Early Weed Farming

Keep on the Sunny Side: Lubbock area farmers turn to sunflowers to save water, money

Published: Sunday, September 07, 2008
ELLIOTT BLACKBURN

OLTON – Bright arcs of gold interrupt the cash-crop green surrounding this small farming town, welcomed by a handful of growers pushed into the unthinkable.

Farmers here have covered thousands of acres with sunflowers, a gangly intruder for years best known for harassing the region’s dominant crops.

Few Panhandle growers would consider sunflowers a savior. The wild strays towering awkwardly over farm road ditches and fields remain, for most, a deep-rooted weed robbing potential profit.

But some South Plains growers now wonder whether the flower’s same frustrating qualities could extend the lives of their farms.

“It’s a glorified weed that has a purpose,” said Billy Tiller, longtime dryland farmer outside of Littlefield who planted 1,000 acres of oil sunflowers this summer.

The Ogallala Aquifer, sustainer of all irrigated agriculture and a drinking supply for Lubbock and other cities, has shrunk beneath Olton under the strain of cotton and corn.

Water levels at an observation well southwest of town have dropped more than 35 feet during the last decade, according to records kept by the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District. Growers around the small community 60 miles northwest of Lubbock must reach deeper for irrigation than all but four other monitored sites the district tracks inside Lamb County.

“It’s getting to where you can’t hardly keep the pressure up in the sprinklers,” said Ken Gallaway, a grain and cotton farmer who seeded a fifth of his 500 acres with sunflowers in late June. “The formation’s not giving up the water like it did years ago.”

Gallaway, an easygoing former accountant, left office life more than a decade ago for the freedom of setting his own working hours outdoors.

The numbers don’t work for the acres of corn separated from his sunflowers by a narrow dirt road, he said.

High corn prices sparked a rural renaissance as ethanol brewers, cattle feeders, grocers and food processors seemed to add up to an insatiable demand. Corn prices doubled, tripled, and any land that had water to handle it – quite a bit that didn’t, too – chased the new gold.

As corn raced up, so did much of the materials needed to grow it. Corn guzzles irrigation water and demands an array of chemicals and pricey seed. Fertilizer alone doubled in price from last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and energy prices climbed 50 percent.

Gallaway can’t even find the most common name-brand weed killer anymore. He couldn’t afford it if he did, he said.

But those sputtering center pivots raised the biggest fears, he said. He didn’t expect to see corn, depending on the commodities market, beyond three to five years.

“We’re just losing our water,” Gallaway said. “So we’ve got to

come up with a profitable alternative to corn.”

The vanishing water began to form clouds over morning coffee chatter at the Olton Farm Supply. Though there are many across Texas like Tiller who rely on the whims of the weather to sustain their crops, switching to dryland can be a tough adjustment.

Randy Redinger, manager of the supply store and a former seed salesman with Triumph who is familiar with sunflowers, pitched the oddball crop to his regulars.

A few Panhandle farms have grown sunflowers that produce edible seeds for years, but those plants required more work and care.

High Plains Oilseed in Dumas needed oil sunflowers, and contracts fetched nearly triple what a farmer could expect a few years ago.

Competition became fierce for sunflower acreage in traditional areas such as Kansas, said Phil Haaland, a contracting agent for High Plains.

His company began to look south of Amarillo for farmers in low water situations who could easily pick up sunflowers, setting up local drop-off points and pushing for acreage.

For farmers such as Gallaway, it was a question of business – how to responsibly make the most of their land for as long as possible. The sunflowers he planted in June used half the water corn demanded and about a quarter less than he put on his cotton, he said.

The crop grows so fast that farmers can plant nearly anytime through the spring or early summer. Those weedy qualities meant the plants scoured the soil for nutrients by themselves and didn’t need big fertilizer investments.

He needed fewer chemical treatments, too, to knock out a roving moth that dines exclusively on the big flowers.

It meant farmers did not have to take such a big gamble, grower Preston Huguley said. He could make a sunflower crop spending half the money per acre that cotton or corn may require. The processing plant contracted for him to plant a certain number of acres, rather than deliver a set number of pounds, which meant he did not gamble having to make up the difference if his acreage fared poorly.

“You’re risking less money out there all year,” said Huguley, who planted more than 100 acres on land he’s farmed for 18 years. “It’s an extremely scary risk to put that money out there.”

Growers such as Huguley felt a more personal pressure, too. How could he preserve the lifestyle he loved for his 4-year-old son?

Plots around Olton tend to cover hundreds of acres, not thousands, and Huguley said there was little opportunity for growers to expand. Only if fewer farmers worked bigger plots of land could the area remain profitable without water, he said.

“In 15 to 20 years, we could need half the farmers in Olton that we have now,” he said.

Huguley’s flowers came up to his shoulder, aside from a few wild flowers that shot above their conventional brethren. The crop remained weeks away from harvest, but the bright yellow petals had begun to fall. Their heads nodded under the weight of the seed. Sunflowers will turn dark and bow to the east by the time a combine moves through the field.

Harvesters will need special equipment or modifications to collect the sunflower heads without rattling their valuable seeds all over the soil. Farmers must be careful choosing whichever crop will follow their sunflowers, Tiller warned – stragglers almost always popped up in his fields. Gallaway wondered how much fertilizer the field would need following his flowers.

“The dealbreaker for me, whether I do this again, is what happens to the crop after this,” Gallaway said.

But ahead of harvest, the growers seemed optimistic about their first go with the crop.

“They’re a pretty crop,” Gallaway said, looking at a field of young flowers staring back at him. “It’s amazing.”