Sunflower crops could set records in the nation’s top two producing states this year, helping to blunt a drop in nationwide production and ensure a healthy supply for processors in the United States and Canada. The good year for growers in North Dakota and South Dakota in turn might help keep consumer prices down for foods that use sunflower oil although worries remain about the weather-delayed harvest.

“Any time that the crop stands out there longer, obviously there’s potential (for damage),” said John Sandbakken, international marketing director for the National Sunflower Association. The last official estimate Nov. 9 said less than one-third of the crop had been harvested in the Dakotas, which produce 75 percent of the nation’s sunflowers.

Sunflowers are used primarily for cooking oil. Production nationwide is expected to be down 13 percent this year, because of a drop in planted acres due to competition from highly profitable crops such as soybeans and spring flooding in North Dakota that prevented some fields from being seeded.