Safflower meal price

Safflower meal is a protein feed, fed to raise a ration's crude-protein content. On a dry-matter basis it runs about 24% crude protein and 56% TDN, roughly 0.56 Mcal of net energy for lactation per pound of dry matter, at about 91% dry matter as fed. Those figures come from Colorado State University Extension, Feed Composition for Cattle and Sheep (Fact Sheet 1.615). Solvent, undecorticated. The leaderboard uses them to convert each USDA report week's board price into a cost per pound of protein and per pound of energy, so it can be ranked against corn and soybean meal. Prices are quoted per ton, and the cheapest board price is not the cheapest fed price once freight and moisture are counted (see the FOB-vs-delivered guide). Safflower meal is crushed from safflower seed after the oil is pressed out, an oil used mostly for cooking and, in high-linoleic varieties, as a drying oil in paints and varnishes. It is a small-acreage US crop, grown mainly in California and as a rotation option on the northern Plains in Montana and North Dakota, so the meal trades in a thin, regional market next to soybean or canola meal. Most US safflower meal is the undecorticated kind, hull left in, which pushes fiber up and energy down against a dehulled meal. Cattle rations are the main outlet, valuing it as a rumen-degradable protein where the extra fiber is tolerated; monogastric use stays limited.

The acres are sold before they are planted. NDSU Extension notes that nearly all safflower grown in North Dakota, Montana and South Dakota has historically been grown and sold under contract, negotiated before spring planting, with the price per ton adjusted for the seed's oil content and test weight. Growers are often limited to the varieties the buyer contracts. Meal supply is settled in winter by oil buyers writing contracts, and nothing a cattle feeder bids for meal later can add acres. Harvest follows in the fall: NDSU says most North Dakota safflower is ready in early to late September.

One seed, three buyers. NDSU lists safflower's three principal products as oil, meal and birdseed. The oil market splits into oleic and linoleic types, with oleic the predominant market, while the birdseed trade wants white-hulled seed and has no preference for fatty acid type. Seed contracted into a birdseed bag never reaches a crusher, so the meal pool is limited to what the oil side crushes.

California grows it for the rotation. UC Davis extension specialists describe safflower meal as a co-product of the expelling process and note that, because of a limited market, the crop is generally grown only on small acreage as a rotation crop, alongside small grains, tomatoes, cotton, rice, corn and sugar beets. Their history of the crop shows cheaper canola oil and later olive oil eroding safflower's oil markets. California meal supply rides on rotation choices and the oil market, not on anything in the feed trade.

Priced as a cattle protein. Feedipedia lists safflower meal as a ruminant protein source that can replace soybean meal, cottonseed meal or linseed meal, and those are the meals a buyer argues its price against, per unit of protein. NDSU's alternative feeds guide places it as a protein supplement for cattle on low-protein forage or in backgrounding rations, with energy held down by the hulls left in the meal. NDSU's production guide puts the meal at 24 to 36 percent protein depending on variety, so a per-ton price only compares fairly once it is divided by the protein a given load carries. The cost-per-protein board and the sunflower meal page, the other hull-in oilseed meal from the northern Plains, give the useful comparisons.