Updates
January 16, 2013: KXNews reports the same.
Both oil and confection sunflowers set new yield records in 2012.
Oil yields per acres average 1750 lbs per acre, a 140 pound jump from the previous record set in 2005.
While confections, the sunflowers you eat straight from the shell, averaged a record 1580 pounds per acre.
(John Sandbakken / National Sunflower Association) "On the confection side we export about 50% of what we produce here in North Dakota, and our main markets are in Europe. Spain, turkey, places like that are the largest customers. But, also Mexico is expanding significantly. And that has been our shining star here for the last few years. That in Mexico the demand is increasing consistently every year."
January 15, 2013: North Dakota lost the crown for one year (due to extreme flooding) but handily gained it back this past year.Executive Director of the National Sunflower Association John Sandbakken calls this year's production "an off-the-charts crop."
South Dakota in 2011 became the nation's top sunflower-producing state for the first time in recorded history, due to extreme flooding in North Dakota. Production data from the federal Agriculture Department released this month show that North Dakota handily reclaimed the crown last year, with a crop of 1.46 billion pounds compared to South Dakota's 892 million pounds.
Original Post
The head of a new North Dakota-based sunflower business says he believes the company's new plant in Lubbock, Texas, is the most technologically advanced sunflower seed roasting facility in North America.
SunGold Foods CEO Bob Majkrzak (MAY'-shack) presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday at the facility, which will produce in-shell sunflower seeds to be sold as snack food.
Majkrzak says the plant has unique equipment that controls moisture and monitors salt levels for specific products. The technology was developed at the company's North Dakota facilities.
The plant has 40 employees. Majkrzak says there are plans to hire 65 more workers in five years.Several story lines:
- North Dakota, #1 in sunflowers; this year is a spectacular year for ND sunflowers -- yes, credit it to global warming. Thank you (that's two story lines).
- How to pronounce: Majkrzak. That alone makes the story worth reading. I've always wondered how to pronounce Majkrzak. The "z" is silent. That threw me off.
- Forty: didn't it rain forty days and forty nights early in the Bible stories?
- Forty employees: avoid 50 -- ObamaCare kicks in. Break the company in two: one for upstream; one for downstream.
- North Dakota showing Texas how it's done. The technology was developed at the company's North Dakota plant.
- The whole story reminds me of wonderful autumn days of hunting in North Dakota.
Clark Coleman has raised sunflowers for many years. The Baldwin, N.D., farmer rarely has been as optimistic going into sunflower harvest as he is this year.
For some growers, this is “a dream year,” given the combination of excellent yields and high prices, says John Sandbakken, executive director of the National Sunflower Association.
With the area sunflower harvest nearing the halfway mark, some North Dakota and Minnesota sunflower producers are reporting yields of 1,700 to 2,800 pounds per acre.
Typically, sunflower growers shoot for 1,500 to 2,000 pounds per acre.
Prices, which rose above 30 cents per pound earlier this year, an exceptionally strong level, remain around 25 cents per pound at area grain elevators surveyed weekly by Agweek.
Growers also benefit because the crop’s oil content is unusually high, for which they receive a premium, or bonus, Sandbakken says.
North Dakota is the nation’s leading sunflower producer, accounting for 46 percent of the 1.815 million acres the federal government projects will be harvested this year.
A Note For The Granddaughters
I'm back in my JRR Tolkien phase. It just happened, independently of the new movie release, The Hobbit. I am re-reading Tom Shippey's biography of JRR Tolkien, in which Shippey argues that Tolkien was the "author the century." He makes a great case. What an incredible book. Tom mentions that JRR Tolien was never taken seriously by the literari. So, I was curious whether Tolkien made Harold Bloom's western canon. Surprisingly, Tolkien does not. In The Western Canon, Harold Bloom lists hundreds of, perhaps as many as a thousand, writers that make the grade. And yet, Tolkien is not one of Harold Bloom's western anon. Tolkien is mentioned once, on page 73 (soft-cover edition) as part of a short list of non-Christian writers.
We all have blind spots. Harold Bloom's blind spot is JRR Tolkien.
So, I'm re-reading Shippey and watching the extended edition of the trilogy.
In Shippey's book, p. xviii, the soft-cover edition:
However, while Ulysses had had few director imitators, thought many admirers, after The Lord of the Rings the heroic fantasy 'trilogy' became almost a standard literary form. Any bookshop in the English-speaking world will now have a section devoted to fantasy, and very few of the works in the section will be entirely without the mark of Tolkien -- sometimes branded deep in style and layout, sometimes showing itself in unconscious assumptions about the nature and personnel of the authors' invented fantasy worlds. One of the things that Tolkien did was to open up a new continent of imaginative space for many millions of readers, and hundreds of writers ...Think Star Wars. A heroic fantasy, and a trilogy.
Other writers in the same general time and place, who also wrote giant trilogies, include Mervyn Peake (The Gormenghast Trilogy) and E. R. Eddison (The Zimiamvian Trilogy). They're terrific, but somehow their works are never used by Masterpiece Theater.
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