Safflower

Safflower

Joseph R. Smith

Champaign, Illinois

AOCS Mission Statement To be a forum for the exchange of ideas, information, and experience among those with a professional interest in the science and technology of fats, oils, and related substances in ways that promote personal excellence and provide high standards of quality.

AOCS Books and Special Publications Committee E. Perkins, chairperson, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois T. Foglia, USDA—ERRC, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania M. Mossoba, Food and Drug Administration, Washington, D.C. Y.-S. Huang, Ross Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio L. Johnson, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa J. Lynn, Lever Brothers, Edgewater, New Jersey G. Maerker, Oreland, Pennsylvania G. Nelson, Western Regional Research Center, San Francisco, California F. Orthoefer, Stuttgart, Arkansas J. Rattray, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario A. Sinclair, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia G. Szajer, Akzo Chemicals, Dobbs Ferry, New York B. Szuhaj, Central Soya, Ft. Wayne, Indiana L. Witting, State College, Pennsylvania Copyright @ 1996 by AOCS Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher. The paper used in this book is acid-free and falls within the guidelines established to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-084161

Printed in the United States of America with vegetable oil-based inks. 00 99 98 97 96 5 4 3 2 1

To my wife, Joyce, who has provided unwavering support and effort to make things happen, and to make life fun, and who typed the manuscript for this book.

Acknowledgments One purpose of this book is to celebrate and thank the many, many people who have helped to create a new crop out of safflower. Thanks first to Carl Claassen and Al Hoffman whose unique combination of research, pioneering, and business ability brought forth the first practical safflower varieties, convinced farmers to grow them, and oil millers to buy them. Next, thanks must go to Paul Knowles of U.C. Davis and the Farm Advisors and Extension Agronomists of the California Extension Service, such as Milt Miller, Torrey Lyons, Ron Baskett, Karl Ingebretsen, Franz Kegel, Roy Edwards, Ted Torngren, Bob Sailsbery, E.O. McCutcheon, Tom Kearney, and others who stuck their necks out in the early days of safflower’s development, recommending that growers try it; and to George and Fred Tarke, Jack Harris, Frank and Vince Diener, Floyd Sparr, Frank Coit, Fritz Erdman, Fritz Strain, Dan Best, Louis Giovannoni, and Bud Daniels who successfully pioneered growing good safflower crops. Thanks, too, to Barney Rocca, Sr., for his humanism; Barney Rocca, Jr., for his great imagination and desire to push safflower trade to the far corners of our planet; to Ed Hill for his special ability to make a lot out of little; and to Gerry Brewer, Sam Evans, and Jim Greer for building a wonderful PCO team; and kudos as well to the salespeople, traders, and marketers who formed and nurtured new markets for safflower oil and meal: Dick Hammond, Joe Siracusa, Sam Ross, John Retkwa (even though he stole my secretary), Don Baker, Al Westerweel, Ruud Mente, Fabien Bismuth, Ed Cody, Yuzo Wada, I. Saitoh, Jim Taylor, Don McLeod, Roy Kelly, Hurley Zook, Tom Medd, Jesse Chiang, John Gyulai, Chris Thompson, Brooks Pierce, Don Nelson, Ken Dulin, Howard Boone, Bill Davis, Mike Radford, Dick Hayr, Ed Weimortz, Jim Karson, Mike McKittrick, JoVic Fabregas, Jack Ponting, Bill Dickinson, Herman Lambert, Ewold Dubbleman, Ralph Pöhner, Cees Spaargaren, and Rick Dobranski. Thanks to the people who kept the wheels turning and oil flowing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, such as Merton Boomer, Carter Sanders, Hans Nissen, Ned Robinson, Eino Oksanen, Paul Frausto, Dwight Hendrix, Chris Kopas, Mel Connely, Gerhard Schmidt, Alejandro Terrones, Ike Sinaico, Irwin Field, Bill Adams, Wiley Blair, Jerry Knick, Ernie Ferguson, Curt Halseide, Les Hefferline, Louie Mocny, Ben Grygga, Earl Saunders, and Dale Dybbro; to those who loaded the ships, like Bud Grimes, Jim Cordova, and Howard Wallace; and those who watched over and analyzed shipments, like Clem Burton-Smith, Mike Abed, Harry Spires, Murray Fenton, Graham Cullen, Abraham Oversier, Roger Loh, and Neil Falke. More praise goes to country buyers, dealers, and elevator operators like Chuck Crowell, John Rutkai, George Meckfessel, Hubert Hatch, Fred Sterzing, John Brownell, Dick Cooley, Bert Wolcott, Bill Meadows, Steve Chambers, Bud

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Gasset, Pat Silvey, Frank Moradian, Jack Morgan, Pete Dwyer, Kurt Storz, Jack Doty, Jay Claire, Tim Grunsky. Don Wille, Tony Correia, Terry Davis, Lee and Don Traynham, George Jimenez, Bill Adams, Gary Wick, Dewey Esvold, Marty Ketterling, and Ken Woodward. Thanks to those who helped safflower production and markets in foreign lands, such as Carlos Cuvi, Ceferino Sainz Pardo, Cesar Estrada, Pancho Obregon, Alan Lemon, Owen Duncan, Howard Colbert, John Ranken, Keith Coulton, Peter Leech, Joe Brauns, Morris Rassaby, Francisco and Julio Gonzalez Blazquez, Francisco Gonzalez Avila, Geronimo Cejudo, and to the agronomists, plant breeders, scientists, seed merchants, and farm managers who pushed the crop along, such as Don Smith, Dave Rubis, Gene Lorenz, Neil Riveland, Glenn Hartman, Lee Urie, Charlie Thomas, John Klisiewicz, Amran Ashri, Barney Hill, HansHenning Muendel, Elmer Carlson, Leon Pultz, Raphael Carrascosa, Li Dajue, Russell Giffen, Frank Ayerza, Ken Scarlett, Jim and Jesse Hansen, Charles Gilkey, Buster Allan, Audie Bell, the Herringer family, Earl Wallace, the Heidrick brothers, Fred and Everett Salyer, Evelyn Holland, Emery Poundstone, Balsdon Ranch, and Juan Martin Allende. Special thanks to those who represented Japan in making safflower a success in their homeland and abroad, such as Yonetaro Ueno, Kanji Yamaguchi, Norman Makino, Steve Ishiguro, Isao Ueda, Kaneyuki Funayama, Kokoichi Sato, Ichiro Dotsu, Koichi Kubota, Shoji Inoue, Ryouei Aoki, Enshiro Matsuyama, Kosaku Yoshimura, Manoto Hattori, Taneshi Horiuchi, S. Furusawa, Alan Webb, H. Nakahara, and Sue Murakami, all soldiers of Mitsubishi. And friendly thanks are extended to Toshimitsu Hagimori, Minoru Honda, Etsuya Shinohara, Isamu Takahashi, Hiroshi Inoue, Yashuhiro Akao, Paul Sakai, Ichiroh Nagasawa, Kohji Nagasaka, Norio Maekawa, Bud Yoshitomi, Paco Kuno, Keith Nakayama, Shigeru Aoki, Hiroyuki Tanaka, Hiromi Tanabe, Tadao Abe, Hiroshi Itoh, Toshitaka Konishi, and Masayoshi Fujiwara of Itochu; Tetsuya Satoh, Connie Kondo, Kazumi Ando, Nobuhiro Watanabe, Kenji Nakamura, Y. Sunayama, Kiminori Iikura, Ryoichi Ohe, Iwaharu Nishikawa, Kiichiroh Kamakura, Hiroshi Yumoto, Noburo Nikamura, Fumiyoshi Sugawara, N. Miura, Kinshi Takayama, Shotaro Tominaga, Isamu Hasegawa, Tadao Shigetomi, Tamotsu Yurugi, Masaru Omizu, and Yutaka Shoman of Toshoku; Seiro Shirakawa of Nichimen; Masakazu Otsuka of Nissho; Y. Fukuta, Kazuo Kawabata, Hiroshi Oikawa, and Y. Mochizuki of Sumitomo; and Junichi Tsutsumi of Yuaza. Chemists like John Kneeland, Ernie Jacobsen, Dick Purdy, Lowell Cummings, Tom Applewhite, John Cowan, George Kohler, Al Duvall, and Don Banks allowed us to see new horizons for safflower. Transportation and handling people, such as Wayne Hays, I. Noda, Jorgen Snitker, Hans Mathon, Bill Sibbern, Ras Apnes, Jorgen With-Seidelin, Grove Bryant, Gerd Breur, Torben Henry, George Gemelch, Al Mogerly, Eddie Elzer, I. Iki, Y. Yasui, N. Negishi, and Glenn Prickett, helped safflower safely reach intended destinations.

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Buyers of safflower seed, oil and meal are, of course, the reason all the rest of the equation works. Cheers then go to Henry Jurvis, Allen Hovde, Les Thompson, Neal Estrada, Tom Doak, Russ Smith, Gianni Zucchi, Mauri Karvetti, Juan Ramon Guillen, E.J. Berveling, Emile Rastoin, Pete Faust, George Jacobs, Greg MacIntosh, Mario Altonaga, H. Koschorreck, Jan Slof, Antonio Beiroco, Fred Deroost, Akira Ui, Keiji Matsumoto, Manubu Suzuki, T. Kariya, Tadashi Shirayama, George Bobango, Ed Muratori, Ramon Azria, Iwao Sunagawa, Ray List, Noel Hawkes, K. Ishii, Shunkichi Yamada, Buzo Watanabe, Kunio Egashira, and many more. Many others have helped safflower grow and prosper—journalists like Ernie Douglas, Jack Pickett, Henry Schacht, and George Willhite; bankers, such as Henry Drath, Diane Evans, Tom Blake, Hiroshi Ozawa, Nick Lyons, Armando Cassinelli, Takashi Kondo, Keishi Fujii, Linda Landucci, E.F. Blase, and D. Schotanus; Administrators like Doug Dies, Bob Moon, George Kromer, Wayne Wolcott, Dave Johnson, Dennis Giacone, Adolph and Paul Schumann, L.S. Wong, Si Seiwert, John Athanson, and Emil Schultz. Thanks go to the creators of the G.I. Bill who helped put so many of the those listed on the course they were to follow for the rest of their lives, to my parents and in-laws for putting money on the line and giving moral support when Agricom International was created. And finally, thanks to my partners, George Kopas and Jim Easler, with whom I have enjoyed many fun-filled years in the oilseed business. Joseph R. Smith Los Altos, California

Preface I have been lucky to have spent all of my business career dealing with every aspect of the safflower business throughout the world. In 1950, I was hired by Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation (PVO) as a chemist (really a dishwasher) because I had published a master’s thesis on safflower, and that year PVO had embarked on a project to grow the crop in California using varieties developed by my old friend, Carl Claassen. It soon became my job to coordinate all phases of PVO’s safflower program. After a time, I also became an officer in Claassen’s company, Pacific Oilseeds, Inc. (POI), so I could help to coordinate POI’s programs with those of PVO. After 18 years with PVO, I left, together with two PVO associates, to form Agricom International, a company that specialized in safflower and sunflower production and marketing, in addition to the operation of dry bulk vessel charters. Subsequently, we formed Oilseeds International, Ltd., to do toll processing and marketing of oilseeds (particularly safflower) on the behalf of others. In 1985 I wrote a cover story for the Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society*. Afterward, I began to think about doing a book that would contain everything you ever wanted to know about safflower. I talked to the AOCS and in 1988, the AOCS Monograph Committee agreed to publish such a book. Writing the book has taken longer than I planned because of some changes of direction that took place in my company’s operations that caused me to stop work on it for 2 years, but here we are. The book will contain a personal report on 40-plus years out of the 4,500 years that safflower has been cultivated. Most of the commercial development of safflower oil has taken place since 1950, and I have attempted to portray how this was done, how the different players involved approached the problem, and what we can learn from this that might help in the evolution of other “new” crops. I include chapters on the ancient history and origin of safflower and how it got started in the United States. I next switch to a discussion of the safflower plant as we know it today; how it grows; and a look at the composition of the seed, oil, meal, and florets in order to see what characteristics caused people to become interested in growing this crop and what fueled the development of the changing markets for safflower seed, oil, and meal. After this, the book explores the strategy that PVO pursued in promoting safflower during a period of near monopoly, and is followed by a look at how PVO’s principal competitors managed their strategies. A look at safflower research follows, (first agronomic, then industrial oil and meal studies, improved processing techniques, and medical and edible development) that leads into an examination of the exotic uses for safflower. The story then returns to an account of how safflower production has been encouraged in other countries, and how markets for safflower products have been exploited abroad. The discovery of *Smith, J.R., J. Amer. Oil Chem. Soc. 62: 1286 (1985).

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oleic safflower is covered in a chapter illustrating how this mutation has been developed. We then return to the PVO story by discussing outside and inside influences that caused the breakup of PVO and the evolution of the safflower business to its present condition, and where it might go next. Finally, the book contains an appendices listing acreage, production, consumption, export, and price data for the United States and other parts of the world, together with listings of the important safflower planting seed varieties, sections on growing, storing and processing of safflower, and a summary of trading rules and specifications involving safflower. The notes at the close of most chapters of this book constitute a general bibliography of safflower. Perhaps a word on the units of measurement used in this publication is in order. The United States continues to resist the metric system and practically all of the historical data in the United States is based on miles, acres, inches, feet, bushels, pounds, and 2,000-pound tons. I have chosen to report U.S. data for the past century in the english system and to report exports and export sales from the United States, as well as production and market data outside the United States in the metric system. Gathering data for such a book has been an interesting experience. Many of the old records of PVO and Agricom International are gone, and in many cases I have had to rely heavily on personal notes and finally memories, both mine and others. I would appreciate hearing from readers who may have another view of the many facets of this story. The vegetable oil industry of the world is full of fascinating people, some of whom I have tried to portray here. The preceding acknowledgments can only try to thank all of those who have helped me in this business and in the preparation of this book. Joseph R. Smith Los Altos, California

Contents

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Early Days of the Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Characteristics of Safflower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Development of the PVO Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Alternatives to the PVO Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Developmental Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Processing and Handling Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Industrial Oil Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Medical, Pharmaceutical, Cosmetic, and Edible Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Protein and Meal Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Analytical Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Unconventional Use Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 The Rise and Fall of PVO—Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 The Rise and Fall of PVO—Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 Oleic Safflower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Safflower Around the World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370 1980s to the Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 Safflower Today, and Where It Is Going . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 U.S. and World Acreage Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 North American Safflower Variety Descriptions . . . . . . . . 526 Recommended Cropping Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530 Legal and Technical Regulation of Trade. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553

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Chapter 1

History Description Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius Linn) is a plant that has been cultivated since ancient times (1–7). It has been known under many names: asfiore, asper, aspir, assfore, azafrancillo, bastard saffron, benibana, benihana, brarta, cartamo, cartham, carthami flos, carthamo, carthamos, cnecus, cnicus, cnikos, cusumba, dikken, dyer’s saffron, false saffron, flase, ghurtom, golbar aftab, golzardu, hong hua, hubulkhortum, hung hua, kafsha, kafshe, kahil, kajena-goli, kajireh, kamal lotarra, kardi, kariza, kasumbha, kazhirak, khardam, khariah, kharkhool, khartum, khasdonah, kosheh, kouchan-gule, kusum, kusuma, kusumba, laba torbak, maswarh, muswar, onickus, ostur, qurtum, saffiiore, safflor, snecus, suff, thistle saffron, ssuff, usfar, usfur, and zafaran-golu, (8,9) among others. Safflower is a member of the Compositae (Cynaraae) family, which includes several important crop plants, such as artichoke, (Cynara scolymus), sunflower (Heliamthus annus), niger seed (Guizotia abyssinica), and chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum). In his classic work Castor, Sesame, and Safflower, Weiss gives a description of safflower that can not be improved. “Safflower is a highly branched, herbaceous, thistle-like annual varying in height from 30 to 150 cm. It has a strong, somewhat thickened tap-root, and numerous thin laterals. The stem is stiff, solid, circular in section, thick at the base and tapering with height, smooth and glabrous. The plant has many branches, each terminating in a flower, and the extent of branching within a variety depends mainly on environment. The leaves are simple, usually dark green, sessile and glabrous, exstipulate, deciduous, with short spines scattered along the margins, having acuminate tips and a pronounced midrib. They are cauline, alternate, penastichous, with a phyllotaxy of two-fifths (144°). The inflorescence is a dense capitulum of flowers, invested with an involucre of green ovoid bracts, the outer bracts separate, foliaceous, sometimes spinescent, the inner becoming fused, ovate, often covered with short white hairs. The involucre is conical, with a small apical opening through which the corolla tubes of the flowers protrude. The receptacle is broad, flat or slightly curved, and densely bristled from the numerous floral bracts. There are numerous flowers in the inflorescence, all regular, carried on the receptacle. The flower has no pappus. The florets are tubular, sessile, regular epigynous, and grow out through the apical opening of the involucre, The calyx is rudimentary. The ovary is unilocular, with a simple basal ovule, which is composed of two united carpels, and is inferior. The fruit is cypsela, glabrous, obovate with a flattened top, with four longitudinal ribs such that a cross-section of the seed has a rhombic shape. The pericarp is generally whitish, the pappus normally absent. The seed is dicotyledonous, oleaginous and exalbuminous”(10). 1

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Safflower

This rather formal description accurately describes a plant that resembles a weedy thistle through much of its growth period, develops formidable spines during the last half of its life (although there are spineless varieties), and about 45 days before it is ready for harvest presents beautiful yellow, orange, or red flowers for a period of approximately 2–4 weeks. The question most farmers ask when they first see a safflower plant is, “Will it become a weed if I grow it?” The answer is no. Safflower, as it is presently known, exists only under cultivation and does not become a pest. It can volunteer, and sometimes a volunteer field is worth saving, but it does not then repeat itself or establish itself in the long-term environment. The second question usually centers around the plant’s spininess. Most people who work around safflower learn to wear leather pants, chaps, or at least heavy blue jeans when they need to walk through safflower in its later stages, or better yet, they avoid walking through it. Even dogs learn this quickly. Albert Hoffman (discussed later in this chapter) loved to describe a hound dog he saw chasing a rabbit. Just before the dog could grab the rabbit, it darted into a safflower field with the dog in hot pursuit. A few seconds later he saw the dog sheepishly backing out of the field, very slowly, one paw at a time, trying to avoid any more scratches. In mechanized farming, the spines are not a serious problem. There the question usually is, “How do you harvest this stuff?” In the parts of the world where safflower is harvested by machine, the farmer can harvest it in much the same manner as grain. Custom harvesters usually charge about the same amount per acre to harvest safflower or wheat. If the throat of the combine-harvester gets plugged with safflower plants in a heavy field of safflower, the usual “smart” answer to what to do is “Burn the combine!” It is not that bad, and seldom happens with experienced operators, but when it occurs it is a tough job because of the many spines.

