Here Comes the Sun

It’s hard to imagine that the field of spectacular yellow sunflowers now blooming in a four-acre field at UNH’s Kingman farm will end up as fuel for Dorn Cox’s farm equipment and feed for his pigs, beef cattle, and chickens.

Cox, a family farmer from Lee, has joined forces with UNH Cooperative Extension and the manager and crew of UNH’s Kingman Farm to conduct some applied research into the feasibility of using locally produced sunflowers to make biodiesel to help power the region’s farms.

Biodiesel, a fuel manufactured from vegetable oils, has attracted a lot of national attention as a domestically available fuel for engines that ordinarily run on petroleum-derived diesel.

 “I wanted to grow my own sunflowers, but we have a certified organic farm and I couldn’t get organic seed this year,” says Cox, who’s already using the biodiesel he processes from waste cooking oil collected from local restaurants to power some of his farm equipment. “I approached John McLean, manager of UNH’s Woodman and Kingman Farms, to see if he might have land available.”

Cox and McLean brought the idea to Becky Grube, UNH Cooperative Extension’s sustainable horticulture specialist. Becky also found the idea intriguing, and the three embarked on a pilot project to evaluate how sunflowers perform in this area and to test the feasibility of small-scale oil pressing.

“The project will measure the yield of oil, the feed value of the meal that remains after the oil has been pressed from the sunflower seeds, and the food quality of the oil,” says Cox, who has a degree from Cornell in international agriculture.

Grube took to the idea immediately. “Because they’re in a different plant family from most of our important cash crops, sunflowers might make a good rotation crop for many New England growers,” she says. “Plus, they can be planted with equipment that many farmers already have. Dorn used his two-row corn planter to plant the four acres at Kingman Farm. Also, sunflowers have multiple uses. The oil has excellent culinary properties and the meal that remains after pressing makes a nutritious feed for cattle and other livestock.

“Several questions remain, which we hope the pilot project will help to answer,” she says. “Will harvest and pressing for oil production be cost-effective and feasible on a fairly small scale? Will sunflower yields be sufficient to make them economically viable? Will the climate permit harvest of quality seeds without pest and disease problems?”

“The project is a model of farmer-driven research and teamwork,” Grube says. “Dorn proposed the idea and used his planting equipment and labor to sow the sunflowers. I contacted Land O’Lakes/Hytest seeds, who donated seeds of five hybrid varieties likely to be adapted to this area. John and the rest of the UNH Farm crew, including students, prepared the ground and have weeded and mowed around the plots. Seth Wilner, the Extension educator who manages the USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grants program in New Hampshire came up with a small grant for the project.

“The experiment got off to a slow start, with the heavy rains this spring delaying the first planting until mid-May,” says Grube. “The second planting was delayed to mid-June. The first two acres are in full bloom right now and harvest will likely take place in a few weeks. Losses due to birds or heavy rains are still possible, but hopefully the harvest will go off without a hitch.”
 
Grube says if the harvest is successful, the team hopes to broaden the project and evaluate the economics of sunflower oil production by other local growers.

Cox says he ordered a small oil press from China that should arrive any day. He plans to harvest his crops at the end of summer and press them in late fall. He’s also begun fabricating a mobile biodiesel processing unit that will turn out about 80 gallons per hour. With such a machine, Cox says, “A couple of weekends each summer would produce all the fuel our operation would use in a year.”

As for his experience working with the UNH farm crew and Cooperative Extension, Cox says, “They’ve been fantastic. Within a couple days of approaching John [McLean], we had a project up and running.”

by Peg Boyles, UNH Cooperative Extension Writer/Editor
Photo by Faye Cragin, WWW and Media Specialist

• U.S. Department of Energy Biodiesel fact sheet
• UNH Biodiesel Group Outlines other work on biodiesel going on at UNH
• Visit and talk by Dr. Duane Johnson, biocrop and biofuels expert from Montana State
• More Kingman Farm sunflower photos