HANNIBAL — A Hannibal-based agribusiness plans to expand thanks to a state grant.
Show Me HH Farms will use a grant through the Missouri Agricultural and Small Business Development Authority to boost operations and what it can provide to customers of its cold-pressed sunflower oil.
“This will allow us to put up a new building with a bigger warehouse space for our seeds,” said Kent Brown, who with his wife Kathy, son Phillip and daughter-in-law Amberlyn is raising 15 acres of sunflowers this year.
“We do agritourism when the flowers bloom. This will give us a place to have our product, to greet people and to have a bathroom when they come visit.”
Brown hopes to have the new building done by November.
“This gives us the start we need. It would have taken us years to get to the point where we could afford to put up a nice facility like we’re going to have. We’re very grateful,” he said. “We’re going to keep growing with this.”
MASBDA funded 28 projects this week through the Show-Me Entrepreneurial Grants for Agriculture program. The competitive grant program provided nearly $4 million to Missouri farmers, small businesses and higher education institutions to add value to agricultural products or provide educational opportunities to those seeking to do so.
“Adding value to our agricultural products is a huge opportunity to grow Missouri’s top economic driver,” Director of Agriculture Chris Chinn said in a news release. “Funds awarded through the SEGA program will kick-start ideas across our state and help our farmers and small business owners create more opportunity.”
SEGA grants are funded by an appropriation from the Missouri General Assembly to encourage value-added agriculture in the state.
SEGA funds five categories of grants, with Show Me HH Farms getting $113,443 in the innovation grant program which provided 16 grants for the development of Missouri businesses that add value to agricultural products.
“At MASBDA, we are fortunate to see agricultural innovation happening across our state every day,” Executive Director Jill Wood said in the release. “We are excited to see these awardees make use of this funding as they develop new products and opportunities.”
Brown said key will be continuing to educate people on the farm’s product — a golden-colored oil high in omega-3, high in Vitamin E and very low in saturated fats with a smoke point of 450 degrees.
“People are under the idea that seed oil is bad, unhealthy, and that’s not true with the type of sunflowers that we use,” he said.
The Browns plant the high-oleic sunflowers in June, typically see them bloom 60 days later and harvest in October or November. The seeds are cleaned then cold pressed in custom equipment to capture the oil — a process that takes about 10 hours to fill a 30-gallon drum — with the byproducts used for livestock feed. The oil then is filtered, a 12-hour process, before bottling.
“Most oil that you buy in the supermarket, and I wasn’t aware of this until we started doing this, is extracted with chemicals and solvents,” Brown said. “Cold pressing is so slow … but tastes so much fresher, so much better.”
With the grant, the Browns plan to add a second press along with machinery to clean seeds on the farm, where they also raise corn and soybeans.
“This will take care of us for quite some time and give us a great expansion,” Brown said.
With sales at farmers markets, the farm has built a customer base locally and in the St. Louis area, with plans to target the Jefferson City and Columbia markets.
Pressing other types of oil in the future from safflower, nuts or lavender is a possibility, but “for now we’re going to concentrate on our sunflowers and our building,” said Brown, who was hoeing the field this week by hand. “We use no chemicals on our flowers at all. We walk every row and pull weeds.”
Dry conditions at planting slowed germination this year, Brown said, but shouldn’t affect overall production.
“I think this is going to turn out to be something I wish we had done years ago,” Brown said.
Expanding the sunflower acreage remains another possibility for the future.
“There’s about 240 acres on this farm that would make a lot of sunflower oil,” Brown said. “It produced close to 600 gallons of oil this year just off 15 acres. That’s a lot of bottles of oil.”