Sunflowers -
Any native American crop that
takes 373 years to come into its
own has got to be called a late
bloomer on the agricultural
scene.
So it is with sunflowers. Grown
by Indians in North Godina for
food before 1600 ahd raised by
New Ebgland colonists for hair
oil as early as 1615, sunflowers
have had a long but relatively
uneventful history in the United
States.
Down through the decades'
most sunflowers that served
more than a decorative function
in U.S. gardens were raised for
the confectionery and bird seed
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markets, rarely for oil
But while we in • the United
States weren’t successful in
getting yields of oil high enough
to make sunflower* a profitable
crop, researchers in the Soviet
Union were.
The USSR desperately needed
to find an oilseed crop which
would grow successfully in a
climate too cold for the
traditional world leaders
soybeans, peanuts, and cot
tonseed. They hit upon, you
guessed it, the sunflower-but they
took the sunflowers we had im
proved through many years of
breeding and achieved a
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breakthrough which ap
proximately doubled the., oil
content of the native American
plant to where it ranged between
40 and 45 percent. Soybeans are
only about 20 percent oil.
In 1966 we imported some of the
high-oil Soviet sunflowers into the
United States, and a year later
commercial production for oil
uses began on some 93,000 acres
in the Red River Valley of
Minnesota and North Dakota.
So much for the past. More
important is the present and the
fqture for oilseed sunflowers
in the United States.
'At present best estimates of
U.S. sunflower plantings in 1972
put die total somewhere near
350,000 acres-the largest ever.
And for the first time in history
plantings of oil varieties topped
those for confectionery and seed
purposes-the ratio being about 3
to I.'
Minnesota and North Dakota
usually plant about 85 percent of
the Nation’s crop-al though
sunflowers are getting more and
more popular on the northern
fringes of the Corn Belt where
com and soybeans historically
have not performed ex
ceptionally well.
In addition, oilseed sunflowers
are also being grown in several
Cotton Belt States where excess
capacity in cotton oil mills is an
inducement to provide oilseeds
for crushing.
a ,'f •■rtVi'rt fa'f> UJIiUUUUU >«r» • 11 »
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 31,1973
Of course, theodtimate test for
high-oil sunflowers will be how
well their costs and returns stack
up against those for competing
Crops.
In the Red River Valley area
production costs, based on
estimates developed by the North
Dakota Agricultural Extenison
Service, come to about $23 to
obtain present average yields of
around 1,000 pounds an acre.
A recent study by the
Economic Research Service
indicates that at recent sun
flowerseed price levels of 4 cents
a pound, 1,000-pound-per-acre
yields would make crop returns
superior to those for flaxseed and
equal to those for wheat not
produced under allotment.
However, sunflower yields
would have to rise to around 1,100
pounds to compete with soybeans
and barley and to 1,900 to 2,000
pounds to compete with allotment
wheat.
(The higher yields apparently
are achievable with existing seed
varieties and technologies. Some
farmers in North Dakota already
report sunflower yields of 2,000
pounds an acre and over and
several Red River Valley far
mers claim sunflowers are their
No. 1 cash crop.)
In the Cotton Belt, production
costs are estimated by ERS to
total about $4O to obtain present
average yields of about 1,250
pounds an acre.
Compared with other major
crops in the Cotton Belt area, if
sunflowerseed sells for 4 cents a
pound, per acre sunflower yields
would have to be about 1,100 to
1.600 pounds to compete with
cotton produced without
government payments; 1,200 to
1.600 pounds to compete with
sorghum raised under the feed
grain program; and 1,600 to 2,000
pounds to compete with soybeans
and with corn produced under the
feed grain program.
In sunflowerseed sells for 5
(Continued On Page 42)
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