State sunflower growers elect members for new board

Minnesota's sunflower growers have elected a five-member board of directors to oversee their newly established research and promotion council. Like other commodity councils, the Sunflower Research and Promotion Council (R&PC) will work to stimulate the use, sale and consumption of sunflowers and improve methods of production, processing and marketing.

The Sunflower Council's board is represented by two regions. Region 1 includes Kittson, Roseau, Marshall, Pennington, Red Lake, Polk, Norman, Mahnomen, Clearwater, Clay and Becker counties. Region 2 comprises the remaining counties of the state.

Those elected to the board in Region 1 include John Swanson of Mentor, Kevin Capistran of Crookston, Jerry Hasnedl of St. Hilaire and Tyler Nelson of Oklee. Steve Schmidt of Dumont was elected to serve Region 2.

U.S. farmers grew about 2.4 million acres of sunflowers worth just under $670 million last year. In Minnesota, nearly 164 million pounds of sunflowers were produced on 130 thousand acres.