Origin Nobody knows exactly how long ago or where safflower originated. Salunke et al. call it the world’s oldest crop (9), whereas others in Evolution of Crop Plants indicate that olives, dates, and sesame may be older (11). In any case, over 4,000 years ago safflower was grown in Egypt; it is possible that it was grown earlier in the Euphrates region. Weiss (8) uncovered a number of Egyptological references showing that safflower was prized as a source of red-yellow and orange dyes for cotton and silk. The dyes were derived from safflower flowers, and this use continues to this day. Safflower orange dye was used to dye the bindings of mummies found in ancient tombs (1,4,12) and was used to color ceremonial ointments used to anoint mummies. Safflower flowers were woven into mummy wreaths, while safflower seeds were found in temple offerings, and representations of the flower have been found in early Egyptian wall-paintings (13,14). Safflower flowers inserted in packets of willow leaves were found with a mummy from circa 1600 B.C. (15). Narrow garlands of safflower flowers sewn on papyrus or cloth and wrapped about mummies’ bodies or necks (Figure 1.1) and safflower seeds were found in Egyptian tombs (8,13,16,17).

History

Figure 1.1. Garlands of safflower flowers on display in the Agricultural Museum, Cairo, Egypt.

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Safflower

Vavilov (18) and Kupsow (19) hypothesized that safflower had three main centers of origin: India, the Iran-Afghanistan area, and Ethiopia. De Candolla (5) felt that Arabia was more probable, but more recent work by Hanelt on taxonomy (20). Ashri on the divergence and evolution of the genus (21), and Ashri and Knowles on cytogenetics (22,23) lead to the conclusion that the Euphrates basin is the most likely area for its origin (8). Hooker and Jackson (24) listed 60 species of the genus Carthamus, but the previously listed workers and Yuan et al. (25) reduced these to about 25 species. Except for the cultivated safflower, all are spiny weeds that grow in the wild. Some become serious problems, while others grow on roadsides or waste places. Knowles felt that the species can be divided into five chromosome groups with 10, 11, 12, 22, and 32 pairs (26). Cultivated safflower is part of the 12-pair group. Three wild species are closely related: Carthamus flavescens Spreng, is usually a wheat field weed found in Lebanon, Syria, and continental Turkey, C. oxyacantha M.B., is a very serious weed in the area from western Iraq to northwestern India and northward into the southern parts of some former republics of the U.S.S.R.; and C. palaestinus, Eig., found in the desert regions of Iraq, Israel, and Jordan (26,27). Carthamus tinctorius and C. flaverscens are self-incompatible (28,29), C. palaestinus is self-compatible, and C. oxyacantha is mixed self-compatible and self-incompatible (26). These species readily cross with C. tinctorius to produce fertile progeny in the F1 and F2 generations (27). Two other species, C. gypsicolus Ilj. and C. curdicus Han., seem to belong to the 12-chromosome group. Carthamus gypsicolus Ilj. is similar to C. oxyacantha but is found only in some of the republics of the former U.S.S.R., while C. curdicus Han. is similar to both C. gypsicolus and C. flavescens and is restricted to northern Iraq, (20). They have not been introduced into the United States, and cross capabilities to C. tinctorius have not been studied (27). All of these 12-pair species have yellow flowers except C. palaestinus, which has both yellow- and white-flowered types. Ramanamurthy (30) and Imrie and Knowles (28,29) have published studies on alletes of this group. Knowles believed that all of them originated from a common ancestor, probably from northern Iraq/northwestern Iran (17). C. nitidus Boiss, which also has 12 chromosome pairs, is distinctly different from the previously mentioned group. This native of the Syrian-Palestine region has while- to light-rose-colored flowers, white pollen, and gray-green foliage, resembling species of the 10-chromosome group, but it produces no seed when crossed with members of that group (31). Some crosses with cultivated safflower produced F1 plants that were intermediate between the parents but failed to produce seed. Carthamus nitidus did not produce seed when back-crossed to cultivated types, is self-fertile, and remains a mystery taxonomically (30). Early in its evolution, C. tinctorius spread to Egypt, Ethiopia, southern Europe, south Asia, and the Far East, where distinct types have evolved (27). In 1969, Knowles introduced a system of comparing characteristics of safflower in the different centers (geographic regions) where it is found (27,32). These centers of similarity are 1. Far East: China, Japan, and Korea; 2. India-Pakistan: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh;

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3. Middle East: Afghanistan to Turkey, southern republics of the former U.S.S.R. to the Indian Ocean; 4. Egypt; bordering the Nile north of Aswan; 5. Sudan: bordering the Nile in northern Sudan and southern Egypt: 6. Ethiopia; and 7. Europe: Algeria, France, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, and Spain. Table 1.1 lists certain characteristics in descending order of frequency. In 1975, Ashri (33) expanded Knowles’ list by analyzing 13 morphological characteristics for 2,000 safflower accessions from 30 countries. Ashri divided Knowles’ Middle East Center into three regions. Turkish lines were categorized separately because many of them are not endemic and have diverse origins. Morphological and other traits differentiate the Near East pool (Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq) and the Iran-Afghanistan pool. In addition Ashri added Kenya to the list, and produced the following list: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Far East (poorly represented in the collection); Indian subcontinent; Iran-Afghanistan; Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria; Turkey; Egypt; Sudan; Kenya; Ethiopia; and Morocco, Spain, Portugal, and France.

In land around the eastern Mediterranean and extending eastward into northwestern Iran are found species with 10 pairs of chromosomes having great morphological differences. Carthamus glaucus M.B., C. tenius B.&B., C. alexandrinus B.&H., and TABLE 1.1 Safflower Characteristics of Different Geographical Regions, in Order of Decreasing Frequency Geographical Region

Height

Branching Spines

Head Size

Flower Color

Far East India-Pakistan Middle East Egypt Sudan Ethiopia Europe

tall sh tall int sh, int tall int

int many few few int many int

int sm, int int, large large, int sm, int sm int

r o,w,r r,o,y,w o,y,w,r y,o r o,r,y,w

sp, spls sp spls sp, spls sp sp sp, spls

Abbreviations: sh, short; int, intermediate; sp. spiny; spls, spineless; sm, small; r, red; w, white; o, orange; and y, yellow. Source: Reprinted by permission from Economic Botany, Knowles (32), copyright 1969, The New York Botanical Garden.

6

Safflower

C. leucocaulos S.&S. are included in this group. Knowles and Shank (31) studied the first three species, which all have grey-green foliage, flower color that ranges from purple to white, and white pollen. Aside from those similarities, they differ greatly. Crosses of the species made by Knowles and Shank showed it to be a complex taxo-nomic group, since crosses of most species produced F1 plants with normal chromosome pairing, but others showed a translocation. Estilai’s research also supports these findings (34). Knowles (26) reports that C. leucocaulos, which was not included in his studies with Shank, is quite different from other species in this group. It is found in the Aegean islands and has been introduced into southern Europe, Australia, and the United States. It has small heads, smooth stems, high self-fertility, and flowers that are light purple to light pink. Crosses to other species with 10-chromosome pairs showed a close relationship, although one cross showed a translocation and a paracentric inversion (35). There is only one species that displays 22 pairs of chromosomes, C. lanatus L. It displays yellow to white flowers, yellow pollen, and is self-fertile. It has been found over a wide range of the old world, extending from Spain and Portugal to eastern Turkey. Its origin remains a mystery. Studies by Ashri and Knowles (22) and by Harvey and Knowles (36) failed to provide conclusive evidence. Two species, C. turkestanicus Popov and C. baeticus (Boiss. & Reut.) Nym., have 32 pairs of chromosomes. Carthamus turkestanicus is found from Turkey to Pakistan and Kashmir and populations have been introduced into Ethiopia. Carthamus baeticus is found all around the Mediterranean and on its islands. Both have grey-green foliage, light-yellow to white flowers, white pollen, and light-colored anthers with purple to brown stripes. They both have regular chromosome pairing, but hybrids between them produce some trivalents and quadrivalents. There seems to be considerable gene exchange between the two and C. lanatus (26). These two species may be allopoids where C. turkestanicus is derived from a cross of C. lanatus with C. glaucus M. Bieb. and C. baeticus is derived from a cross of C. lanatus with C. leucocaulos (37,38). One species, C. divaricatus (Beg & Vacc) Pamp., found only in Libya has 11 pairs of chromosomes. It is quite distinct since it has horizontal branching; yellow, purple, and white flowers; yellow pollen; and dark-purple-striped anthers. Estilai and Knowles (26,39) reason that C. divaricatus is closely related to 10-pair chromosome species, but more study is needed as to its origins. Finally, Knowles (26) theorized on a tentative pattern for the evolution in Carthamus genes based on the following assumptions: AA for species with 2n (number of chromosomes) = 20; A1A1 for an ancestral species with 2n = 20; BB for species with 2n = 24; and B1B1 for an ancestral species with 2n = 24. This can be portrayed as follows:

History

7

Dispersion Safflower has been grown for centuries, primarily as a source of dye for food and clothing, along the Nile as far as Ethiopia and from the eastern Mediterranean through the Middle East and on through India, Afghanistan, southern Russia, and into north China. It was used as a medicinal and became known as an edible oil during pre-Christian times in Mesopotamia (8). It continues to be grown in small plots over most of this area and in most parts of the world where Spaniards, Arabs, or Asians have settled. In most of these places it is also used as an adulterant in, or substitute for saffron (40,41). Hanelt (20) and Weiss (8) theorized that the word carthamus is the Latinized version of the Arabic words quartum, qurtum, or kurtum, which refers to dye color, extracted from the flower heads, and usfar is an Arabic word for yellow that is probably the source of the name “safflower”. There are numerous references to safflower by Arabic, Greek, and Latin authors (8). The revenue papyrus of Ptolemy II for 259–258 B.C. showed that the king had a monopoly for the production and marketing of certain vegetable oils, including safflower oil (13). Pliny wrote that it was used as a mild substitute for castor oil but not for edible purposes (8). Others in Egypt have described its use as a dye practically up to modern times (15,42,43). It is mentioned in Dioscorides’ Materia Medica, written during the first century A.D. and the leading text on pharmacology for 16 centuries, as a source of color and flavor for potions and unguents, as a pot herb, and as a source of a mild laxative (8). As the Moslem Empire expanded, traders carried safflower with them along the coast of North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula. It was used not only as a cloth dye but also to color soups and rice dishes, the latter use continuing to this day. Arabs also introduced it into East Africa, and it is still found growing in that region in home gardens. Weiss points out that local Arab or Indian traders quickly snap up any local production for personal use (9). It was introduced into Britain in 1551 from Egypt primarily for use as a food coloring, but also as a dye (8). Carthamin, the red clothing dye extracted from safflower flowers, was produced in southern Germany (44–46) and Alsace (47) from the sixteenth century, and from the nineteenth century in Russia (48), and southern Italy and Sicily until recent times (49).

8

Safflower

It begins being mentioned in Hebrew literature in the second century A.D. as a food-coloring agent, rouge, and medicinal (50,51). Jewish cooking in Poland made extensive use of the flowers to color breads and other foods. It was grown as a garden or small truck crop in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, and moved from there into Turkey (52,53). Turks introduced it into all parts of the Middle East, and small farmers continue growing it to this day (8). In Iran and Afghanistan it was used to dye woolen rugs (54). Safflower probably moved from Afghanistan to China 2,000 years ago, and has served as a medicinal to this day. Early on it was employed as a cosmetic and as a source of dye (55,56). It moved to Japan in the third century A.D., but was little used except as a dye and cosmetic until this century (8). In India it was not used as a dye in early times, but as a purgative (as in Egypt and Africa) and as a medicinal. In recent times, it has been used primarily as an edible oil, and the florets are used in rice, bread, and pickles to gain an orange color. Indian saffron rice is usually colored with safflower. Safflower foliage is used as a source of dried herbs, or brewed into a tea served to prevent miscarriages. Safflower oil is used as an edible oil, (both alone and blended with other oils), as a lamp fuel, and as a soap ingredient. Charred safflower oil is used to treat rheumatism and sores. Safflower seeds are considered a diuretic and tonic (8). In India and Burma safflower leaves are used as a vegetable (57,58). Safflower came to the western hemisphere with Spanish and Portuguese conquerors who grew the flowers in gardens or small plots for limited dye use. It was probably brought into California by early Spaniards, but no references note it until the start of the twentieth century (59). Carl Claassen commented in his remarks at the First International Safflower Conference that when his mother’s family immigrated to Kansas from the Ukraine in 1899, they brought safflower seeds with them and grew them in their garden in central Kansas (60).

Early Work Safflower is first mentioned in the turn-of-the-century report of Shinn (59) outlining observations made at the State of California Foothill Substation. Apparently this work was not continued. In 1925, the United States Department of Agriculture obtained samples of safflower seed from Russia and India. Between 1925 and 1935, various Agricultural Experiment Stations and certain farmer cooperatives conducted safflower trials in cooperation with the USDA. The Huntley, Montana, Experiment Station maintained this material (60). In 1935, Rabak of the USDA issued a circular summarizing the results of these tests (61). The USDA concluded that safflower had possibilities as an oilseed crop for the northern Great Plains and western states (61). In 1928, Alfred Rehbein, Sr., a Montana farmer, imported some seed presumably from Russia and later India, and began to experiment with the crop (62). He became obsessed with safflower production and over the next four decades conducted many agricultural experiments and entered into correspondence with many paint company researchers. By the mid-1930s, he had produced a small amount of safflower oil experimentally and forwarded samples to various companies for testing. Over the next several years results of this testing were published in the technical press (63–69).

