The sunflower was a common crop among American Indian tribes long before white men reached America. The seed was ground or pounded into flour for cakes, mush or bread. Some tribes mixed the meal with other vegetables such as beans, squash and corn. The seed was also cracked and eaten for a snack, and squeezed for the oil. The stalks of the plant made excellent fuel for the fires, and the ashes left by these fires became rich fertilizer for future crops.

This exotic North American plant was taken to Europe by Spanish explorers some time around 1500. The plant became widespread throughout Western Europe mainly as an ornamental, but some medicinal uses were developed. By 1830 the manufacture of sunflower oil was done on a commercial scale. By the early 19th century Russian farmers were growing over two million acres of sunflowers.

By the late 19th century, Russian sunflower seed found its way into the United States with seed companies advertising the "Mammoth Russian" sunflower in their catalogs. The first commercial use of the sunflower crop in the United States was silage feed for poultry. It is believed that the first processing of sunflower oil in the United States took place in 1926.

Canada started the first official government breeding program in 1930. Because of the demand for sunflower oil, acreage spread into the United States. Though Kansas is known as the "sunflower state," the chief sunflower growing states today are Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas. Russia produces more sunflower seeds than any other nation.

The sunflower was hybridized in the middle 1970's providing additional yield and oil enhancement as well as disease resistance. Sunflowers are among the easiest of all plants to raise. They are fast-growing and fabulously productive. They do well under a wide range of soil and climate conditions and will produce an abundance of seeds in any climate where corn grows well. This includes the northern two-thirds of the United States.

There are more than sixty species of sunflowers. The most common type grows up to ten feet tall and has one or more heads of flowers. Each head consists of a disk of small, tubular flowers surrounded by a fringe of large yellow petals. A sunflower head may measure up to two feet in diameter and produce up to 2,000 seeds.