Genesis As a U.S. Crop
Monday, April 6, 2015
filed under: Historical
It is one of history’s ironies: Though sunflower is native to North America, it took immigrants from Russia — by way of Canada — to reintroduce the sunflower seed as a noteworthy food source for the modern-day United States.
The immigrants were Mennonites who settled on the prairies of southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan during the 1870s. While living in Russia, these families had become fond of growing sunflower in their farm gardens in order to eat the kernels (often after roasting them). Upon leaving Russia, many Mennonites took with them seeds of the Mammoth Russian (so named for the large seeds it produced) variety of sunflower and began planting them around their new homes in Canada’s prairie provinces. By the 1880s, Mammoth Russian seeds were being offered for sale in U.S. seed company catalogs.
While it was not uncommon to see the occasional tall sunflower plant in U.S. gardens during the early 20th century, sunflower was still decades away from becoming an important agricultural crop in the United States. The garden-variety sunflower seeds were consumed either as a snack for humans or for bird food.
Some farmers in northern and western states did grow sunflower for fodder and ensilage during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and a few universities conducted research evaluating that usage. The crop yielded an impressive quantity of silage, and the sunflower plant parts provided a tasty, nutritious diet supplement for livestock.
During the 1930s and 1940s, annual U.S. sunflower seed production averaged about 6.0 million lbs off approximately 6,000 acres. Most of that pre-World War II sunflower was in California, Missouri and Illinois, according to USDA.
Though a few Americans had been tinkering with the possibility of developing sunflower as an oilseed crop — particularly for industrial purposes — U.S. oilseed processors exhibited very little interest in it. Rather, it fell to Canadians to make the first serious North American commitment to growing and processing sunflower for its oil.
During the 1930s, the Canadian government, dissatisfied with the nation’s heavy dependence upon imported edible oil, asked its agriculture department to investigate various crops that might help alleviate this reliance. Among those crops was sunflower.
Scientists in western Canadian provinces began a quest for suitable varieties. To form the basis of a viable oilseed crop, these varieties would have to be shorter than the Mammoth Russian types, require less time to mature — and have a higher percentage of oil in their seeds. Using the Mennonite-derived sunflower genotypes as a starting point, Canadian researchers eventually produced an acceptable new variety called “Sunrise” and later followed with additional varieties.
The onset of World War II strengthened the Canadian government’s resolve to produce more edible oil domestically, and it actually promoted sunflower production. By the mid-’40s, the Red River Valley of south central Manitoba had become the focus of this production — appropriately so, since the area contained numerous Mennonite farm families, the same people who for decades had grown sunflower in their gardens.
In 1943 a group of Manitoba sunflower growers formed Co-op Vegetable Oils, Ltd. They built a crushing plant at Altona and had it operating by 1946. Initially a producer of only crude oil, CVO later added the equipment required to refine and bottle a brand-name vegetable oil (“Safflo”) for the consumer.
To the south, companies in the Red River Valley portion of Minnesota and North Dakota were beginning to promote and contract with farmers for the production of sunflower seeds for the confectionery and bird food markets. This activity continued through the 1950s and into the ’60s, although acreage remained relatively small. Some minor-scale breeding of nonoilseed (confection and birdseed) sunflower was conducted within the United States during this period.
By the dawn of the 20th century, Russian researchers were selecting and crossing various sunflower populations in a search for higher oil content, improved seed size and yield, earlier maturity and disease resistance. By mid-century, Soviet breeders had achieved dramatic improvement in the quality of their nation’s cultivated sunflower varieties. Other European nations — along with Canada and Argentina — had by then established their own sunflower breeding programs in an attempt to emulate and build upon the Soviet success.
Developed in the Soviet Union, the variety “Peredovik” was licensed in Canada by 1964. It possessed a significantly higher oil content than the current Canadian varieties, resulting in greater efficiency at the processing plant and, hence, higher prices for the farmer. Not surprisingly, Peredovik gained immediate popularity within the Canadian sunflower industry.
Simultaneously, across the border in Minnesota, two of the state’s large flaxseed processors — Cargill and Minnesota Linseed — were wrestling with declining flax acreage due, in part, to the growing popularity of latex paints. Facing the unprofitable prospect of excess crush capacity, these two companies saw in sunflower an excellent replacement crop. They began promoting oil-type sunflower in the Red River Valley, offering contracts to farmers to grow the crop.
More than 200,000 acres of sunflower were harvested in the U.S. by 1967, mostly in the Red River Valley. More than half the crop was of the nonoil type (confection and birdseed). The remaining “oil” production went to the Minneapolis-area crushing plants of Cargill and Minnesota Linseed (later to be known as Honeymead Products Company). — Don Lilleboe