The Great Sunflower Hunt

If you live in the Hudson Valley, come sell me out at the High Falls Food Co-op! I just did a drop of some of my RAY BAKE products — chocolate chip cookies, sourdough granola bars, and sunflower brownies, all vegan and local wholegrain. The brownies feature the seeds and sunflower flour that I write about below. My cookies will also be for sale at Unicorn Bar starting this Wednesday.

The great sunflower hunt begins in Ukraine. You can see the yellow fields from the airplane before you land. Sometimes on the five-hour drive between Kyiv and Anthony’s family in Rivne, we’d pull over to the side of the road and step into one. Exhausted from traveling all night and sore from crunching into a tiny seat, I’d open my arms wide and tilt my face up like the thousands of black faces around me. In the distance, the yellow stretched out until it met blue at the horizon, and it felt like I was standing on the Ukrainian flag.

What’s funny is that sunflowers are actually from North America — a fact I didn’t learn until a few years ago. Of the crops domesticated up to 5000-6000 years ago, they’re one of the few that remained in cultivation past the ascendency of maize. They originated in the Midwest but spread across the continent and were grown by the Lenape people who lived where I do now. Typically, the sunflower heads were dried, then the unhulled seeds were roasted and pounded into a paste, which would be mixed into bread dough or used in a soup. They weren’t a staple food of the Lenape, according to Justin Wexler, an indigenous foods expert whom I talked to. But they were used as a condiment and for ceremonial purposes — the oil was squeezed out and spread on false face masks and other significant items. They’re still used this way, said Justin, and retain symbolic importance.

My love of sunflowers, which began with Anthony’s love of them, escalated once I started incorporating nuts and nut butters into my baking. In searching for sustainable ingredients (almonds use a ton of water, cashew production is exploitative), I landed on sunflower seeds, which have a similar nutritional profile to almonds and grind up super smoothly when soaked. Sunflowers require less water than a lot of other crops, they support pollinators, and, as I learned, they clean the soil (a process called phytoremediation) and were actually deployed at Chernobyl to help remove radioactive waste. Because they’re hyperaccumulators, however, it’s worth looking into where and how your sunflowers are grown. And so I began my hunt to find sunflower seeds, which I assumed must be somewhere here in the Hudson Valley.

“When I first started the business, I had heard about this sunflower seed farm up in Buffalo who was the only one selling seeds in New York State. I called them up, and the grandmother got on the phone — she ran the farm and she was retiring, she said, and the kids don't want to take it over.” This is Eva Rodriguez, creator of Red Hook Dreams Sunflower Seed Butter. Her product is the best I’ve tasted — lightly roasted and subtly sweet without any sweeteners. Like me, she’d searched for local sunflower seeds but every lead she followed turned up fruitless (or should I say seedless). She learned that today most domestic sunflowers are grown in North and South Dakota, typically in large monocrop farms.

“Sunflowers are pretty management intensive,” explained John Sandbakken, Executive Director of the National Sunflower Association. “The majority of the crop is not organic - if I were to guess a number, I’d guess 2-3% of what's produced here in the US is organically grown.” He said that production peaked in the 1970s, but has fallen off since then. “As farms get larger, a farmer doesn't have as much time to spend on a particular crop. There's only so many hours in a day.” Everyone I spoke to who has tried growing sunflowers said that pests are a big problem — from sunflower weevils to (of course) birds. Weather can affect them tremendously too, with too much heat or too much water leading to less-developed seeds and smaller yields.

Eva ultimately turned to seeds from Europe. “The seeds I get are from Ukraine and Bulgaria. They’re smaller, and they’re so buttery — they’re not the same seeds.” Eva discovered that these seeds are in fact different from most grown here. The seeds used for SunButter (which is made in the US and holds most of the market share) are the product of a partnership between SunButter’s parent company and the USDA, which sought to create a similar-as-possible alternative to peanut butter in the early 2000s. They’re bigger and not as flavorful, according to Eva.

Throughout my search (I’ve basically asked every local baker or nut butter maker I’ve met), I did find one exciting sunflower farm located just 25 miles from my house. Hudson Valley Cold Pressed Oils unfortunately doesn’t sell seeds — which come from a different variety of plant and require specialized equipment to process — but makes a delicious cold-pressed sunflower oil that actually tastes like sunflowers. In most recipes or restaurant kitchens, sunflower oil is treated as a neutral fat, and on Amazon “they're selling a gallon of sunflower oil for $9,” said Jeff Haight, who runs the farm with his family. In HV’s oil production, “we get about 30 to 35% of the fat out of our seed. Whereas if we were to turn on some heat and add some chemicals to the process, we'd get 95%. But in that process, the oil is being altered.” A byproduct of this gentle extraction method, they discovered, is sunflower flour, which is starchy but still contains a lot of the seed’s fat, allowing it to function similarly to almond flour in recipes. I’ve been using both the oil and flour in my baking and I love the flavor they add.

Like others, Jeff thinks the cost of management (especially if you’re not using a lot of fertilizers and pesticides) is probably why we don’t see more sunflower fields in the Hudson Valley. His farm isn’t yet certified organic but they use many organic practices like crop rotation and a no-till drill. However, they’re able to charge more for their specialized product, which they sell to restaurants in the city. At the prices we’re used to seeing for sunflower seeds and oil, it’s hard for farmers to grow them here.

I’m going to plant a few sunflowers in my garden anyway. Justin offered to share some seeds from the two varieties that were cultivated by the Lenape to become native to the Hudson Valley. I’m looking forward to seeing them poking out of the ground and turning to greet the sun.

Whole sunflower heads for sale at a market in Ukraine

What I’m Cooking