rebuy it from them (the same producers) at higher price.

7. Sure, local producers sell abroad as the price are higher, then local consumer have buy from abroad as there is not enough product around to satisfy the needs. There might be other “shenanigans” too, I don’t know about that.

8. Not really an expert on agriculture but part of it is an operation to manipulate the public into thinking the new government is responsible for this.

9. I am ducking addicted to sunflower seeds

10. The international agricultural market for me is essentially economic black magic, but I think I can figure out what is happening here.

    The world’s top importer of sunflower seeds is Turkey. The price of sunflower seeds there is several times higher than in Bulgaria. Bulgarian farmers produce and export hundreds of thousands of tons of sunflower seed to Turkey because it’s much more profitable than on the Bulgarian market.

    However, this also means that Bulgarian seed processing companies cannot compete with Turkish ones for Bulgarian seeds. So they have to import them from other countries. We import nearly as much sunflower seed from Romania, Russia and Ukraine as we export. In these countries the average price is lower than in Bulgaria so their farmers make more profit exporting to us.

11. One advice: Never try to find anything logical in our politics/trading. You will never succeed

12. Market speculation.

13. I don’t know for sure, but I suppose some Bulgarian sunflower seeds producing companies have clients abroad and sell them packaged products
    Meanwhile, other Bulgarian companies produce sunflower oil and try to buy as much Bulgarian and foreign sunflower seeds, as possible in order to press and refine them.

14. Yoo we produce more than France let’s goo

15. It seems like it’s different type of seeds. We export “skinned” seeds and import “crushed”. I guess they’re used for different things and/or by different companies. We’re also a big exporter of sunflower oil. Here’s a recent in-depth article:
    https://www.capital.bg/biznes/kompanii/2022/03/25/4327819_voinata_za_olio_i_bulgarskite_masloboini/

    https://img.capital.bg/shimg/zx1278_4328379.jpg

16. We sell more abroad because it is economically better for the local producers, and then we buy poor quality from other countries as it is cheaper.
    That is, if we do not force the local producers to sell only to the government at a lower rate because, let’s say, there is a war in Ukraine and they are not allowed to export essential goods.

17. You’re very wrong my friend. The real question is – what’s up with the rest of the world and NOT sunflower seeds?

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19. So we import all we export. 😀 This smells of a fat scheme.

20. At least we ended up 33 mil in the green 😂

21. Probably some sheme of importing from Ukraine and Russia and reexporting for profit. Not into sunflower, but happens with honey too (Ukrainian honey by the tons = 1Euro/kg). Yes, we produce and export ours too, but since you have the contacts to also import at 1 and export at 4… just a trade. We are also a regional fuel exporter, without actually digging any oil of our own.