Homegrown Alternative To Olive Oil

Homegrown Alternative To Olive Oil FARM HOME Food When I stopped in at our local Deere/Stihl dealership to pick up a chainsaw for my husband I noticed bottles of cold pressed virgin sunflower oil for sale They seemed out of place at the dealership so I read the label and picked up a brochure It turned out the oil is cold pressed here in Minnesota and that the price is competitive with imported olive oil Tom and Jenni Smude of Pierz Minn appreciate the diversity and value that sunflowers have added to their operation I wanted a drought tolerant crop Tom Smude explains We feed cattle so I also had use for a byproduct We thought why not produce something on the farm Research led him to sunflowers with their water-sucking 7-ft taproots that thrive in the driest conditions Growing them for seeds didn t seem profitable due to transportation costs Setting up a biodiesel operation was a possibility but Smude was more attracted to producing edible oil out of high oleic sunflowers It s the highest in Vitamin E It s a monounsaturated fat and low in saturated fat 1 gram/serving one of the lowest of all oils and half of olive oil 2 grams/serving There are no transfats or chemicals and all the nutrients are in there because it s not refined Smude says He chose a high oleic sunflower variety from Seeds 2000 based in Breckenridge Minn and grew his first crop in 2009 He put the harvested sunflower seeds in storage as he set up his facility and ordered a Kern Kraft oil press from Germany In 2010 he convinced five neighbors to grow 500 acres of sunflowers and he planted 150 acres With the oil press manual written in German Smude admits there was a big learning curve- and a few expensive broken parts -before he figured out how to use it He bottled his first oil in February 2010 The sunflowers are stored in two 3 000-bushel bins outside his Minnesota Department of Agriculture-inspected processing building Sunflowers are run through a screen and shaker a destoner and a huller which removes up to 70 percent of the hulls Then the seeds go through a classifier which blows the remaining hulls up and drops seeds An auger takes the seeds through the press and the oil flows through a filtration system into three 7 000-gal storage vats ready to be bottled It s filtered down to one micron Smude says It s very stable and has an 18-month shelf life It takes about 100 lbs of sunflowers to yield 30 lbs of oil Smude averaged 2 200 lbs of sunflowers on his heavy soil fields He pelletizes the seed byproduct to provide 33 percent protein to feed to his 60 beef cows and 200 steers Hulls are sold as bedding for free-stall dairy facilities Sunflower stalks are tilled back into the ground Setup was costly and Smude is hoping for a 10-year payback on his investment His biggest challenge is marketing but he s finding buyers in markets he hadn t expected Smude sells the oil at 45 stores and at farmers markets craft shows and trade fairs The oil tastes nutty when raw or used for baking and has a buttery flavor when heated for cooking chicken fish potatoes or popcorn Orders have come in from diverse culinary markets The light oil works well for chicken broasters and kettle corn A commercial cooking operation in California ordered sunflower oil as did a pet food maker Others have non-food uses for the oil We ve had people use it to moisturize premature babies skin It s good for cracked heels or elbows and some people are using it for skin care products in salves Smude explains Other medical uses suggest it heals wounds and relieves psoriasis and arthritis and can be used as massage oil Smude sells the oil through his website Prices start at $8 99 for 16 oz and $25 95 for a gallon Special orders for up to 250-gal totes are available With the addition of more growers Smude expects to produce 60 000 gallons of sunflower oil a year Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Smude Enterprises LLC 25804 173rd St Pierz Minn 56364 ph 320 468-6925; www smudeoil com

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