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Sunflower Blooms On Hawaiian Island
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
filed under: Planting Systems
Hawaii has always been blessed with an abundance of sun and beautiful flowers. So why not factor in some blooming sunflower fields to make the landscape rainbow even brighter?
A 2024 Pacific Biodiesel sunflower field in bloom on the Island of Kauai. Guinea grass, an invasive species in Hawaii, pokes up between rows and where a farm road cuts through the field. Note the Pacific Ocean in the background.
That’s exactly what’s transpiring on the Island of Kauai, where Pacific Biodiesel Technologies, LLC, has added sunflower to the list of oilseed crops from which it produces biodiesel.
Pacific Biodiesel, founded on Maui in 1995, is the nation’s longest-operating biodiesel producer. Employing nearly 100 people statewide, the company is the sole commercial producer of liquid biofuels in Hawaii. It currently produces nearly 6.0 million gallons of premium distilled biodiesel annually at its refinery on Hawaii Island.
That biodiesel is sourced primarily from used cooking oil and grease trap residue recycled from restaurants and food service facilities across the state.
For the past several years, Pacific Biodiesel founders Bob and Kelly King, through their company Maiden Hawaii Naturals, LLC., have been producing sunflower and other oilseed cover crops as a feedstock for local biodiesel production and for the local production of culinary oils and animal feed. (The Kings actually first produced sunflower — and other oilseeds — in 2017 on their 115-acre farm in Maui’s central valley, using regenerative farming practices.)
From Maui, Pacific Biodiesel’s agricultural operations made a major expansion onto Kauai in 2024. The expansion project is keyed to a multi-year agreement — signed in 2023 with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for its Engineer Research and Development Center’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory — to demonstrate a renewable biofuel produced in Hawaii from multiple locally grown oilseed crops. “Supporting the U.S. Army Climate Strategy, including its priorities to enhance resilience and sustainability of the Army’s military installations, this project will produce a prototype solution for renewable biofuel, as well as the agricultural model to produce the fuel in Hawaii,” Pacific Biodiesel noted at the time.
Pacific Biodiesel began supplying biodiesel to Kauai Island Utility Cooperative in 2023 as a source of renewable energy supporting the utility’s accelerated pathway to 100% renewable electricity production by 2033. If that goal is achieved, it would come more than a decade ahead of the State of Hawaii’s mandated timeline of 2045.
Hawaii U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono (center) meets with Bob and Kelly King at Pacific Biodiesel.
Hawaii U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono has been an ardent supporter of the Kauai project and was a key player in its funding success. “This federal funding will help bolster Hawaii’s local agricultural industry while decreasing our reliance on expensive imported oil,” Hirono noted in early 2024. “Not only will this project advance our state’s climate and clean energy goals; it will also provide our military installations with a reliable source of renewable fuel while supporting local jobs.”
The 2024 sunflower crop on Kauai being planted
Pacific Biodiesel’s Agricultural Operations team is farming the first fields as the project gets underway. As expansion continues, crop production under the Kauai project will be coordinated with existing commercial farmers initially on land owned by Gay & Robinson, Inc., that was previously used for sugarcane and pineapple. Pacific Biodiesel has established a new oilseed crushing mill at the Gay & Robinson property in Kaumakani.
The project’s model also includes expanded production of culinary oils and other value-added food products, meal for animal feed and biodiesel — plus co-products from biodiesel production such as glycerin and potassium sulfate, which can be used as fertilizer for local agriculture.
So what, specifically, does the sunflower component of this unique story look like?
For 2025, Pacific Biodiesel plans to scale up to farming 1,000+ acres of sunflower on Kauai in rotation with other oilseed cover crops and food crops such as rice. They plant high-oleic sunflower hybrids, with yield potential, oil content and plant height also being primary considerations. (Given that they do not use herbicides, taller plants aid with later-season weed suppression.)
James Twigg-Smith serves as director of agricultural
operations for Pacific Biodiesel.
James Twigg-Smith, director of agricultural operations for Pacific Biodiesel, notes that current sunflower ground had been utilized for sugarcane and pineapple production for more than a century. (Sugarcane is no longer grown on any of Hawaii’s islands.) “The soils are fairly compacted and generally depleted in organic matter. Composition is a loamy-clay type,” he says. Most of the fields were a fallow grassland prior to sunflower’s arrival. A moldboard plow initially flips the sod/root layer on the grass, and that’s followed by several passes with a tandem disk.
“We can plant and harvest year-round,” Twigg-Smith points out. “In Hawaii, we have two general seasons: the wet season (October to April) and the dry season (May to September). We grow most of our crops under pivot irrigation, which allows us to plant year-round, even in the dry season. The best time to plant sunflower is in December/ January for an April/May harvest.”
The sunflower is planted in 30-inch rows, utilizing a JD 1765 12-row unit. Not much fertilizer is needed. “While we have at times applied P and K as needed, there is a significant residual of both left over from past years of sugarcane and pineapple,” Twigg-Smith explains. “The main nutrient we supply is nitrogen, typically at a 35-50 lbs/ac rate.”
Since the ground never freezes in Hawaii, weeds are always present. Pacific Biodiesel has opted to avoid herbicides, so weeds are controlled mechanically via cultivation.
Harvesting is accomplished with a John Deere S780 combine fit with a 12-row Fantini GH3 folding header.
Sunflower fits well into the Pacific Biodiesel operation for several reasons, Twigg-Smith emphasizes. “Agronomically, the physical height of the plants gives us an advantage in that we can tolerate weed pressure in the field while still reaping significant yields. The root system works well for our soils as the previous crops, sugarcane and pineapple, had shallow root systems. [Also], the deep root system of the sunflower reaches for nutrients banked in the soil,” he explains. Finally, the high oil content and high protein content of the meal, coupled with the 120-day crop timeline, make sunflower even more valuable.
“Our model is one that promotes both food and energy production,” Twigg-Smith continues. “In Hawaii, we have an acute understanding of our supply chain and the fact that 90% of our state’s food is imported. Hawaii is the most isolated archipelago in the world, with the closest major landmass 2,400 miles away. There is an urgent need to increase food and energy production in Hawaii to reduce dependence on imported goods and bolster food security across the state.
“Our production process for sunflower oil highlights the inherent health benefits and natural flavor characteristics that are absent from conventional cooking oils,” he adds. “Most people have never tasted non-RBD (refined/bleached/deodorized) culinary oil. The sunflower creates a sensory experience, from its growth in the field and striking blooms to the rich earthy flavors that carry through into the oil. It is the complete package, and for those reasons we have focused on sunflower production in Hawaii.”
Twigg-Smith reiterates that the Pacific Biodiesel operation is vertically integrated, in that they farm, store and mill their seed. The sunflower oil is extracted mechanically with an expeller press, and their culinary oil is sold into the local marketplace.
“With our current scaled-up operations, we are also seeing a much greater interest in the meal,” Twigg-Smith adds. “Hawaii has very little to no large-scale protein source for animal feed; all feed is imported from the mainland U.S. [So] there is strong interest in local feed/protein sources.
“We’ve been planning this iteration of the project for about eight years now. It was always a dream. We’ve finally been able to put this together and bring it to life,” Twigg-Smith concludes. “Where it goes from here is going to be really exciting — those next supporting parts of this agriculture model that are going to come about, like meal for cattle or other ideas like rice that we can put under pivot. It’s exciting to be adding commodity-scale agriculture to our bread basket of local food here.” — Don Lilleboe
Bob and Kelly King (foreground) host the initial tour group to visit the Kauai sunflower field.