Your West Coast Hybrid Seed Source / By Don Lilleboe — “If factoring strictly acreage, California would be considered a ‘minor’ sunflower state.  But if the issue is value, the Golden State’s sunflower stock takes a big step up the chart.

        “That’s because a good 90 percent of this nation’s hybrid sunflower seed production is located in the Sacramento Valley of northern California.  In 1995, that translated into roughly 25,000 acres (up significantly from 1994).  From those fields have come the hybrids which U.S. sunflower producers — as well as farmers in such diverse global regions as Europe and China — will plant in 1996 and beyond.

        “Virtually every company retailing sunflower seed in the United States is represented in the Sacramento Valley.  Two companies — Cargill and Pioneer — have their own facilities in the region and also contract directly with farmers who produce their respective hybrids.  The nation’s other seed suppliers operate under agreements with California-based firms — Vaccaro Seed/California of Chico and SeedTec International of Woodland being the most prominent — to arrange and supervise hybrid seed production on their behalf.

        “Though hybrid seed fields comprised the vast bulk of those 25,000 acres in 1995, the California seed industry also includes blocks of ‘foundation’ sunflower seed.  Foundation seeds are the parent lines of inbreds.  Their offspring — the male and female inbreds — are planted in the next year’s seed production fields to produce the actual hybrids planted the year after that by farmers in the Upper Midwest, High Plains and other sunflower growing areas.”

        Production Contracts: Who Does What / By Don Lilleboe — “Along with its favorable climate, Bill Vaccaro emphasizes that California’s Sacramento Valley possesses another invaluable asset for hybrid sunflower seed production: excellent farmers.

        “They need to be, since producing hybrid seed can involve a rather complicated mixture of juggled planting dates, male-female row configurations, pollination sources and a host of other management ingredients.

        “This region’s farmers have the capability to grow literally dozens of crops — everything from cotton to corn, tomatoes to sugar beets, walnuts to wheat.  So to attract and retain acreage, sunflower companies must price their contracts in competition with each other, but also with a host of other high-value crops.

        “Along with some quality premiums/discounts, the base price received by the farmer for each pound of sunflower he delivers will vary according to the female inbred he’s planting.  Some females are inclined to produce only 500 pounds of hybrid seed per acre; others may yield a ton or more.  (This phenomenon is not related to the yield potential of the resulting commercial hybrid, however.)

        “Seed companies adjust their contract prices accordingly so that each grower has the opportunity for a similar per-acre income — regardless of the particular hybrid being produced.  The farmer’s gross from an acre of hybrid sunflower seed production commonly runs in the neighborhood of $600 to $650.  An average net may be around $200, though the figure obviously varies significantly from operation to operation and year to year.  Per-pound payments can range from around 40-45 cents all the way up to one dollar or more, depending upon the hybrid, the contracting company and the relative demand for seed production acreage.  A reasonable average would probably be around 60-65 cents a pound.

        “Contracts typically state [that] the grower is responsible for managing the crop in a ‘good farmer-like manner.’  Preplant tillage methods and weed management strategies are up to the producer.  A considerable amount of Sacramento Valley sunflower is planted in single 30-inch rows with each row furrow irrigated.  Some fields — particularly those in rotations with tomatoes — are planted in double rows on 60-inch beds.  In that situation, each sunflower row is watered from only the one side.

        “Male and female planting seed is provided by the company to the farmer.  The farmer never owns the seed he plants or produces; he is essentially being paid only for his services.  Also, though the planting seed obviously has identification numbers, the farmer does not know which commercial variety he is producing.”

        They Grow the Hybrids You Plant / By Don Lilleboe — “In an area where numerous other high-value crops compete for acreage, hybrid sunflower has remained quite competitive.  [Cowles] Mast, whose family partnership (Vernon A. Mast & Sons) is located at Esparto, is a contract grower with Pioneer and SeedTec.  The Masts contracted to produce 800 acres of hybrid sunflower seed in 1995. 

        “ ‘We’ve done awfully well with sunflower,’ Mast affirms.  ‘As far as a cash crop, it’ll compete with tomatoes in our rotation.’  Since tomatoes are the ‘Cadillac’ crop for many Yolo County farm operations, that’s a revealing comparison.

        “Equally important, though, is Mast’s parallel statement:  ‘We take care of it as a first-class crop, too.’ . . .

        “The Masts use a six-row JD MaxEmerge 2 to plant their sunflower, adding a starter of 17 gallons of 18-24-5 plus one-fourth percent zinc.  If they’re seeding a 10:2 ratio of female to male rows and can seed both the females and males simultaneously, they’ll fill five of the six planter boxes with the female and the sixth with the male, working the entire field in a pattern that will alternate two male rows between every 10 of the female.  While a 10:2 configuration/single planting is ideal in terms of convenience and seed yield, it is, however, the exception rather than the rule.  Row configurations differ from inbred to inbred — everything from a 14:4 to a 6:2 — and sometimes the grower must also do split plantings of the males to ensure there will always be flowering males available when the females are ready to be pollinated. . . .

        “Chuck Dudley [is the] farm manager for Joe Heidrick Farms near Woodland. . . .  The farm grew 1,500 acres of hybrid seed under contract with Pioneer in 1995.

        “For Dudley, the preferred rotational sequence consists of tomato/sunflower/tomato/wheat/tomato and then sunflower again.  Tomatoes are the farm’s top income producer, ‘but sunflower is in the upper tier,’ he says.”