Sunflowers - A New Novel Crop

By Kathy Williams, Herald Democrat

Their golden heads rising above dark green foliage, sunflowers are brightening the landscape in southern Grayson County and providing farmers here a new rotation crop.

In the same blackland fields that once made cotton king in Grayson County, Mike and Pat Fallon are now planting sunflowers to produce cooking oil. Fields of sunflowers aren't likely to be the king crop in North Texas any time soon. County AgriLife Extension Agent Chuck Jones said, last year there were about 400 acres of sunflowers in Grayson County, last among the crops Jones surveys weekly for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Jones said he contacts farmers on a weekly basis and also drives throughout the county looking at crops. By comparison, local farmers had more than 24,000 acres planted in wheat and nearly 19,000 in corn.

Farmers rotate crops in their fields for several reasons, both Jones and Mike Fallon said Friday. Rotating crops -- which in 2010 also included 9,600 acres of grain sorghum (milo), 2,000 acres of oats, 719 acres of soybeans and 521 acres of cotton -- makes for healthier plants and allows production during several seasons. Healthy plants also mean farmers don't feel compelled to use as many chemicals to prevent diseases and pests.

Fallon said he and his brother Pat had another reason to choose sunflowers over some of their corn this year. Three years ago wild or feral hogs rooted up 200 of the 600 acres they had planted in two of the last three years in the field off Dagnan Road.

"Wild hogs have gotten to be such a problem on corn in certain areas, we're looking for a crop to rotate with our wheat that the wild hogs wouldn't damage," Fallon said. "This year we didn't have as big a problem with hogs, but the two years before that, we averaged losing 200 acres of corn."

When asked if it were a trade-off to get some corn-fed pork, Fallon laughed ruefully and said, "We try to shoot 'em and leave 'em laying in the fields. We've got people trapping them and hunting them; use dogs. We try to do everything we can to kill them or make them go somewhere else; do anything we can to battle them. So sunflowers looked like a viable alternative."

In middle March, they planted 300 acres of sunflowers on Dagnan Road. That exposed the young plants to some cold weather, but that's not a problem for sunflowers.

"They're supposed to be fairly tolerant of cold weather early on," Fallon said. "They're typically grown in Canada and the Dakotas. So they have a northern adaptation and that allows us to plant them early."

He said the plant also is fairly drought tolerant.

There are several types of sunflower crops, he added. They chose the oil variety, which they are producing under a contract. The seeds are crushed and the oil extracted for cooking oil.

"These are not the kind that you find in the grocery store that baseball players chew on," he said. "Those are a confectionery sunflower, and a little more difficult to grow."

He said he and his brother are conventional farmers and don't try to grow organically.

"We try to limit our chemical use. To be economically feasible for us we have to use the chemical fertilizers," Fallon said, "and the sunflowers have a problem with head moths. Their larva feed on the pollen and the head and they will devastate them if you don't treat for the moths."

He said the compatibility of farm equipment between corn and sunflowers is another factor in choosing the brilliantly colorful crop. Fallon said he and his brother also had looked at cotton, but that crop requires a whole range of specialized and different equipment.

"We can do all the planting (of sunflowers) with our corn planter, with some different plates and harvest it," Fallon said. "The biggest difference at harvest is you have to either put some different attachments on your headers or buy specialized headers for the combine to harvest it. That would be the most specialized piece of equipment."

He said on a combine, the actual threshing part is the part of the header that gathers the corn and pulls it in to get threshed. He said headers pull the ears off the stalk. So there would be different types of headers to strip seeds out of sunflower heads.

From the fields, "My understanding is the seeds will be trucked to Lubbock and crushed and then the oil is taken to California and refined," Fallon said.

He said the experts he consulted before deciding to grow the crop have told him that the variety of sunflower oil they produce is high in certain fatty acids, so it doesn't have to be hydrogenated. And that makes it a more healthful cooking oil.

Fallon explained that he grows the crop under contract. The Fallons farm in Fannin and Lamar counties as well and grow other crops, like soy beans, that the soils in those areas support better.

"It's still too early to tell whether we'll try (sunflowers) again," Fallon said. "We won't harvest until mid or late July and we probably won't decide that until we get the combine in the field and see what our production is. But at this time, I will say it looks promising. They look really good. But I'm a novice and that's an uneducated eye looking at it."

Asked if anything about sunflower farming had surprised him, he replied that he didn't expect the plant's toughness in the face of strong spring winds, blowing sand and hotter than normal spring weather.

The field of yellow sunflowers attracts attention from motorists. "We've had a lot of comments from people about it. ... it's a curiosity. At this point they're in full bloom and it's a fairly attractive plant."

Of course, getting a good return on investment is the main reason to choose a particular crop to plant. However, asked if growing plants that blossom so strikingly is a bonus, he replied, "Oh, yeah, if you're farming for a living, you like to see things look visually attractive in the field.

"My brother and I farm together and we make a lot of trips out there just to look at it and see what's happening. Kind of like a kid's got new colors. You're just going to pay more attention to them."