History

9

Between 1932 and 1935, Rehbein collected letters from several paint companies that had tested samples of safflower oil, comparing it to linseed oil and soybean oil in a number of products. Most gave it good marks and suggested that it should be priced 1¢/lb under linseed oil (Abstracts of Reports Recorded by Alfred Rehbein, 1936). During the early 1930s, Deming Oil Mill extracted small amounts of safflower oil through expellers after decortication. It is unclear where Deming obtained its crushing stock—whether from Rehbein or locally, Kenneth A. Earhart reported that when he was an alkyd resin chemist in Devoe and Reynolds three or four drums of safflower oil were obtained from Deming Mills prior to 1936, and that the safflower alkyds produced were considered to be the best ever to be produced by the company (Kenneth A. Earhart, personal communication, October 4, 1985). Europeans were also evaluating safflower. In 1919, Mann and Kanitkar wrote a report on safflower (70). Honcamp et al. did a comprehensive study of safflower meal in 1929 (71). By 1937, van Loon (72) of Delft had issued a comprehensive report comparing safflower oil extracted from Indian seed obtained from Hull in 1925 and Liverpool in 1927 with seed obtained from Rehbein in 1934. His conclusion was that “safflower oil is worthy of attention with respect to properties, potential uses and price.” Van Loon reported that small quantities of safflower oil for edible use were being produced in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Australia also began to investigate safflower in 1940, and the work was summarized by Pugsley and Winter in 1947 (73). This booklet contained information on safflower cropping trials from 1940–46 in South Australia by Pugsley and others, and detailed studies of alkyd, paints, and varnishes prepared by Winter and his associates. Winter’s enthusiastic endorsement of safflower oil. “Safflower oil could replace linseed oil in most organic coating compositions, and in some instances, improved coatings would be obtained,” probably created more enthusiasm for safflower oil research in the United States than any other single publication. Every reference on safflower work for years afterward referred to Pugsley and Winter. Back in the United States, Cargill Incorporated began to take an interest in safflower production in the mid-1940s, initially motivated by Rehbein’s initiatives. but later finding more grower acceptance in states other than Montana. Chapter 5 contains more complete coverage of Cargill’s efforts. During 1947 and 1948, they purchased 1,000 tons/year, but their interest waned in part due to the death of Claude Halderman, who had been promoting the project within Cargill.

The Chemurgy Project and Carl E. Claassen The most important effort concerning safflower production took place in Nebraska in 1940 with the creation of the Chemurgy Project at the University of Nebraska. The State of Nebraska decided to evaluate a number of crops to determine if any could become “a significant contributor to the agricultural and industrial economy of the State of Nebraska” (74).

10

Safflower

Carl E. Claassen, a young graduate student, was hired in December 1941 as a Research Agronomist at the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station to do research on a possible new crop (75). He moved to Lincoln in early 1942. After one year of testing many new crops, safflower was chosen as the most promising, and a breeding program was started (60). Claassen had been introduced to safflower by Gaines, a wheat breeder at the Pullman Experiment Station. Gaines had picked up a sample in Russia on a trip in the mid-1930s. The seed was similar to that grown by Claassen’s family in Kansas, and had an oil content of about 22–24%. Claassen established extensive correspondence with agronomists in other western states and overseas. He obtained some of the Indian types being maintained at the Huntley, Montana, Sub-Station and found them to be quite different from the Russian material. Starting with 10 different varieties to test in 1942 in eight Nebraska locations, he was able to add introductions from India, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Morocco, and Romania. The Huntley seed was so mixed that Claassen bulked it with introductions he obtained from India, all of which had an oil content in the 22–29% range. The introductions from Sudan had oil contents ranging from 33–35% and single plant selections of Egyptian seed ranged from 36–37% (76). The Chemurgy Project was the brainchild of Leo M. Christensen, who became its Director. Besides providing Claassen with a venue to begin his program of introduction, testing, and breeding, the Chemurgy Project also produced literature and pilot plant research on methods for extracting safflower meal, encouraged testing and feeding of safflower meal, and attempted to determine how safflower oil could be refined and marketed. The Chemurgy Project was a product of the fervor sweeping through parts of the United States at the time, fueled by a combination of Henry Ford’s passion for developing multiple markets for U.S. soybeans, George Washington Carver’s publicized work in building a better peanut culture, a wartime desire to produce substitutes for imported products, and finally a craving by U.S. farmers to find new crops to diversify their cropping base. The Chemurgic Digest magazine, published from 1949–79, reflected this desire for change through agricultural means. Claassen’s yield trials in various parts of the state showed reasonably good results in the Nebraska panhandle. In 1945 he published a bulletin outlining what had been learned about safflower culture (26), and followed this with several additional publications between 1945 and 1949 (77–80). Additional cropping data was published in the Chemurgy Project Industrial Survey (74). Christensen, Claassen, and others from the Project held meetings, corresponded, and did all they could to promote positive thinking about safflower. There was no safflower industry at the time, and the Project tried to act as a coordinator in the commercialization of the crop. Claassen’s correspondence and release of lines for testing encouraged other universities and experimental stations to begin or renew consideration of the feasibility of safflower projects in other western states. In connection with a Master’s thesis I was writing at the time, I obtained letters from the researchers listed in Table 1.2, illustrating the results of Claassen’s efforts in their states. Claassen’s introductions may have totaled 100 lines. These were tested for several years in replicated yield trials, and Claassen began to select for increased yield

History

TABLE 1.2

11

Summary of Early Safflower Testing in the Western United States

State/Institution

Researcher

Comments

Univ. of Arizona

Aepli/Thomas

Univ of California

Knowles

Colorado A&M

Tucker

Univ. of Idaho Kansas State

Klages Zahnley

Minnesota Montana State

Hayes Eslick

New Mexico A&M

Overpeck

North Dakota State

Stoa

Oklahoma A&M

Ligon

Oregon State South Dakota A&M

Dahl Franzke

Texas A&M

Miller

Utah State Washington State

Pittman Kellenbarger

Wyoming

Quay

3,000 lb/acre yields; combines easily; needs market. Published in 2-page typewritten bulletin in 1949. Good results in trials; contracting beginning. Mimeographed bulletin in September 1949. Printed bulletin in October 1949. Testing started in 1946; yields on dry land variable. Published a 1-page mimeographed bulletin in 1950. 2,000 pound yields; optimistic, but no market available. Recommended waiting another year for release of bet ter varieties. Published a 2-page mimeographed bulletin in February 1950. No recommendation. Processing plant in Montana needed before crop can be raised in Montana. Not adapted to southern part of state. Yields not satis factory in the north. Tested at Fargo from 1928–39, 1934 bulletin recom mended against production. The November 1947 3page mimeograph bulletin was more positive. Results very poor for several years’ testing. Printed Bulletin B-307 included recommendation against growing. Not competing with wheat. Considerable testing; we are not ready to back saf flower. Commercial trials not satisfactory; better varieties needed. Trial plot exciting; no good varieties available. Much data; a most promising crop but it has problems maturing before rain. Testing from 1930; need higher oil content types and a local industry.

and Oil content (37). Initially Claassen released the Indian line, a mixture of Hindustan introductions, Pusa 2, Pusa 7, Ahmednager 1, Simla, Sholapur, and Kardai, in 1945 (74). It was predominantly orange-flowered and up to 5% of the plants were nearly spineless. It was slow growing in its early stages and early maturing, but it offered an oil content of only 28% oil. Nebraska 55 was released next and was a uniform type selected from Pusa 14, a Hindustan introduction. It had pure orange flowers and was equal to Indian in yield ability, but had an oil content that was 2% higher. The most important variety released by Claassen was Nebraska N-852. It was a mass selection out of an introduction from Sudan. It featured rapid early growth, early maturity, comparable or superior yield to that of Indian and N-55, and most importantly, it offered an oil content of 32%. Here was a variety that truly made commercial sense (74). Claassen began work on purifying further selections, and Nebraska 1–9 evolved. Most importantly, Albert Hoffman, a student at the University of Nebraska, was hired by Claassen as a graduate assistant, and a long-time association and friendship started.

12

Safflower

The Chemurgy Project also engaged in pilot-plant work in processing safflower seed (74). A V.W. Anderson Company Red Lion expeller was obtained and instituted in the Marr Industries plant at Fremont, Nebraska. A number of experiments were conducted trying to decorticate safflower. Those on the project concluded that a Bauer disk huller did the best job and made suggestions for constructing special disc plates for the huller to limit losses. They concluded that seed must be screened prior to decortication to remove fines and that after passing through the decorticator, two aspirations would be required to separate meats and hulls properly. Based on their expeller tests, they concluded that with decortication, expelling could expect to achieve 5% residual oil in the meal if proper settling were provided. They also found that if the expeller temperature exceeded 257°F darkened safflower oil resulted yet temperatures needed to exceed 250°F to maximize extraction efficiency. They also recommended that the feed seed moisture be reduced to a 2–4%. Finally they recommended that for best commercial results, solvent extraction be considered, and that a combination of prepressing and solvent extraction should work well (74,81, Miller, H., and L.M. Christensen, Unpublished Report of Chemurgy Project, University of Nebraska, 1946). The Chemurgy Project also encouraged testing of decorticated safflower meal in the University’s Animal Husbandry unit and, when used to feed lambs and steers, produced satisfactory results compared to regular soybean meal. Additionally, the project conducted an extensive literature survey concerning all available information on safflower. The Project also speculated that safflower hulls would make a practical source of furfural (Baker, M., Unpublished Report of Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Nebraska, 1945). Claassen and Christensen encouraged farmers in western Nebraska, eastern Colorado, and Wyoming to try safflower. Business Week reported that “Alliance Safflower Co. of Alliance, Nebraska, was offering farmers $3.50 percwt to produce 250 acres to act as a source of planting seed for a much larger acreage in 1945” (82). In 1947, Chemical Crops, Inc., was incorporated to act as a buying agency for seed from growers. Christensen was a vice president of the company, and still retained his position with the Chemurgy Project. This gave the company some advantage in obtaining the newer varieties when they were first introduced. In 1949, Western Solvents, Inc., was incorporated and construction of a threeexpeller mill began in a steel and concrete building on a 5-acre site in Longmont, Colorado. Christensen also became an officer in this firm and a consulting chemist for Petroleum Specialties, Inc., in St. Louis; a company chosen to market safflower oil for Western Solvent. Thus, a start had been made toward the commercialization of safflower in the United States. References 1. Rawlinson, H., History of Egypt, London, 1881. 2. Lucas, A., Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, 4th edn., Arnold, London, 1962. 3. Howard, A., G.L., Howard, and A.R. Khan, Mem. Dept. Agric., India. Bot. Ser. 3: 281 (1910). 4. Pfister, H., Revue des Artes Asiatiques XI: 210 (1937).

History

13

5. De Candolle, A., Origin of Cultivated Plants, R.W. Hofner Co., New York, [1890] 1967. 6. Breitschneider, E., On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, Foochow, China. 7. Breitschneider, E., Medical Researches from Asiatic Sources, 2 vol., 1870. 8. Weiss, E.A., Castor, Sesame, and Safflower, Barnes and Noble, Inc., New York, 1971, pp. 529–554. 9. Salunkhe, D.K., J.K. Charan, R.N. Adjule, and S.S. Kadam, World Oilseeds, Van Nostrand, Reinhold, New York, 1992, p. 326. 10. Weiss, E.A., Castor, Sesame, and Safflower, Barnes and Noble, Inc., New York, 1971, p. 742. 11. Simmonds, N.W. (ed.), Evolution of Crop Plants, Longman, New York, 1976, pp. 219–233. 12. Huber, J., J. Soc. Dyers Colourists XXV: 223 (1909). 13. Keimer, L., Die Gartendflanzen im alten Ägypten, Hamburg, Germany, 1924. 14. Schweinfurth, G., Bot. Jahrb. 8: 1 (1887). 15. Schweinfurth, G., Ber. dt. bot. Ges. 2: 351 (1887). 16. Doby, G., Plant Biochemistry, Interscience Publishers, New York, 1965. 17. Knowles, P.F., in Evolution of Crop Plants, edited by N.W. Simmons, Longman, New York, 1976, p. 31. 18. Vavilov, N.I., The Origin, Variation, Immunity, and Breeding of Cultural Plants, Ronald Press Company, New York, 1951. 19. Kupsow, A.I., Bull. Appt. Bot. Genet. Pl. Breed. Ser. 9: 99 (1932). 20. Hanelt, P., Systematic Study of the Genus Carthamus L. (Compositae) A Monographic Review, Ph.D. Thesis (in German), Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenburg, Germany, 1961. 21. Ashri, A., Divergence and Evolution in the Safflower Genus, Carthamus, Final Research Report for USDA PL 480 Project No. A-10-CR-18, Hebrew University, Rehovot, Israel, 1973. 22. Ashri, A., and P.F. Knowles, Agron. J. 52: 11 (1960). 23. Ashri, A., and P.F. Knowles, Abst. A. Mtg. Am. Soc. Agron., 1977, p. 50. 24. Hooker, and Jackson, in Characterization and Evaluation of Safflower Germ Plasm, edited by D. Li, M. Zhou, and V.R. Rao, Geological Publishing House, Beijing, 1993, pp. 234–235. 25. Yuan, G., D. Li, et al., Safflower Genetic Resources and Their Utilization, Science and Technology Publishing House, Beijing, 1989. 26. Knowles, P.F., Safflower in California: A Personal History of Plant Explaration and Research on Evolution, Genetics, and Breeding, Report No. 14, University of California, Genetics Resources Conservation Program, Davis, California, in press. 27. Knowles, P.F., in Oil Crops of the World, edited by G. Röbbelen, R.K. Downey, and A. Ashri, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, 1989, p. 367. 28. Imrie, B.C., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 10: 349 (1970). 29. Imrie, B.C., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 11: 6 (1971). 30. Ramanamurthy, C.V., Relationships of Cultivated Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius L. to the Wild Species, C. oxyacantha M.B. Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1963. 31. Knowles, P.F., and S.C. Schank, Crop Sci. 4: 596 (1964). 32. Knowles, P.F., Economic Bot. 23: 324 (1969).

14

Safflower

33. Ashri, A. D.E. Zimmer, A.L. Urie, and P.F. Knowles, Theor. App. Genet. 46: 395 (1975). 34. Estilai, A., Crop Sci. 17: 800 (1977). 35. Estilai, A., and P.F. Knowles, Can. J. Genet. Cytol. 20: 221 (1978). 36. Harvey, B.L., and P.F. Knowles, Can. J. Genet. Cytol. 7: 126 (1965). 37. Khidir, M.O., and P.F. Knowles, Can. J. Genet. Cytol. 12: 90 (1970). 38. Khidir, M.O., and P.F. Knowles, Amer. J. Bot. 57: 123 (1970). 39. Estilai, A., and P.F. Knowles, Amer. J. Bot. 63: 771 (1976). 40. Ingram, J.S., Trop. Sci. 11: 177 (1969). 41. Mandan, C.L., B.M. Kapur, and U.S., Gupta, Econ. Bot. 20: 377 (1966). 42. Hasselquist, F., Reise nach Palastina, Rostock, Russia, 1762. 43. Forshal, P., Flora Ägyptiaco-Arabica, Hauniae, 1775. 44. Reif, W., Lustgarten der Gesundheit, Frankfurt, Germany, 1546. 45. Bock, H., Kreyter-Busch, Strasbourg, 1951. 46. Reinecke, K.L., Flora von Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany, 1914. 47. Darpoux, M.H., C.R. Acad. Agric. Franc. 34: 131 (1948). 48. Kupsow, A.I., Kulturnaja Flora S.S.S.R. 7: 437 (1941). 49. Benvenuti, A., Proc. Convegno Nazionale Sulle Sementi di Piente Oliefere, Bologna University, 1964. 50. Rennier, S., Economie Publique et Rurale des Arabes et des Juifs, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1820. 51. Low, I., Die Flora der Juden, vol. 1, Vienna, 1926. 52. Celakovsky, L., Prodromus der Flora von Bohmen, Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1867. 53. Beck, G. von M., Flora von Nieder-Osterreich II, Vienna, 1893. 54. Scheibe, V.E., Pflanzenhau 11; 49 (1935). 55. Wagner, W., Die Chinesische Landwirtschaft, Berlin, Germany, 1926. 56. Li, S., Compendium of Materia Medica 15, China, 1600, pp. 966–968. 57. Akroyd, W.R., Health Bulletin No. 23, 4th edn., Ministry of Health, New Delhi, India, 1951. 58. Mollinson, J., A Textbook of Indian Agriculture, Vol. III: Field and Garden Crops of the Bombay Presidency, Bombay, India, 1901, pp. 98–101. 59. Shinn, C.H., Cultural Work in Sub-Stations, 1899–1901, Bull. 147, Calif. Agric. Exp. Sta., California, 1903. 60. Claassen, C.E., Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1987, pp. 28–35. 61. Rabak, F., Safflower, a Possible New Oilseed Crop for the Northern Great Plains and the Far Western States, Circ. 366, USDA, Washington, 14 pp. (1935). 62. Rehbein, A., Sr., Montana Farmer-Stockman 35: 6 (1948). 63. Carrick, L.L., and H.K. Nielsen, Am. Paint Jour. 22: 44 pp. 7–9, 18–22, 22–23, 26 (1938). 64. Carrick, L.L., and H.K. Nielsen, Am. Paint Jour. 22: 45 pp. 13–16, 20–21, 44–46 (1938). 65. Carrick, L.L., and H.K. Nielsen, Am. Paint Jour. 22: 47 pp. 12, 14, 43, 48 (1938). 66. Carrick, L.L., and H.K. Nielsen, Am. Paint Jour. 22: 48 pp. 20–21, 24, 26, 28–29 (1938). 67. Carrick, L.L., and H.K. Nielsen, Am. Paint Jour. 22: 49 pp. 52–56, 58, 60 (1938).

History

15

68. Scofield, F., Natl. Paint Varnish Lacquer Assoc. Sci. Sect. Cir. 519, 522, (1936). 69. Remington, J.S., Paint Manuf. 6: 50 (1936). 70. Mann, H.H., and N.V. Kanitker, Jour. Soc. Chem. Ind. 38: 36 (1919). 71. Honcamp, F., et al., Tierernahr 1: 3 (1929). 72. Van Loon, J., Verfkronief 10: 280, 282 (1937). 73. Pugsley, A. T., and G. Winter, Australian Munitions Supply Labs Rpt. No. 171, 57 pp. 1947. 74. Woodward, R.E., Industrial Survey of Safflower, Chemurgy Project, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 56 pp. 1949. 75. Muir, J., The Farm Quarterly, pp. 88, 168–172, 1960. 76. Claassen, C.E., and T.A. Kiesselbach, Experiments with Safflower in Western Nebraska, Bull. 376, Neb. Agric. Exp. Sta., 28 pp. 1945. 77. Claassen, C.E., Chemurgic Dig. 7: 11 (1948). 78. Claassen, C.E., Nebraska Sta. Circ. 87, 23 pp. 1949. 79. Claassen, C.E., M.L. Schuster, and W.W. Ray, Plant Disease Reporter 33: 73 (1949). 80. Claassen, C.E., and A. Hoffman, Crops Soils 1 (1949). 81. Chemurgy Project, Fifth Annual Report, Bulletin 6, University of Nebraska, 1947. 82. Business Week, p. 50, July 22, 1944.

Chapter 2

The Early Days of the Industry Choosing a Location Even though Claassen had provided a seed that made safflower commercially feasible, the companies trying to start a safflower business in the Great Plains faced difficult odds. The first, second, and third problems were the weather. Safflower needs a minimum of 120 days to mature after planting; a minimum of 10 inches of rainfall, but not more than 20 inches; and finally, soils that will hold moisture and are deep enough to allow safflower’s root structure to reach for water. Figure 2.1 displays a map, based on Climate and Man (1) that I prepared for my Master’s thesis, illustrating the limited areas of the United States to which safflower is adapted (2). The areas receiving 20–24 inches of rainfall were considered marginal, and history has shown these areas to be basically unsuccessful for safflower production. Because there are summer rains in the Plains, safflower can develop serious head and leaf rot diseases, particularly if enough rain falls at or after time of flowering. In addition, safflower was not a good early weed competitor and in a cool spring it could be overwhelmed by faster growing weeds. Al Hoffman liked to remark that the way he and Carl Claassen would find safflower fields in western Nebraska in the late 1940s was to get on top of a hill and look for weed patches. There would usually be a field of safflower under the weeds, struggling to compete. Claassen had included Paul F. Knowles of U.C. Davis in the group of researchers he had enlisted to try safflower. Knowles was a native of Canada who came to the University of California at Davis in 1947 after receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Saskatchewan. Although he originally worked on flax, sesame, or other oilseeds, he became interested in safflower after trying the seeds Claassen sent him. In 1947 and 1948 the yields Knowles obtained were very promising (Table 2.1). During this same period, Claassen had been making winter increases of his promising new selections using a friend from Kansas days, Richard Hoagland, to handle this work in California’s Imperial Valley (3). Hoagland became excited about safflower’s potential as a crop in California and made several trips to Nebraska to learn more from Claassen and to encourage him to visit California. In 1948, Claassen was awarded his Ph.D. and in the fall of the following year made a trip to California to survey the situation. By this time several companies in Nebraska, Colorado, California, and Arizona were involved in increasing Indian and N-55 (and subsequently N-5, 6, 8, and 9) varieties for planting seed and trying to obtain N-852 foundation seed to do the same for the following year. Chemical Crops Co. had the only supplies of N-6 and N-9. Oilseed Products Company, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, the Glidden Company branch in Buena Park, Anderson Clayton’s Western Cotton Oil, and various 16

The Early Days of the Industry

17

individuals were engaged in planting seed production in California and Arizona; however, none of these groups had experience in growing safflower. Hoagland tried to convince Claassen to resign from the University and join him in starting a planting seed production and promotion company in California. Claassen used his trip to visit all of California’s oil processing companies, Knowles, and a number of local farmers.

Getting Started in California He reached the conclusion that safflower production had a better chance in California than in the Midwest. In California there were several experienced oil

Figure 2.1. Land climatically suited to safflower.

18

TABLE 2.1

Safflower

Results of Early Safflower Tests in California

Variety or Strain

First Flowering

Date Mature

Height (inches)

Yield lb/Acre

Percent Oil

4/ 1 4/ 1 4/17

5/12 5/12 5/25 8/ 7 8/ 2 8/ 9 8/10 8/ 8 8/11 7/23 7/24 7/24 7/22 7/26 7/23 7/24 7/25

38 48 48 43 45 54 50 49 58 43 46 44 45 48 45 54 45

1,639 2,110 1,765 3,157 3,022 3,304 2,977 2,878 2,729 3,749 3,166 2,956 2,696 2,563 2,370 2,297 2,229

30.5 35.1 30.5 28.9 32.7 30.8 29.7 27.7 29.8 34.1 32.3 27.2 33.8 31.0 28.8 27.9 28.6

Indianaa N-852a,b N-804a Indianc N-852b,c N-472-2c,d N-514-2-10c,e N-461-1c,f N-804-21c,g N-852b,h N-803-16h,l N-4h N-7h N-5h N-3h N-2h N-1h

6/ 8 6/10 6/12 6/11 6/16 6/12 6/11 6/18

aTests under irrigation in Imperial Valley in 1946–47, planted November 5 in rows 24” apart. bN-852 planted in Feb., harvested in late July at Shafter California, yielded 2,894 lb/acre with a 33.9% oil content. cTest was sown at Davis on January 30, 1948 in rows 24” apart with one irrigation in the spring. dNebraska Variety no. N-5 eNebraska Variety no. N-3 fNebraska Variety no. N-4 gNebraska Variety no. N-2 hRecent Nebraska varieties compared at Davis in 1949 rows spaced 18 inches apart. Planted early January/midFebruary. Because of cold January weather, all matured at about the same time. iSimilar to N-6. Source: Knowles (6).

milling companies interested in adding safflower to their product mix. In Nebraska and Colorado there were only inexperienced, underfinanced startup companies that were totally dependent on safflower’s success. Upon his return to Nebraska, Claassen resigned from the University and arranged with the Director of Agriculture of the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station to take a portion of all breeding materials with him. Claassen and Hoagland formed a partnership, Western Oilseeds Company, and Claassen moved to California in March of 1950, first to Bakersfield, then to Chico, and ultimately to Woodland (3, author interview of Claassen, January 19, 1988). In February, 1949, Knowles published a brief, illustrated report (4). In September he followed this up with a more detailed mimeographed report (5), and in October he produced a printed bulletin that had essentially the same wording (6). Sabin of the USDA released a bulletin in January 1950 (7). Interest increased, especially after Claassen released the Nebraska bulletin in 1949 (8) and the articles by Claassen and Hoffman (9) and Matlock (10). Oil Seed Products Co. (L.L. “Jim” Touton and Charles W. Koch) were the most venturesome of the Californians interested in safflower during 1949. Koch visited

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Claassen in Nebraska in the summer of 1949, purchased a supply of N-852 seed from Bruce Lane of Chemical Crops, made a loose alliance with Richard Hoagland to get acreage plante in the Imperial Valley, and maintained an active correspondence with Paul Knowles at Davis (Personal correspondence between Knowles/Touton/Koch between July 22, 1949 and September 25, 1950). In July, 1949, Claassen authorized Knowles to release seed to Oil Seed Products Co. from University of California at Davis tests of Nebraska seed, and this helped to circumvent the monopoly in N-6 and N-9 seed held by Chemical Crops. Oil Seed Products obtained enough seed to plant about 16,000 acres in the Imperial and San Joaquin Valleys for the 1950 harvest. Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation made its first enquiries about safflower planting seed in August of 1949 (PVO letter of August 11, 1949, J.R. Giansiracusa to P.F. Knowles), but within weeks it had located enough seed to allow contracting with growers. The Glidden Company announced plans for planting and contracting for 1,000 acres in Yuma. In the years 1947–50, some of the same seed was sold several times to different buyers; prices for planting seed eventually climbed to $0.25/lb, and the claims of acreage planted in the western Great Plains turned out to be quite exaggerated. Adding to the excitement about safflower was the shipment of the first tank carload of safflower oil from Western Solvents Inc. to Cook Paint and Varnish Co. This shipment was heralded in the Denver Post and Associated Press (11) on November 28, 1949 and the Rocky Mountain News on November 29 (12). In ceremonies at the Western Solvents plant, a number of speakers participated in a formal ceremony complete with a christening of the tank car by the seven-year-old daughter of the plant’s production manager, and acceptance of the shipment by a representative from Cook Paint.

The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had been incorporated in 1924, originally as Pacific Vegetable Oil Company (13). The company was started as a salvage operation to purchase a bankrupt oil-storage plant built in San Francisco by the Archbishop of Manila to store imported coconut oil. The name of this company had been Philippine Vegetable Oil; its initials, PVO, were painted on the side of three huge storage tanks. The name Pacific Vegetable Oil was selected by the new owners in order to be able to continue using the same initials. One of the founding shareholders was B.T. Rocca Sr., known as “Senior” to his friends and employees. Rocca Sr. was a mining engineer but after the fledgling company experienced problems, he was named Manager in 1926 and never looked back. As time went on he acquired stock from his partners and eventually became the largest shareholder of PVO. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation originally operated as an importing, storing, and handling business for imported oils, such as coconut, linseed, tung, and later, perilla, rapeseed, and sesame oils. In 1931, a small, three-expeller mill was organized as Pacific Oil Mills Limited on adjacent land, and utilized the newly developed Anderson R.B. expellers. The mill was built to crush Chinese sesame seed, but a revolution suspended shipments from China, and PVO turned to crushing Argentine

20

Safflower

flaxseed. When China opened up again, Chinese flaxseed—and later, perilla, hemp, and sesame seed—were imported in increasing quantities along with babasu kernels, palm kernels, some copra, and kapokseed. An expanding amount of linseed, tung, perilla, and coconut oils began to be imported as well. During the years prior to World War II, Rocca also was forced to lead a fight in Congress to combat crippling duties on all imported oilseeds, duties that ostensibly were to protect the U.S. cottonseed industry. This caused the formation of the National Institute of Oilseed Products (NIOP), which Rocca led as President for 9 years. The battle was successful, winning adjustments in the duties to allow west coast oil mills to compete with Japanese oil mills. In the early 1930s, Rocca’s son, Barney Rocca Jr., began working part-time in the company. After graduation from UC Berkeley in 1937, he joined the company on a full-time basis and eventually worked his way through all phases of the operation. Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation opened sales agencies in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles and established working relationships with prominent dealers in London, Rotterdam, Australia, and other overseas locations. World War II quickly put a stop to PVO’s imports, and the company was forced to promote production of flaxseed in Califormia. By the end of the war, PVO and the rest of the U.S. oilseed industry had lost their dependency on imported raw material, obtaining raw material from domestically produced soybeans, flaxseed, and cottonseed. During the war, Rocca Jr. went to Washington and became Director of Procurement, Import Division, Fats and Oils Branch of the War Food Administration. He acquired many relationships with international figures and upon returning to PVO at the end of the war, began planning for the company’s further expansion. Before price controls were removed in 1947, PVO obtained large quantities of copra from the Philippines and established buying agencies there and finally hired the Spaniard, Francisco Gonzalez Avila to open a PVO office in Manila. By the start of the 1950s, PVO was supplying 90% of the copra going to Latin America, as well as a significant share of the needs of Europe and Japan, in addition to steady supplies to PVO’s newly opened copra mill in Richmond, California, and its affiliate, Western Vegetable Oil, headed by Adolph Schumann. Much of the Latin American copra business was handled through Rocca-Cuvi Co. Rocca Sr.’s other son, Curtis had returned from Naval service, joined Balfour Guthrie for a short time, and then joined together with Carlos Cuvi, an Ecuadorian, to form the Rocca-Cuvi Co. specializing in Latin American and feedstuff trading. As soon as the war ended, PVO moved to reopen trade with China, particularly in tung oil, and established a joint venture with China Vegetable Oil (CVO), a semi-government company, to rebuild their war-ravaged milling industry and to provide barge transportation from the points of production to Shanghai. L.S. Wong, CVO’s Production Manager, later became a PVO executive. After many trials and tribulations, the barges reached Asia just as Mao Tse Tung marched into Shanghai. Eventually the Communist government re-established relations with PVO because of PVO’s preeminent position in tung oil exportation from China and began additional business in peanuts and sesame seed. This business was destroyed when China marched into Korea over the Yalu River.

The Early Days of the Industry

21

As World War II ended, PVO also began acquiring and exporting cottonseed oil from CCC stockpiles in its own plant and elsewhere. Unilever, in particular, was a large buyer of those products, and PVO developed a lasting relationship with Kurt Kretzschmar, Unilever Chief Buyer. In 1950, PVO had reached a sales volume of $75,000,000 and a net worth of over $3 million, but was faced with the loss of its very profitable tung oil business from China, and a decline in linseed oil processing as water-based products began to seize the paint market. Safflower offered a nice alternative. When I first came to San Francisco in 1950 to search for a job I had never heard of Pacific Vegetable Oil, but many people urged me to interview there. As it turned out, there was no job for a chemist or a chemical engineer; however, Ed Hill, PVO’s Production and Purchasing Manager, hired me as a laboratory dishwasher until something more suitable opened up. I came under the wing of John Kneeland and his chief assistant, George Kopas—my future partner. Kopas showed me the ropes of the lab and how to perform simple analyses, such as running free fatty acids, moisture in meal, and eventually oil contents. Soon I was taking samples in the mill, and gauging tanks on the San Francisco docks. In no time I was running safflower seed oil contents as the 1950 crop began to be harvested. I was given a side job of trying to engineer a better conveying system in PVO’s San Francisco plant. Later, I became Mance Langford’s assistant in organizing the PVO buying program so that safflower production could expand. It was at that time that I met Claassen and Knowles and formed life-long friendships with both of them. During the summer of 1950, before safflower was harvested in California, optimism about the harvest was generally high. However, some of the advice that Carl Claassen had put forth was based on Nebraska experiences, and he soon found that not all of it applied in California. Safflower planted in the Mojave Desert east of Bakersfield ran out of steam; the soil was too sandy and would not hold enough water to sustain safflower. Some early plantings in the San Joaquin Valley, planted on 40-inch cotton or vegetable beds grew well over five feet tall. Frank Coit at Mendota was one of the growers; his safflower towered over him and yielded in excess of 4,000 lbs/acre (Figure 2.2), but his was the exception. Other tall safflower seemed to expend its energy in growing tall, and failed to produce much seed. During the developmental stages of a new crop, many strange, wondrous and frightening things happen. I recall a 1950 phone call from PVO’s Imperial Valley agent, John Brownell, reporting that the crop looked spectacularly beautiful. Literally, the next day, a shaken Brownell called again to report that the crop was dying everywhere he looked. In the course of 2 or 3 days, farmers watered their crops, which were primarily planted flat instead of on beds, during days when the weather ranged between 114–117°F in the shade. The N-852 variety was very susceptible to phytopthora root rot but even more so to scalding, and within a week, much of it was dead. Even though safflower was almost a total failure in the Imperial Valley and parts of the San Joaquin Valley in 1950, PVO’s long-term hold on safflower was indirectly strengthened. Growers in the Imperial Valley refused to even talk to anyone about safflower for 10 years and their caution turned off most people in the San Joaquin

22

Safflower

Figure 2.2 Frank Coit standing in a safflower field where the plants grew in excess of 6’ tall in 1951. Picture taken in Mendota, California.

The Early Days of the Industry

23

Valley as well. Accordingly, all of the cottonseed mills which could have been natural competition for PVO at the start were faced with incredulous growers and the need to develop cultural practices and varieties resistant to root rot. This gave PVO several years of lead time working in the Sacramento Valley where the crop could be and was grown in most cases without irrigation. No other mill, save Cargill, was geographically situated to compete. Liberty Vegetable Oil, the Glidden Company, and California Cotton Oil crushed small amounts of safflower oil but were very disappointed and dismayed with the poor yields that farmers experienced. Oilseed Products Co. continued working with the crop through 1952; however they found that they could only sell oil at prices below soybean oil prices and reluctantly sold most of their oil to PVO. In 1953, they sold their oil mill to Ranchers’ Cotton Oil Co., and it was subsequently converted to a cottonseed oil mill. Rocca Jr. talked to Claassen and encouraged Claassen to end Western Oilseeds’ semiclosed relationship with Oilseed Products Co., and to begin to work with and represent PVO exclusively from that time on. In turn, Rocca offered to prowide financing for Western Oilseeds’ breeding programs and operating expenses. Rocca Jr. reasoned that PVO would have a big advantage versus other oil mills since PVO’s mill was close to the potential growing area so it would have a logistic advantage, but more importantly the cotton oil mills just were not prepared to handle sales to the paint trade. Claassen discussed this with Hoagland, and they agreed that this was their best option, primarily because PVO offered the best market outlet. Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had an already established business in dealing with the paint and varnish trade, where safflower oil appeared to have its best market. Of the other mills in California—J.G. Boswell, S.A. Camp, Anderson Clayton, Producers Cotton Oil, and Oilseed Products Co.—all in the San Joaquin Valley, none had experience in marketing to the drying oil field. Western Vegetable Oil, Eldorado, and Cargill in the San Francisco Bay Area were primarily involved with copra processing. Liberty Vegetable Oil at Santa Fe Springs, the Glidden Co. in Buena Park, Spencer Kellogg at Long Beach, California Cotton Oil of Los Angeles, and California Flaxseed Corporation in Vernon were the only other ones involved in selling to the drying oil industry. But all of this latter group were in Southern California where safflower had failed in its first big test, and it might take years to develop a safflower variety that was resistant to phytopthora root rot. Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, with its proximity to the Sacramento Valley where some growers had been successful, was a logical choice not only because of its location, but also because it expressed interest in helping Claassen and Hoagland, whereas some of the other companies began to be indifferent. In PVO’s mill, Hill and Langford applied some of the processing lessons that had been reported by the Nebraska Chemurgy Department (14). Because of the heavy, fibrous hulls on the N-852 variety, a lot of frictional heat was generated. At this point nobody wasted time on decortication efforts, as Nebraska and Longmont had tried to do. In order to stop the safflower oil from scorching as it was passed through the horizontal expeller barrel, water-cooled shafts were employed. These

24

Safflower

did the trick, and the oil produced was 8–9 Gardner for the original color and 1–3 Gardner after heat bleaching. The oil coming from the mill was of beautiful quality and everybody involved was excited about this aspect. If the crop could be grown, it was easy to see that this was a product we could mill and that this was an oil that would almost sell itself to paint manufacturers. Joe Siracusa, Dale Dybbro, who was moved from refinery duties, and Jim Taylor, who joined the company in late 1950, were given the job of selling safflower meal to the California feed trade. It was to prove to be a tough battle, but at this stage many field mixers were willing to give it a try, hoping an X factor existed in the meal that analyses did not reveal. Some of the early Midwestern tests led people to believe that it could stand up to soybean meal on a per unit of protein basis (15,16). In 1950, approximately 23,000 acres of safflower had been contracted and planted in California on behalf of all buyers. In most cases growers were promised a price of $70–75/short ton delivered to the oil mill. But by the time the harvest was finished, it was apparent that only 10,000 acres had been harvested, and much of what was harvested did not meet growers’ expectations. After a series of meetings between Hill, Langford, Claassen, Hoagland, and me, it was decided that we needed to concentrate our efforts in the Sacramento Valley. Claassen reasoned that several years would be needed to develop good phytopthora resistance before safflower could be grown successfully on San Joaquin and Imperial Valley irrigated acreage. In the meantime, safflower could be grown successfully on the heavy soils in the Sacramento Valley and Delta region, which could hold water well and allow rotation with crops such as beans, rice, barley, and wheat (3). Claassen—who displayed the attributes necessary to promote and develop a new crop; an almost religious zeal to push the crop forward; a good researcher’s eye, capable of seeing things in a field when others would just walk on by; and a single-mindedness and dedication willing to work 25 hours/day to get the job done—moved his residence and office from Bakersfield to Chico, in the north end of the Sacramento Valley. He commanded the respect of the farmers because he was able to talk to them on their own terms, and he was not afraid to admit mistakes and adapt some of the lessons learned in the first year in California.

The PVO Plan We began to adopt a series of steps that we felt were necessary to get safflower started. Over time we adapted these steps into a method that we successfully used over and over in other areas of the country and the world to promote safflower and consolidate PVO’s position. The first step was to design a simple contract form of one page that could be easily understood by growers, bankers, and farm advisors (Figure 2.3). This step also included adopting a program that would provide good quality planting seed to the grower, the cost of which could be deducted from the proceeds of his harvest. The second step was to meet as early as possible with the local farm advisors of the California Extension Service to enlist their aid in providing local farmers accurate information about safflower and establishing careful yield and observation trials with

The Early Days of the Industry

Figure 2.3. PVO grower contract form.

25

26

Safflower

farmer cooperatives. These tests would be used to measure yield potential, oil content, and other quality characteristics for safflower seed produced locally and to determine what practices were the most practical to enhance production and yield. The work with the Farm Advisors needed the cooperation of the State’s Extension Service Administrators and the University of California’s Agronomy Department. Knowles lent his full cooperation in helping to coordinate this effort and helping the farm advisors set up their best plots. The third step was to explain what safflower was, how it was grown, what potential markets existed, how safflower could be produced at a profit, and to explain that PVO would be willing to contract with growers in advance at a guaranteed price. These explanations were carried personally to bank officers, newspaper editors and reporters, elevators and country buyers, and trucking companies—anyone and everyone who might be affected by a safflower crop. This effort was enhanced by the publication of a two-color bulletin that contained the facts (17), and which PVO and Western Oilseeds would mail to several thousand recipients. The third step was assisted by publications and news about safflower oil that continued to reach the press during this starting period (18–20). The farm press carried continuing reports on crop progress (21–23). Next, the two companies organized grower meetings all over the area to take the message to each locality. These meetings gave potential growers, farm advisors, university personnel, and local businessmen a chance to ask questions and make comments about safflower before their peers and hear answers from PVO and Western Oilseeds personnel. It was also emphasized at each meeting that Western Oilseeds would provide field service free of charge to growers who had questions about the progress of their crop. Of course, PVO needed to do more than just encourage farmers to produce safflower. It was necessary to inform the market that safflower oil and meal were available, to explain why buyers should use it, and to encourage those buyers to do research to find new or expanded uses for safflower products. In turn, PVO began research to improve milling and refining techniques and to develop new grades of safflower oil to give the PVO sales force a more diverse set of products to sell. Finally, PVO encouraged outside research on the utilization of safflower oil and meal. The University of California Animal Husbandry unit was approached to begin running total digestible unit tests on California-produced safflower meal. We began to search for a firm to perform research studies on certain industrial uses of safflower oil. In early 1951, PVO published the first of a series of bulletins on safflower oil that continued to be published for the next 20 years. Finally, PVO made two key decisions that distinguished this program from anything that had gone before. Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had a history of rewarding good employee performance with bonus payments. We decided to apply this method to grower contracts, offering to pay growers a bonus based on the results of PVO’s marketing efforts, over the guaranteed floor price we were offering, after harvest. This was probably the first example of contract farming for a nonperishable crop (24). Secondly, we offered a full year’s supply of safflower oil to buyers willing to contract for the oil produced from the upcoming 1951 harvest. This was the first time

The Early Days of the Industry

27

that industrial oil consumers had been offered a forward contract so far in advance and for such an extended period. These people were used to buying oil on a spot basis. We reasoned that if we could maintain stable prices for our buyers contracting in advance would make sense for them, since they would have no fear of fluctuating prices, and it would minimize the risk of contracting ahead with growers. Three events occurred in late 1950 that helped PVO’s program succeed. After the 1950 debacle in California, PVO needed a miracle to promote acreage in 1951. The miracle turned up in the form of George Tarke. Tarke, typical of many Sacramento Valley farmers, was a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and farmed pink and baby lima beans on the rich, flat lands near Meridien, California. While most farmers had been very disappointed with their 1950 safflower crop, Tarke and his brother Fred had succeeded in producing 3,400 pounds/acre on sizable plantings (Figure 2.4). Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation convinced George Tarke to speak at several growers’ meetings in late 1950 and early 1951, and his sincere testimony helped carry the day. The second truly fortuitous break for safflower development occurred during the 24th Fall Meeting of the American Oil Chemists Society on September 26–29. The Wednesday, September 27 session featured a mini-symposium on Safflower Seed Oil, featuring four talks on various applications for safflower oil (Chapter 8, [25–28]). These papers gave safflower oil more national attention, and Milton Silverman, science writer for the San Francisco Chronicle picked up on it (29). The third factor that occurred during this period was the beginning of a drought in the Great Plains that continued for the next 5 years. It spelled doom for companies like Western Solvents Inc. which failed by 1952, was strated again by other entrepreneurs under the name of Western Safflower Products, and failed again to be sold at an RFC auction and dismantled in 1953. Chemical Crops, Inc., and Safflower Enterprises, Inc., also failed the same year. Production of safflower seed was dismal in that region, causing defaults on oil shipments and eventual bankruptcy for all of the companies involved. This, combined with the poor results in Southern California in 1950 did give safflower oil a poor reputation with some consumers, but much more importantly, it removed all of PVO’s competition and provided the start of their market domination for the next 10 seasons.

Conclusions During safflower’s early years in California, much needed to be learned concerning which areas of the state were suited to the crop, the ideal planting dates for each area, and the cultural practices that would do the best job. Farmers from every region of the state were eager to try growing some; since we were eager to expand production, we cooperated with them if we felt the crop had a reasonable chance. In many instances, the farmers wanting to try safflower were not the best producers in their areas, but rather were the ones who had tried everything else already and were in need of a quick fix to stay in business.

28

Safflower

Figure 2.4. George Tarke in an outstanding field that produced 4,000 lbs/acre in 1951. Picture taken in Meridien, California.

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29

We quickly learned that the high country around Susanville had neither the moisture nor the growing season to sustain a year-in, year-out crop. Lake County was similar to Susanville in this regard. It quickly became apparent that the fields in the Imperial Valley, with a high salt content would not sustain a safflower crop and, in fact, the high water costs of all of the Imperial Valley would not allow safflower to compete with higher paying crops. The sandy soils around Merced, Modesto, Riverbank, and Ripon proved to be uneconomical—safflower was found to need a soil type that would hold moisture better. A lot of effort was also put into trying safflower in the high country around Alturas in Tule County of far northern California, but this effort failed in the long run. The upper end of the Sacramento Valley, north of Redding or Red Bluff, was found to be unprofitable for safflower and the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, which is basically divided into smaller farms with smaller private water systems also proved to be uneconomical. The very heavy rice soils in the Biggs region of the northern Sacramento Valley also could not be adapted to good safflower yields although several schemes were tried. Knowles of UC Davis and his flax-growing friends in the Half Moon Bay area tried safflower, but they soon learned that it could not adapt to the foggy summer days experienced at flowering time. All of the farmers in the coastal valleys that tried it soon discovered the crop developed well early on, but flowering time brought a beautiful case of botrytis, and none of the blossoms developed further. A lot of safflower was planted in the rolling hills on the western side of the Sacramento Valley from Vacaville to Williams, but over time, it became apparent that safflower would only do reasonably well in that country in a season of high rainfall and often that was not the case. In the Paso Robles/Templeton area, similar observations were made, but the farmers in that area found that certain canyons seem to pick up a little more moisture than others and production, although small, has remained around Paso Robles. Irrigation water was plentiful in the Vacaville to Woodland area, but most who tried it found the shallower soils from Vacaville to Dixon did not really produce a significant increase over dry land production and in some cases, production was worse. In the dry years of the late 1980s, irrigation in the area west of Woodland on fields with three rows on beds had met with some success. In the early days, safflower also had a hard time competing with weeds in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Delta, and it never did well on true peat soils. Later, as Treflan became available farmers learned to do better with safflower in the Delta, and it is now one of the most productive safflower areas. As the years progressed, safflower production settled into some fairly well-defined areas in California: 1. The dry lake beds and surrounding areas of Kern and Tulare counties on the southwest side of the San Joaquin Valley; 2. The west side of the San Joaquin Valley from Huron to Los Banos; 3. A small area south of Stockton to Tracy; 4. The San Joaquin/Sacramento Delta area, particularly Roberts; Merritt, Ryer, and Sherman Islands; and the areas near the River from Thornton to Clarksburg;

30

Safflower

5. The Yolo and Sutter Bypasses and Liberty Island; and 6. The central part of the Sacramento Valley from Woodland to Chico, except for the heavier rice soils. In the 1950s, the State of California Extension Service fielded an exceptional group of young Farm Advisors in the Sacramento Valley and Delta region, eager to try new ideas in the hope of finding broader markets for local farmers. They were not afraid to speak on behalf of safflower production and to encourage the most cooperative farmers in their counties to plant yield, cultural, and observation trials. These individuals cooperated well with Knowles, Claassen, and me in lining up helpful and productive meetings and trials during much of the decade. Claassen and Hoagland increased Claassen’s N-6 and N-8 varieties, and so in 1951 three types were available, rather than just the N-852 used in 1950, N-8 was believed to do best on irrigated land and was capable of producing a higher oil content. The N-6 type exhibited much larger heads (and spines) and tended to be taller as well. It was touted to be especially suited for subirrigated land, and N-852 remained as the reliable type for dry land production. However, Claassen and Hoagland decided they would have to add another person if Western Oilseeds was to increase its research efforts for new seeds, since much of their time was spent contracting work with growers and providing field advice for growers producing safflower for both oil and planting seed. Al Hoffman, Claassen’s former assistant, was enticed to leave the University of Nebraska and come to Western Oilseeds in 1952. Although the Glidden Co., Liberty Vegetable Oil, and California Flaxseed Co. produced and expeller-processed small amounts of safflower seed in the 1950–52 period in Southern California, all became disinterested because of a series of meal fires, lack of satisfactory planting seed, and general grower dissatisfaction with the crop in Southern California. The way was open for PVO and Western Oilseeds to operate a virtual monopoly. References 1. Climate and Man, USDA, Washington, D.C., 1941, p. 1248. 2. Smith, J.R., Investigation of Factors Affecting Possible Increase in Production of Safflower Oil in Colorado, M.S. Thesis, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 1950, p. 95. 3. Claassen, C.E., in Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 28–35. 4. Knowles, P.F., California Agriculture 11: 16 (1949). 5. Knowles, P.F., Safflower Production in California, University of California Agricultural Extension Service, 1949, pp. 1–7. 6. Knowles, P.F., Safflower: A New Crop, University of California Agricultural Extension Service, 1949, p. 1–19. 7. Sabin, A.R., Safflower: A New Oilseed Crop, USDA, Washington D.C., 1950, pp. 1–14. 8. Claassen, C.E., Safflower Production in the Western Part of the Northern Great Plains, Nebr. Agr. Expo Sta. Circ. 87, Lincoln, Neb., 23 pp., 1949.

The Early Days of the Industry

31

9. Claassen, C.E., and A. Hoffman, Crops Soils 1: 5–7 (1949). 10. Matlock, R.L., Progr. Agr. Ariz. 1: 5,12 (1950). 11. Denver Post, Denver, Colorado, November 28, 1949. 12. Lowe, W., Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, p. 49, November 29, 1949. 13. Rocca, B.T., Oil and Troubled Waters—The PVO Story, Private Publication, 1986. 14. Woodward, R.E., Industrial Survey of Safflower, Chemurgy Project, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Neb., pp. 31–34, 1949. 15. Baker, M.L., C.N. Baker, C. Ervin, L.C. Harris, and M.A. Alexander, Feeding Safflower Meal-Bulletin 402, Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station, Lincoln, Nebraska, 11 pp., 1951. 16. Hilston, N.W., C.B. Roubicek, and L. Paules, Comparative Value of Soybean Oil Meal and Safflower Meal and Urea for Fattening Steers—Circular No. 2, Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station, 6 pp., 1951. 17. Safflower Comes to California, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, San Francisco, California, 1951, p. 6 18. Sabin, A.R., The Agricultural Situation 34; 10–11, USDA, Washington, January 1950. 19. Christensen, L.M., Amer. Paint J. 34: 54 (1950). 20. Hammond, D., Safflower Oil Summary, March 20, 1950. 21. “Safflower Still May Become New Crop in Arizona,” Arizona Farmer, October 29, 1949. 22. “Valley Farmers Test Safflower Crop Prospects,” Arizona Republic, p. 4, July 20, 1950; 23. “Dope on Safflower,” Arizona Farmer, September 2, 1950. 24. Smith, J.R., in Edible Fats and Oils Processing, edited by D.R. Erickson, The American Oil Chemists’ Society, Champaign, Illinois, 1989, pp. 324–330. 25. Soltoft, P., and F.G. Dollear, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 28: 335 (1951). 26. Thurmond, C.D., A.R. Hempel, and P.E. Marling, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 28: 354 (1951). 27. DaValle, A.J., and W.F. Rhoades, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 28: 466 (1951). 28. Gordon, J.A., P.T. Hamlin, and R.J. Cartmell, Safflower Alkyds—Preliminary Investigation, presented at the 24th American Oil Chemists’ Society Fall Meeting, San Francisco, Sept. 27, 1950. 29. Silverman, M., San Francisco Chronicle, p. 16, Sept. 28, 1950.

Chapter 3

Characteristics of Safflower General Characteristics of the Safflower Plant Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius, L. is a winter annual that belongs to the family, Compositae, a diverse group of flowering plants that grow in many parts of the world. Sunflower, Helianthus annuus, and niger, Guizotia abyssinica, are two other oil-bearing members of the family. Except for its flower color, safflower resembles a thistle, and the commercial genus, C. tinctorius, is not a weed since it exists only as a cultivated crop. When farmed in the United States, safflower is an annual that grows 1.5–6 feet tall. If planted when soil temperatures are barely above the 40°F required for germination, safflower seedlings can take up to 3 weeks to emerge. If planted when temperatures are above 60°F, seedlings emerge in 3–4 days (Figure 3.1). After emergence, safflower grows slowly for a period, forming many leaves in a rosette form (Figure 3.2). If safflower is planted in late fall or early winter it can remain in this form for 2–3 months, while plants that emerge in late spring will stay in this form only 4 weeks or less. During this period competing plants can gain a foothold, and later in the season will tower over the safflower.

Figure 3.1. Safflower seedlings. 32

Characteristics of Safflower

33

Figure 3.2. A field of safflower in the rosette stage. During the rosette stage, the plant is sending down a deep tap root. If safflower is planted with wide spacing or at a low seeding rate, the plant will branch profusely (Figure 3.3) whereas, if it is sown at a heavy seeding rate or on narrow spacings, the branching is much more upright and compact (Figure 3.4). As the temperature and length of day increase, a stem begins to grow. Stems can elongate as much as 1 inch/day until the plant reaches its maximum height. Branches generally begin to form when the plant is 8–15 inches tall (Figure 3.5). The stem and branches will form one to five flower buds at their ends. Buds open into blossoms 4–5 weeks after they first form (Figure 3.6). Flowering lasts from 10 days to 3 weeks (Figure 3.7) and maturity is usually reached 45 days after first flowering (Figure 3.8).

Botanical Characteristics Root Safflower has a strong, whitish taproot from which numerous laterals radiate horizontally in the upper layers of a field. The taproot normally penetrates to a depth of 6 feet but has been measured to depths of 14 feet (1,2). It will deplete soil moisture down to a depth of 2–4 meters (3). The length of the taproot and the configuration of the laterals will depend on the type of soil and amount and depth of available moisture. The deep rooting character helps safflower do well in areas of relatively low rainfall. The chiseling effect of this deep rooting system is considered to be an important reason for enhanced cotton yields following safflower (4).

34

Safflower

Figure 3.3. The bush form of safflower.

Characteristics of Safflower

Figure 3.4. The upright form of safflower.

35

36

Safflower

Figure 3.5. A field of safflower in a rapid growth stage.

Figure 3.6. Safflower buds.

Characteristics of Safflower

Figure 3.7. Safflower in full flower.

Figure 3.8. Mature safflower being harvested.

37

38

Safflower

Of course, safflower needs time for its deep-rooting system to develop, and this activity appears to be particularly associated with the length of time the crop is in its rosette stage. If safflower is planted late in a growing season, the warmer temperatures tend to force the plant out of the rosette stage quickly: taproot length is limited, and the plant may suffer stress later in its seed-forming cycle if temperatures are above normal. When grown as a rainfall-supported crop on medium loam soils, the taproot will extend to considerable depths, searching for water and nutrients, whereas under surface irrigation the root system will tend to be shallower and feature extended laterals. Where land is subirrigated (by means of periodic spud ditches), or where the field has been preirrigated to fill its subsoil profile with water, the taproot will extend to a greater depth when compared to a surface-irrigated field. Phytophthora root rot is the principal root disease of safflower. It attacks the taproot in fields where water is allowed to stand during or after irrigation because of improper land slope or on a soil type that exhibits poor percolation or drainage. Stem and Branches The safflower stem is stiff and cylindrical, thick at its base and becomes thinner as branching progresses, relatively smooth and hairless, white to light gray or green in color, and marked with very fine longitudinal grooves (5). The circumference of the plant stem at its base varies from 3 to 12 cm (6) and is correlated with yield (7). The stem becomes brittle with age, and after harvest the center matter quickly dries into a powdery mass that eventually wastes away, leaving the stem hollow and easy to work into the soil (Figure 3.9). Temple and Knowles found the recessive gene br causes the brittle stem trait (8), wherein stems break readily and cleanly. A thin-hulled mutant found by Rubis (9,10) had a weak stem characteristic because of a lack of secondary wall thickening in sclerenchyma cells. The stem begins to elongate from the rosette as temperatures rise and begins to branch after it reaches a height of 8–15 inches. The central stem branches to form secondary stems and these branch into tertiary stems. Each branch terminates in a floral capitula (head) and the flower at the end of the primary stem is the first to bloom. The type and position of branching are a result of both the plant’s environment and inheritance. Safflower planted with wide spacing tends to form plants that are bushy and have a multitude of branches and heads at various levels, whereas narrow spacings result in a reduction in branching, generally thinner stems, and with most heads near the top of the plant (Figure 3.10). Branching can occur very close to the ground in some varieties. This manner of growth can also happen if the original stem is damaged by frost, cutworms, or hail (Figure 3.11). Safflower cultivars are classified as “appressed,” if they have a stem-tobranch angle in the range of 10–20°, “intermediate” with an angle of 20–40°, “spreading,” if over 40°, and “decumbent,” if the branches droop more than 90° (5,11). Leon and Knowles found that appressed branching was due to the recessive gene ap. (12), whereas Knowles and Fernandez-Martinez found that a different recessive gene (13), dec, controls decumbent branching.

Characteristics of Safflower

39

Knowles states that the ideal branching habit for different agricultural situations has not been worked out (3) but I believe, based on empirical observations, that most varieties producing a second layer of branches and heads (in effect, fourth order branches), such as Saffola 317, produce superior yields given adequate levels of moisture. Several studies have shown that the number of heads influences the yield (14–16), but Khider found a negative correlation in 1974 (17). In India, removal of the central bud just before flowering occurs induces increased branching, number of heads per plant, and total seed yield (18). This is advantageous, since the Indians commonly grow safflower as a single row border plant around a field making the yield per plant quite important. There are numerous reports listing height of various varieties of safflower. For example, 2,626 accessions in the world collection were analyzed for height and 29 other factors (11). The results are shown in Table 3.1. There is no question that plant height differs according to genotype (19), but environment can cause enough variation to make a single year’s measurements suspect. Some varieties, such as the Mexico Dwarf, may be short no matter what the environment and some may be photo and thermo insensitive (Figure 3.12 [11]). But most types are temperature sensitive and are driven by differences in available moisture and nutrients, salinity, date of planting, and plant density. Knowles showed the following in a test planted on various dates at Davis, California (20): Date Sown

Height at Maturity (inches)

Nov. 17, 1949 Dec. 14, 1949 Feb. 2, 1950 Mar. 16, 1950

59 55 50 41

Figure 3.9. Safflower stalks.

40

Safflower

Figure 3.10. Effect on plant structure of varying plant populations. Source: Weiss (5).

Characteristics of Safflower

41

However, Abel (21) has shown that yield is not correlated to plant height. This has been proven in practice many times; safflower that is 24 inches tall can yield just as well as safflower that is 40–50 inches tall if other conditions, particularly moisture, are satisfactory. Zhou and Zhang have reported on the composition of after-harvest safflower stems for feeding purposes: fat (3%), crude protein (15%), crude cellulose (30%), ash (10%), with total digestible nutrients (TDN) of less than 65% (22). I believe that the TDN reported was overstated, since the figure of 65% seems too high when compared to values found for safflower meal or seed. Leaves Safflower leaves are arranged in a special manner on the stems, often at uneven intervals and set opposite each other. The leaves are divided longitudinally by a noticeable

Figure 3.11. Indian-fan type of branching.

TABLE 3.1 Plant Height in the World Collection of Safflower Germplasm

Exotic average Europe Austria Belgium Bulgaria Cyprus Czechoslovakia Denmark United Kingdom France Germany Greece Hungary Italy Netherlands Poland Portugal Azores Island Romania Spain Switzerland CIS Oceania Australia North America United States Mexico Canada

1,521 138 3 1 1 3 2 1 2 8 11 1 6 5 3 5 31 1 4 17 1 32 17 17 31 25 3 3

Source: Li, Zhou, and Rao (11).

Height Mean (cm) 81 79 87 88 103 58 100 98 94 73 71 55 82 52 67 73 75 98 93 69 71 82 85 85 79 85 78 73

Range 13–251 38–118 75–106

49–63 90–109 76–112 47–108 52–93 65–117 42–60 60–74 66–81 50–99 80–117 44–97 38–118 35–117 35–117 42–113 42–109 62–97 47–113

Origin South America Argentina Africa Algeria Egypt Ethiopia Former South Africa Kenya Libya Morocco Asia Japan Afghanistan Bangladesh India Iran Iraq Kuwait Libya Israel Jordan Korea Pakistan Philippines Syria Thailand Turkey China

Number of Acc. 2 2 113 2 66 16 3 9 9 8 1,397 7 34 12 707 196 4 1 1 26 11 1 89 1 11 2 116 178

Height Mean (cm) 94 94 79 107 82 83 79 64 69 72 81 79 98 83 69 98 90 105 110 80 83 61 65 71 79 91 85 80

Range 78–110 78–110 40–138 97–117 40–138 62–124 74–82 40–75 43–96 47–96 13–251 64–95 50–132 66–102 13–160 31–251 70–105

30–114 65–118 39–126 60–95 85–96 41–125 29–153

Safflower

Number of Acc.

42

Origin

Characteristics of Safflower

43

midrib that is more pronounced next to the stem. There are lightly defined lateral veins leading off the midrib. The leaves are between 2.5 to 5 cm wide and from 10 to 15 cm long with acuminate (pointed) tips. The midrib projects slightly from the tip. Most leaves have serrated edges and are lanceolate in shape but can be ovate to obovate. Figure 3.13 illustrates varying shapes of varieties from different parts of the world. Leaves become shorter and stiffer on the upper reaches of the plant until reaching the terminal bud branches where the leaves become still shorter, ovate to obovate shapes, getting closer and closer together until they crowd on each other in a involucral whorl around the flower head. The Chinese have done studies on the shape of the cotyledons and developed a cotyledon index based on the ratio of length to width. Accessions with a smaller ratio exhibit more resistance to cooler weather (11). The lower leaves on most safflower types are spineless; on the upper leaves the degree of spininess varies from spineless to horrible. Spininess is controlled by multiple genes. The number of spines per leaf varies from zero to 24 and length can be from 1 to 6 mm (23,24). Claassen developed a “spine index” for rating the degree of spininess of a variety. It involves multiplying the number of spines on the outer involucral bract by the length in millimeters of either the longer spines or an estimated average (25). Spineless types naturally are preferred by those harvesting the crop by hand. In countries like India, most safflower is spiny, since much of the crop is grown by small farmers who plant rows of safflower on the borders of their fields to ward off wandering livestock or children (5). Li Dajue et al. classify all 2,648 safflower accessions in the world collections by rating

Figure 3.12. Hail damage that produced a secondary stem.

44

Safflower

1. Mature leaf margins: entire (smooth), serrate, slightly serrated, deeply serrated; 2. Shapes: ovate, obovate, lanceolate, ovate-oblong, oblong; and 3. Spines: none, few, intermediate, many. They found that a majority were inverted lanceolate, with serrated leaf edges and dentate spines. Most spiny types exhibited anceolate leaves and serrated margins (11). A study by Stern and Beech in Australia (26) illustrates the effect of plant density on the number of leaves per plant. As expected, the plants from high plant densities had fewer branches and exhibited fewer leaves per plant (Figure 3.14). Leaf removal has been studied in order to observe its effect on yield and oil content. Removal of all leaves at all stages of maturity reduced yield by only 25% (27). This demonstrates why attacks of rust or alternaria on the lower leaves of safflower during the later stages of growth have little effect on yield, and why grasshopper damage generally does not reduce the yield significantly. In India and Burma, the tender shoots and leaves of young safflower plants are used as herbs or salad ingredients and contain 6% fat, 28% protein, 45% soluble carbohydrates, 9% fiber and 12% ash (all dry weight basis [28]). An analysis of Indian safflower leaves is displayed in Table 3.2. Inflorescence As is typical of all Compositae, when safflower bursts into bloom, the flowers or heads are numerous individual florets gathered closely together on a circular button. The button, or receptacle, is enclosed within a number of layers of involucral bracts that are wrapped around each other tightly and form good protection for the developing

Figure 3.13. Primary Leaves (3rd to 5th leaf) of different types of C. tinctorius showing regional variations: 1, India; 2, Turkestan; 3, Spain; 4, India; 5, Tashkent. Source: Weiss (5).

Characteristics of Safflower

45

Figure 3.14. Effect of plant density on the number of leaves per plant. Source: Stern, and Beech (26). “flower”. Each floret has its own set of bracts in the form of small hairs. The number of florets varies from 20 to 180, depending on the genotype involved and also any environmental effects (particularly plant population [5,30]). Many papers on safflower have included a drawing from Hanelt that provides a clear, though slightly stylized depiction of the parts of the safflower head (Figure 3.15 [31]). TABLE 3.2

Composition of Young Safflower Leaves from India

Component

Concentrationa

Moisture Protein Fat (Ether-Extractable) Mineral matter Carbohydrates Ca P Fe, mg Calorific value/100 gm Carotene (I.U. Vitamin A/100 gm) Thiamin, mg Riboflavin, mg Accorbic Acid, mg Source: a Aykroyd (29), b Gopelan (72).

89.9% 3.3% 0.7% 1.0% 5.1% 0.18% 0.06% 7.6 40.0 5,500

Concentrationb 91.1% 2.5% 0.7% 1.3% 4.5% 0.185% 0.035% 5.7 33 3.54 0.04 0.10 15

46

Safflower

Weiss has provided a very precise technical description of the florets: “The flowers are regular, with five petals united to form a tube usually long and narrow, but divided at the tip into five lobes of varying size. The epidermal cells of the corolla tube, viewed vertically, are roughly rectangular-oblong in shape, with straight walls. Those of the corolla lobes are elongated with sinuous walls, except at the apex, where the cells are small and papillose. On the outer epidermis, near the apex of the corolla lobes, occur scattered papillae, and in the apex cells are prismatic crystals of calcium oxalate. The mesophyll of the corolla tube is transversed by five vascular bundles and five oil canals, and at the origin of the lobes these both branch and transverse the marginal mesophyll of the lobes. The five stamens lie inside the corolla and the anthers are fused into a tube, although the filaments are normally separate. Scattered multicellular, multiseriate hairs occur near the junction of filament and anther. A single vascular bundle containing delicate spiral vessels transverses the filament. Near the apex of the anther, the cells bordering the dehiscent tissue and extending to the margins and anther apex are thick-walled and porous, while those in the region of dehiscence are rectangular-oblong and thin-walled. At maturity the

Figure 3.15. Reproductive structures of safflower. (a) Head showing spiny outer bracts and several flowers. (b) Disk, or tubular flower, showing ovary at base, tubular corolla terminating in five lobes, an anther with short filaments attached to the top of the corolla tube, and the stigma with attached pollen above the anther tube. (c) Anther tube slit on one side and opened up to show the five attached anthers. (d) Stigma with attached pollen and upper portion of the style. (e) Achene (seed). Source: Hanelt (31).

Characteristics of Safflower

47

staminal tube rises above the spreading segments of the corolla as a bright-yellow cylindrical structure. The anthers have introrse dehiscence. The stigmatic surface bristles with spinose papillae, which are up to 180 microns in length at the bulbous base of the stigma, becoming progressively shorter towards the apex” (5).

Claassen has described the process of flower opening in detail: “Before flowering the stigma is enclosed by the five fused anthers, which are attached by very short filaments to the tip of the corolla tube. Usually all florets that open during a given day have begun to elongate by sunrise. Anther dehiscence, which normally occurs soon after sunrise, takes place at the tip of the anther column as the stigma emerges from within the anther tube. The combined elongation of the style through the corolla tube pushes the brush-like stigma through the anther tube until all the stigmatic surface of the pistil has grown well beyond the tip of the anthers. By the time this process of elongation is completed, the stigma is usually well covered with the floret’s own pollen” (32).

The corolla tube is 2–3 cm long, and the five petal lobes are 6.5–8 mm long. The five fused anthers form a tube that is 4 mm long, and the stigma projects beyond the top of this tube by 5–6 mm. Cultivated safflower pollen is yellow, 52–67 µm in diameter and covered with sharp spines when observed through a microscope (33.34). Figure 3.16 shows a typical safflower head before flowering. One can see how the bracts fully cover and surround the developing “flower.” Figure 3.17 depicts a head after it has opened and the individual florets have emerged, and Figure 3.18 is a photo taken from above of a fully opened head after flowering has been completed. The lower bracts on a head usually mimic the characteristics of the upper leaves and the inner bracts tend to be longer. In the monograph by Li Dajue et al. on safflower germplasm, outer involucral bracts are rated for size (length and width in cm), shape (ovate, lanceolate, or long lanceolate), location on the head (basal, middle, and apical; basal and middle only; basal only; and none) and altitude (closed or open [11]). A closed type of head helps to resist rain-associated problems prior to and during flowering, and resists premature shattering at harvest time, whereas a more open head handles later rainfall problems better and promotes easier combining. Spines on the bracts are an important factor in breeding for handpicking and may play a part in insect or bird resistance (11). They are classified as to number (none, few, intermediate, and many), location (tips only, tips and few on apices, tips and few on bases, tips and all over leaf margins, leaf margins), and length (none, short, intermediate, or long). At the base of each flower (floret) is an inferior ovary that grows into a singleseeded fruit, named an achene, that is normally called a seed. Interspersed among the flowers, and subsequently the seeds, are bristles or hairs (31). Sometimes these bristles persist as a tuft (pappus) on the top of the seeds in the center of the head, although this is not usual in commercial varieties. But the hairs (usually white) that surround the seeds can be a problem when using a combine to harvest safflower, as they tend to fly through the air and will sometimes clog radiators (particularly the ones mounted under a machine) or air filters, and start fires. The heads at the ends of main branches, bloom first, followed by the heads on the secondary branches. Within a given head, blooming starts on the periphery and moves toward the center in a centripetal or whorling manner, two rows at a time.

48

Safflower

This goes on for 3–7 days, depending on the variety and environmental factors. It may take 10–40 days for all heads on a plant to bloom. Head size, number of heads per plant, and number of seeds per head are affected by varietal difference and environmental factors. There can be 3–50 flower heads (capitulum) per plant, and head size is 1.25–4 cm in diameter. No matter how harsh the environment safflower will try to make at least three heads, and the yield will be reduced at that point by the production of fewer seeds per head (5). Plants of this sort are often seen in the U.S. Northern Great Plains in years of drought. The collection of the florets and/or the heads for use in medicinals or as a source of dye or food coloring is one of the oldest uses of safflower. Florets are classified by color (white, light yellow, yellow, yellow-orange, red-orange, red, purple, or other) with yellow-orange being the most common color. The color of the florets after flowering may vary from the color during flowering and is discussed in Appendix B. Claassen found that inheritance of flower color is due to four independently inherited pairs of genes (25).

Figure 3.16. Typical safflower buds before flowering.

Characteristics of Safflower

49

Figure 3.17. Safflower after the head has opened and the individual florets have emerged.

Figure 3.18. Overhead view of a safflower head in flower.

50

Safflower

Safflower florets contain two color matters. In China and Sri Lanka, safflower florets for dye making are obtained by hand picking in early morning hours from heads that have not reached full flower. The picked florets are transferred to trays and placed in barns where they can be dried in the absence of moisture and direct sunlight. In Sri Lanka, safflower yields 70–100 kg of florets/hectare (5); in China the yield is 100–150 kg/hectare (personal conversation with Professor Wang Zhaomu, Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Urumqi, June 15, 1993). Dried (red) flowers in Xinjiang, China, have the following composition (22): Flower Component Safflower yellow (includes yellow and 5% red mediums) Safflower red (carthamin) Pollen Lipids (includes 2% volatile oils) Cellulose Pectin protein, saccharides, etc.

Percent 30 2 5 10 40 10

Red florets are the source of two coloring materials, a water-soluble yellow and bright red dye. Yellow florets contain little or no red pigment. The red dye is carthamin, the component that was highly prized in ancient times. In order to extract the red coloring matter, the yellow dye must first be removed. The yellow component (C16H20O11) has a molecular weight of 558.48. The red component, carthamin, (C43H42O22) has a molecular weight of 910.81 and a chemical structure as shown:

Various reports differ as to its molecular weight, structure, and formula (35–40); we are assuming Obara and Onodera’s most recent work (38) and Merck (40) are correct. The yellow pigment is extracted from dried, ground florets that have been mixed with 13–15 parts of water, stirred for 15 min at 20°C, filtered, centrifuged with an amount of methylglycol equal to the amount of safflower in the clarified liquid, dehydrated under vacuum at 35°C with acetone (5–6 times the amount of remaining methyl glycol solution), allowed to rest 30 min, decanted to recover the sediment, rinsed with acetone 2–3 times, and quickly vacuum dried. A bright yellow powder results with a yield of about 28% (Tables 3.3 and 3.4 [35]). Chapter 1 discusses uses of safflower yellow pigment. Carthamin is present in the flowers at 0.3–0.6% (5). It is present in the residue from which yellow pigment has been extracted at 0.4–1.4% (35). It is extracted from the residue by soaking in a sodium carbonate solution at 20–25°C for 1 hour, filtering, centrifuging, adding hydrochloric acid to the clear liquid, passing through a polyamide absorption tower, washing with sodium carbonate again, desalinizing, and vacuum drying quickly. The end result is a dark red granular powder with a

Characteristics of Safflower

51

TABLE 3.3 Physical and Chemical Properties of Safflower Yellow Pigment Character

Normal

Maximum

Taste/smell Color value Solubility

Nil >4000 Water or Methyl Glycol; not in oil 400 nm 5% 10.3%

Nil 8000

Wavelength absorbed Shrink during drying Ash

10%

Source: Zhou and Zhang (22); Wu, Fu, and Zhang (35).

green luster. This can be refined with dimethyl amide and glycol to produce a brighter red material (Tables 3.5 and 3.6 [35,36]). Uses for carthamin, particularly in dyeing silk and cotton, are discussed in Chapter 1. Other dye components in the florets are isocarthamin (C21H22O112H2O) which ultimately converts into carthamin. If carthamin is treated with dilute hydrochloric acid, it converts into a yellow isomer, isocarmine. Carthamadin and isocarthamidin (C15H12O6), two flavanones with melting points of 218°C and 238°C, can be produced from isocarmine (37,39). TABLE 3.4 Trace Elements in Safflower Yellow Pigment Element Ba La Sr Zn Fe As Pb Cu B

µg/g 0.0231 0.0292 0.0863 0.6890 10.850 0.0187 0.2251 0.1026 nd

Element

µg/g

Be Mn Ti Zr Mg Mo Cd Ni

Element

nd 0.0838 0.00097 0.00055 14.00 0.0071 0.0098 nd

Cr Nb U Al Ca Sn Se Hg

µg/g 0.03719 nd nd 2.879 15.22 0.3224 0.1717 nd

Abbreviation: nd = not determined. Source: Wu, Fu, and Zhang (35).

TABLE 3.5 Physical and Chemical Properties of Safflower Red Pigment Character

Normal

Maximum

Taste/smell Color value Solubility

Nil 2647 Ethyl/methyl glycol; not soluble in water

Nil

Wavelength absorbed Shrinkage during drying Ash Source: Wu, Fu, and Zhang (35).

3% 5%

520 nm 10% 15%

52

Safflower

Pollen Safllower pollen is easily gathered and contains the following main components: Component Water Protein Fat Reducing sugar Cane sugar Polysaccharose Total sugar Macro/micro elements

Percent 1.87 21.06 0.064 12.33 8.04 11.05 33.0 13.9

Source: Zhou and Zhang (22).

The principal elements contained are Element Zn Mn Co Cu Fe

Content (µg/g) 22.69 199.5 3.855 17.19 1000

Source: Zhou and Zhang (22).

Seed The fruit of safflower is an achene, which we call a safflower seed. The modern types of safflower seed are normally free of pappus, although it sometimes occurs on some seeds in the center of a head. Claassen reported that one gene and some modifiers control the attached pappus phenomenon (25). Safflower seeds consist of a tough, fibrous hull that protects a kernel made up of two cotyledons and an embryo. The hull makes up 18–59% of the seed weight (41). The color of safflower seeds is generally creamy to white, but in the last 30 years a number of color variations have occurred as researchers have striven for higher oil contents by modifying the thick hull. Normal-hull seed, thin-hull, and gray-, purple-, and brown-striped hull seeds have combined into a variety of hues. TABLE 3.6 Trace Elements in Safflower Red Pigment Element Ba Mn Mo Ti Cu

µg/g

Element

µg/g

Element

µg/g

0.0143 0.0957 0.0154 0.0053 0.0115

La Sr Cd Sn

0.0262 0.0715 0.0084 0.3186

As Zn Cr Sc

0.0181 1.324 0.0361 0.1096

Source: Wu, Fu, and Zhang (35).

Characteristics of Safflower

53

Figure 3.19. Northern Plains Safflower under stress. A normal safflower hull is made up of a number of layers of tissue: the epidermis, hypodermis, outer sclerenchyma, phytomelanin layer, inner sclerenchyma, outer epidermis of the seed coat, the parenchymous layer of the seed coat, inner epidermis of the seed coat, and the endosperm (5,42). The epidermis, hypodermis, parenchymous, and endosperm layers are all very thin. The sclerenchymae are tough, highly lignified layers that produce the characteristic white color. Dividing these layers is a thin layer of melanin, dark brown in color. The two epidermal layers of the seed coat are also brown. Normal-hull varieties, like N-852 or Gila, have relatively thick sclerenchyma layers that completely hide the melanin layer and display the bright white color preferred by birdseed buyers. Rubis found and reported on a mutant that produced a pigmentless hull by eliminating the melanin layer (43) and later showed that this was controlled by the recessive allele @ul:th (44). Most safflower seeds seen in the West today are of similar size, shape, and color because the objectives of higher oil content, disease resistance, and higher yields have influenced a number of traits. However, safflower seeds in the world collection are quite diverse. In 2,549 accessions, seed weight varies from 105 gm/1,000 seeds for an accession from Portugal to a low of 14 gm/1,000 seeds for a line from Egypt (11). There is a strong correlation between bushel weight and oil content. The refererence also classifies seed as oval, conical, or crescent shaped. Seed color will vary from the normal white to grayish in some naturally occurring types. The more important color variations have occurred when the thin-hulled character is introduced into breeding programs and/or is combined with other mutations. In the thin-hulled seed, the outer sclerenchyma cells are less lignified than normalhulled seed, which permits the melanin layer to show through and, depending on the degree of lignification present, gives the visible hull a grayish to brownish cast (45). In the gray-striped mutation, the lignification varies in thickness producing a striped effect, while in the purple-striped mutant the melanin layer itself is striped, accentu-

54

Safflower

Figure 3.20 Safflower seeds of several types. ating what shows through the sclerenchyma (5). The brown-striped type has a striped melanin layer, and the lignification in its very thin sclerenchyma is confined only to the areas above and below the stripes in the melanin. For some reason, the brown-striped types exhibit a musty odor and have a low hull percentage, and therefore have a high oil content (44). Often there is a fair amount of variation within a variety of the high oil content types with one seed being white, while the next one is thinner and brown in color. In the last 40 years, individual seed size of the commonly used varieties has ranged between the size of a plump barley kernel and a small sunflower seed (Figure 3.20). Hull percentage relative to the kernel varies widely and is directly related (negatively correlated) to the oil and protein contents of the seed (46). Hull percentages in the World Collection vary between a high of 87.5% and a low of 25% (11), whereas Weiss reported that most normal-hulled seeds have hull percentages ranging between 33–45% (5). Table 3.7 illustrates the composition of the seed, kernel, and hull fractions of safflower having a modern oil content level (47) and Table 3.8 portrays the compositions for seeds of various hull types (48). Present-day safflower varieties grown in various parts of the world are producing seed having values shown in Table 3.9. Robin Saunders of the USDA examined TABLE 3.7 Major Component Percentages in Safflower Seed, Kernel, and Hull Sample Whole seed Kernel Hull Source: Betschart (47).

N

Protein (N x 5.3)

Fat

Fiber

Ash

2.63 3.58 1.08

13.94 18.97 5.72

44.23 66.15 13.03

21.94 2.74 49.38

2.68 3.13 1.96

Characteristics of Safflower

TABLE 3.8

55

Analyses of Safflower Seed from the United Statesa

Whole safflower seed Gila U-5 US-10 Frio Thick-hull hybrid Brown-striped Pigmentless brown-striped Thin-hull Safflower hull Gila U-5 US-10 Frio Thick-hull hybrid Brown-striped Pigmentless brown-striped Thin-hull Safflower kernel Gila U-5 US-10 Frio Thick-hull hybrid Brown-striped Pigmentless brown-striped Thin-hull

Oil

Protein

Fiber

Ash

NFE

38.1 38.5 36.8 40.1 37.8 47.7 42.8 47.2

16.7 17.2 19.4 15.4 17.3 20.3 22.5 21.1

22.3 21.1 22.3 20.8 21.5 11.7 13.6 11.2

2.6 2.3 2.5 2.3 0.7 3.4 3.5 3.3

20.3 20.9 19.0 21.4 22.7 16.9 17.6 17.3

3.2 2.2 1.4 2.7 2.2 5.7 5.6 5.1

4.3 5.0 3.6 4.1 4.1 8.4 8.6 10.0

57.1 58.4 60.0 60.4 63.9 46.9 46.2 45.3

2.0 1.4 1.6 2.2 0.9 4.9 5.1 5.1

33.4 33.0 33.2 30.6 28.9 34.1 34.5 34.5

60.9 61.8 59.0 64.0 58.1 52.7 55.9 62.6

24.9 25.4 29.4 23.0 24.7 24.8 27.4 25.5

1.5 1.5 1.5 1.0 2.8 0.9 2.7 0.9

3.1 2.9 3.2 2.6 3.1 3.1 3.1 3.0

9.5 8.4 6.9 9.4 11.3 8.5 10.9 8.0

aAll analyses are percentages on a moisture-free basis. Source: Guggolz et al., (48).

the sugars in safflower hulls and kernels, and found the values shown in Table 3.10. Table 3.11 illustrates Deosthale’s study comparing trace elements in various Indian oilseeds, including safflower. Safflower seed used for bird feeding generally comes from varieties having a thicker and whiter hull. High quality birdseed has bright white hulls; no cracking, sprouting, breaking, or weather staining; no attached pappus; and low admixture levels. Seeds produced in areas that have no summer rains, such as California’s Central Valley, tend to be of the highest quality. However, the production cost in California when compared with other areas, such as the Great Plains, India, Canada, or China, tends to limit the incorporation of Californian seed in bird-feeding mixtures when weather factors do not limit production or quality from less costly areas. Oil As a semidrying industrial oil, safflower oil’s absence of linolenic fatty acid combined with a high linoleic level and low color values gave it an ability to produce

56

Safflower

TABLE 3.9 Characteristics of Commercial Safflower Production Country or Region United States California Arizona N. Gr. Plainsa Utah/Idaho Canada Mexico San Jose/Quir. Normal types U.S. types Argentina India China Australia

Oil Content

Moisture Protein in Solvent- % Linoleic Acid in % Extracted Meal Total Fatty Acids

39.5–44 39–41.5 25–41 38–42 32–35

4–5 4–5 5–9 5–7 5–9

25 25 24 25 24

75–78 72–78 76–81 76–78 76–81

30–38 35–37 35–37 35–36 32 28–32 35–38

5–12 5–12 5–12 6–12 7–8 7–8 5–9

24 24 24 23–24 21–24 25–28 24

60–70 72–77 72–77 72–76 72–78 76–82 70–76

aWide range caused by loss of oil content in years of early frost. The high is based on the S-541 variety; the normal range for local varieties is 35–38%. Source: Smith (unpublished data).

nonyellowing white paints of unparalleled quality, and, as an edible oil, safflower oil exhibits the highest polyunsaturated level and P/S (polyunsaturated/saturated) levels commercially available. Its low color, lack of wax, low FFA, and unsapoinfiable levels allow it to be easily refined and deodorized. Almost all of the oil in safflower seed is found in the kernel; almost none is in the hull (Table 3.8). Safflower oil can be described as pale yellow or golden in color with a bland or slightly nutty flavor depending on the method of processing. It contains low levels of phosphatides and unsaponifiables, 0.5 and 0.3–1.34%, respectively (51). TABLE 3.10 Distribution of Sugars in Safflower Hull and Kernel Safflower Component

Sugars Present

Kernel

Uronic sugar glycosides Raffinose Sucrose Galactinl Total Uronic sugar glycisides Raffinose Sucrose Galactinol D-Glucose D-Fructose Total

Hull

Source: saunders (49).

% Distribution of Sugars 14.3 35.8 46.9 3.0

38.9 6.8 22.6 2.7 14.6 14.2

% Sugars

% Sugars on Defatted Basic (calc.)

0.43 1.08 1.42 0.09 3.02

7.74

0.37 0.06 0.21 0.025 0.14 0.13 0.94

0.79

TABLE 3.11

Mineral and Trace Element Composition of Some Oilseedsa Mustard

Groundnut

Safflower

6 6.6±0.02 872±35 1232±28 521±42 9.3±0.43 122±21 13.2±0.26 22.9±1.70 2.02±0.068 0.87±0.052

8 4.7±0.21 767±41 318±25 273±18 7.9±0.34 48±3.7 25.6±4.09 8.3±0.44 0.89±0.105 0.63±0.058

19 3.3±0.09 500±8 77±6 239±4 2.5±0.23 30±1.6 11.0±0.76 9.0±0.53 1.66±0.173 0.48±6.031

6 2.1±0.15 367±10 214±28 241±18 4.6±0.13 52±3.3 11.0±0.78 15.8±1.54 0.54±0.08 0.45±0.060

aAll values are mean±SEM for dry weight of the sample.

Characteristics of Safflower

No. of Varieties Ash (g %) P (mg/100g) Ca (mg/100g) Mg (mg/100g) Fe (mg/100g) Zn (µg/g) Mn (µg/g) Cu (µg/g) Mo (µg/g) Cr (µg/g)

Sesame

Source: Deosthale (50).

57

Characteristic

Saponification value Iodine value (Wijs) Unsaponifiable, % Peroxide value (at time of shipment) Moisture and volatile, (AOCS Method Ca 2d-25) Insoluble impurities, % (AOCS Method Ca 3–46) Moisture and impurities, % Principal fatty acids, % of TFA Palmitic Stearic Oleic Linoleic Linolenic a

Nonbreak grade, NIOP.

b

Edible grade, NIOP.

Source: NIOP (54); Smith, unpublished data.

Minimum

Maximum (Per NIOP Trading Rules)

8–10 2–3+a

11a 4a

0.5–1.0 redb 0.919–0.924 1.473–1.476 15–17 300+

15 yellow/1.5 redb

0.15–0.6 0.03–0.05b 186–194 141–147 0.3–0.6 0–1.0b 0.03–0.1 0.01–0.1 0.05–0.1a 4–6 1–2 16–12 79–79 Nil

250 2 0.05b 140

72

155 1.5 1.0b 0.8 0.3 0.1a

Safflower

Physical Color (Gardner) Color after heat bleaching, 600°F Color, refined, bleached, deodorized (AOCS Method Cc 13b-45) Specific gravity, 25/25°C Refractive index, np 25°C Titer, °C Flash point, °F Chemical Free fatty acids, % as oleic

Usual Range (California Oils)

58

TABLE 3.12 Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Safflower Oil

Characteristics of Safflower

59

TABLE 3.13 Fatty Acid Composition (%) in Safflower Oil Fatty Acid

Codex Standard

< C14 <0.1 Myristic acid <1.0 Palmitic acid 2–10 Palmitoleic acid <0.5 Stearic acid 1–10 Oleic acid 7–42 Linoleic acid 55–81 Linolenic acid <1.0 Arachidic acid <0.5 Eicosenoic acid <0.5 Behenic acid <0.5

California

Great Plains

4–6

4–6

1.5–2.5 16–12 75–79 0.15 0.2

1.5–2.5 14–10 77–81 0.20 0.2

0.2

0.2

Source: Codex Standard (55); Smith, unpublished data.

The phospholipids included are phosphatidyl choline, phosphatidyl ethanolamine, phosphatidyl myoinositol, and phosphatidyl serine, approximately 36, 15, 23, and 20%, respectively (52). The major fatty acid found in the phosphatides is linoleic acid, and the unsaponifiables are mostly sterols and terpenes (53). The high level of linoleic fatty acid, the low levels of saturated fatty and linolenic acids, the absence of waxes, low free fatty acids (FFA), low unsaponifiables, and light color are the factors that have made safflower oil attractive to consumers (Table 3.12 [see Chapter 15 for a discussion of oleic and other types of safflower]). Table 3.13 lists the levels of fatty acids in U.S. safflower oils, Table 3.14 lists tocopherols and sterols. Of course, the high level of polyunsaturates and relatively low level of a-tocopherol contribute to safflower oil’s limited shelf life and low AOM (56). TABLE 3.14 Tocopherol and Sterols in Safflower Oil Component (mg/kg) a-Tocopherol b-Tocopherol T-Tocopherol s-Tocopherol a-Tocopherol/linoleic acid Sterols (%) Cholesterol Campesterol Stigmasterol D7-Campesterol b-Sitosterol D5-Avenasterol D7-Stigmastenol D7-Avenasterol Unidentified

Value 223 7 33 3.9 0.28 Itoh, et al. 13 9 52 1 20 3 2

Conte, et al. 0.88 10.67 6.32 2.53 54.24 2.22 17.56 3.03 3.55

Source: Miller-Mulot (57); Itoh, Tamura, and Matsumoto (58); and Conte et al. (60).

60

Safflower

TABLE 3.15 Minimum/Maximum levels of Principal Fatty Acids in Safflower Seed from the World Collection Fatty Acid Palmitic Stearic Oleic Linoleic

Maximum Value

Origin of Seed

Minimum Value

Origin Origin of Seed

29.03 5.71 81.84 88.30

India Syria Bangladesh China

2.10 0.0 5.0 11.13

China Many China Bangladesh

Source: Li, Zhou, and Rao (11).

Muller-Mulot (57) determined the levels of tocopherol in safflower oil as reported in Table 3.14. Itoh, Tamura, and Matsumoto separated the sterols and other fractions in the 0.6% unsaponifiables in a typical U.S. safflower oil (58,59). They reported 58% of the unsaponifiables to be sterols, 27% to be hydrocarbons and aliphatic alcohols, 11% to be triterpene alcohols, and 4% to be methyl sterols. Table 3.14 lists their findings for sterols compared with the later sterol analysis of Conte, Frega, and Capella (60) on a widely distributed U.S. seed type (Saffola-541). Oil extracted from safflower seeds in the World Collection shows quite a range of oil content and fatty acid distribution. Making use of these differences and incorporating them in breeding programs is what has allowed safflower to become commercially successful and continues to drive some research programs aimed at new varieties. Table 3.15 illustrates the differences in distribution of the principal fatty acids. An accession from the United States demonstrates the highest oil content, 47.45%, while one from China produces the lowest, 11.48% (11). Compared to sunflower oil, safflower oil produced from a given variety is much less influenced by environmental effects, such as temperature at time of flowering, altitude, latitude, or date of planting. Safflower oil produced from seed grown in North Dakota versus seed produced in northern Mexico or California demonstrates only a 0.5–3% difference in linoleic fatty acid levels, whereas sunflower oil produced from North Dakota seed can easily produce 10–20% more linoleic acid than sunflower seed grown in Texas. Similarly, the variation in fatty acid distribution in the oil from a given variety of safflower is quite small from one season to the next (0–1.5%) at a given geographical location. Safflower oil researchers have long noted that as the linoleic acid level decreases, the oleic level increases proportionately (56,61). Meal Safflower meal is the remnant or by-product of the process of extracting oil from safflower seeds. The chemical analysis of meal is generally not what one would expect by analyzing the seed and subtracting the oil fraction. This is because commercially handled seed contains some moisture and foreign matter. The moisture levels may change because of the addition or loss of water during or after the extraction process, while most of the foreign matter from the seed is found in the meal. Sometimes these differences produce unexpected results. Meal is an imprecise product and very difficult to measure, since it can appear to vary almost spoonful by spoonful.

Characteristics of Safflower

61

Safflower meal or cake also varies greatly depending on the process of extraction. In India, much of the safflower crop is processed in small local mills, called ghani (5), a mortar and pestle arrangement. This process can leave 10–15% of the oil in the residual cake. Extraction by means of expeller presses can reduce the level to 6–8%, while a solvent extraction mill can bring the residual oil content down to 0.5–2%. Another variable is whether the seed has been decorticated prior to extraction, the degree of decortication, or whether the meal has been tailend decorticated (fractionated by sifting, grinding, and air flotation). Yet another variable often involved is whether the factory adds water, spent filter clay, acidulated soapstock, foots or other by-products of the milling and refining process to the meal or cake before shipping to the consumer. The meal or cake from ghani production is usually partially dehulled before milling. Most safflower seed processed in the United States or Mexico is performed by expeller or extruder prepressing of whole seeds followed by solvent extraction of the pressed cake. At the present time in the United States, the energy cost expended in removing hulls is higher than the return obtained from the higher valued high-protein safflower meal, so very little decortication takes place. Safflower cake as it comes from the extraction process must generally be crumbled or ground to a particular screen size to suit the desires of the majority of customers. In the Great Plains more of the safflower cake produced has been pelleted into fortified cubes for spreading on cattle ranges during winter months, whereas in California or Mexico all of the cake produced is ground or crumbled and marketed to feed mixers that employ the product in dairy or poultry feed. Relatively little is sold directly to cattle-feed yards. For humans, safflower meal has a slightly bitter taste. Some attempts have been made to employ safflower meal or defatted flour in the production of spun protein fibers for human consumption, but the bitter flavor and a lack of largescale production prevented the work from going forward. Although humans find it unpalatable, it is not rejected by cattle or poultry. It is grayish tan to brown in color (depending upon the degree of toasting after extraction) with whitish flecks of hull. If finely ground, it is relatively dusty, presenting a control problem when loading trucks in a strong wind or pouring meal from an elevator spout into a vessel’s hold. Table 3.16 lists typical analyses for various types of safflower meal produced in the United States since 1949. The relatively high-fiber content in meals produced from undecorticated seed is its biggest drawback. On an amino acid level it is somewhat deficient in lysine and methionine, but it can be corrected with proper supplements. Table 3.17 lists its principal amino acids and mineral constituents. Meal produced as a result of decortication has higher protein and lower fiber levels, giving it higher feed value. Mechanical decortication is costly. If decortication could be accomplished by using breeding programs to reducing hull thickness without lowering seed yield, then a way would be open to improve the value of a safflower program. This would enable the processor to either lower the cost of oil, cost of meal, or to share the resulting greater profit with growers. The Saffola 161 variety produced and processed by PVO in the 1960s had the potential to do this, but the harvesting and milling equipment available at the time did not allow this program to succeed and yields obtained were not satisfactory.

62

Safflower

TABLE 3.16 Typical Analyses for U.S. Safflower Meal Expeller Meal A

B

Crude protein, % 28 20.05 Crude fat, % 5 6.3 Moisture, % 5.2 Crude fiber, % 28 36.1 Ash Ca, % Total P, % NFE, % 23 TDN, %

C

Solvent-Extracted D

E

20.0 21.5 6.6 6.0 9.0 8.0 32.2 32.8 3.7 4.0 0.23 0.35 0.61 0.90 26.5 52 50.1

F

G

20.00 25.4 42.0 0.5 1.5 1.3 10.0 8.0 9.2 37.0 32.5 15.1 5.0 5.9 7.8 0.34 0.37 0.4 0.84 0.8 1.25 52

57.0

Tail Ends H

I

J

42

20

7

69

Source of meal: A. Partially dehulled expeller meal from Western Solvents Inc., Longmont, Colorado; tag analysis, 1949–50. B. 18% expeller meal from Western Solvents Inc., Longmont, Colorado, 1950. C. Expeller meal from Allen (62). D. Expeller meal from Morrison (63). E. Solvent-extracted meal from Allen (62). F. Solvent-extracted meal typical in California, 1992. G. Decorticated, extracted meal from Allen (62). H. Tail-end decortication from PVO, 1963. I. Tail-end middle fraction from PVO, 1963. J. Tail-end hulls from PVO, 1963.

TABLE 3.17 Amino Acids and Minerals in Safflower Meal Produced by Expeller, Solvent Extraction, and High-Protein Solvent Extraction Expeller Amino Acids, % Methionine Cystine Lysine Tryptophane Threonine Isuleucine Histidine Valine Leucine Arginine Phenylalanine Glycine Minerals, % Ca P 0.78 K 0.79 Mg

Solvent Extraction

High-Protein, Solvent Extraction

0.4 0.5 0.7 0.3 0.47 0.28 0.48 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.0 1.1

0.33 0.35 0.7 0.26 0.5 0.27 0.5 1.0 1.2 1.9 1.0 1.1

0.69 0.7 1.3 0.6 1.35 1.7 1.0 2.5 2.5 3.7 1.85 2.4

0.27 0.81 0.82 0.36

0.37 1.40 1.19 0.37

0.38

Source: Allen (62); and Bath, et al. (64).

1.11

14.5

Characteristics of Safflower

63

From 1960 to 1970, Japan became a major importer from California and Mexico of 20% protein safflower meal, 42% protein safflower meal, and 6% protein safflower hulls. Both types of meal were employed in Japan as ingredients in various beef, dairy, poultry, and fish pellet formulations, and the safflower hulls were popular as a filler. In recent years this business has ceased, as Japan found cheaper feedstuffs in China. Safflower cake from ghani production has been used in India as a fertilizer and soil conditioner. Because of its high lignin content, it takes longer to decompose in the ground than castor pomace or peanut (groundnut) cake, but is reported to have an excellent effect on soil structure (65). Chavan (6) measured the average nutritional levels for Indian safflower cake manures as follows: Source of Cake Nitrogen Whole Seed 4.92 Hulled Seed 7.88

Phosphoric Acid 1.44 2.20

Potash 1.23 1.92

Forage As noted elsewhere, safflower is the only green crop visible in the U.S. Northern Great Plains when it is approaching the flowering stage. This quality allows it to be considered as a forage crop, particularly in years when the crop has been damaged for oil-milling purposes by frost; rain; or lack of sufficient heat units, the number of days at a temperature, to reach maturity. Weiss reports that safflower has been successfully grazed in a number of countries (5). Australian data shows that safflower can be grazed continually 8 weeks after planting, producing green yields of 5,021 and 17,324 kg/hectare in 1957 and 1959, respectively, while oats delivered 5,272 and 9,041 kg/hectare, respectively. Total dry yield was 2,762 kg/hectare for safflower and 2,008 for oats in 1959 (66). An analysis of safflower and oats as grazing crops appears in Table 3.18, which also contains a comparison between Indian safflower hay and alfalfa hay. A series of papers by Mehrotra and others show safflower to be quite promising for the production of fodder as well as ratooned seed for farms in northern India (68–71). In 1993, safflower in Montana which failed to reach maturity because of an inadequate growing season was cut for silage and yielded 8,000 pounds green matter with an 18% protein analysis (personal communication, Chuck Crowell). TABLE 3.18 Comparison of Safflower to Other Grazing and Hay Crops Crop Safflower grazing (Australia) 1st sample (July) 2nd sample (Sept.) Oats grazing (Australia) Sample (July) Safflower hay (India) