Sunflower seeds are a healthy snack, a salad garnish, and a baseball dugout icon. But how much do you know about the state’s hybrid seed production that results in the global planting and growing of oil and confectionary-type sunflower seeds?

Do you know that the Sacramento Valley produces about 25 percent of the world’s hybrid planting sunflower seeds? We grow some 47,000 acres of this crop, valued at about $70 million (2012 County Crop Reports).

Even better news is that the hybrid sunflower seed production industry is growing, sparked by the demand for our high quality seed and the increased interest in sunflower oil worldwide. In 2007, for example, the value of California’s sunflower seed crop...