The Sunflower Industry.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 217, 14 March 1895, Page 2

The Sunflower Industry.

There is money in the cultivation of the flower as a field crop. So far, Buffi* seems to have a monopoly of the sun* flower industry. The discovery of the oil - in this plant was by accident. A Russian farmer was advised to try it as a remedy for sickness, which proved successful, and he then began to use it as food to hi? stock. About one million acres of sunflowers are annually grown in Bussia and the area is steadily increasing every year. It is being grown, in fact, instead of flax and hemp, in many parts of the country. The seedcake of the sunflower possesses some remarkable fattening virtue when used as a food It is considered superior to linseed, or hemp, or rape, for producing flesh on beef cattle, arid equally as good for increasing the supply of milk in. milch cows. . A German farmer reports that he increased the weight of an ox three pounds per day by feeding on sunflower oilcake. The stalks are valuable for paper making purposes, and the ashes or the same are greatly prized by soap-makers. Machinery has now been introduced into Victoria by •Afr Robert Harper for treating sunflower, linseed, hemp, and other oil producing seeds, and farmers who are keeping themselves posted in all these new industries will do well to put in a fe w acres o f each. Make a beginning, anyway, and do not wait ' till somebody else takes the cream.— Australasian.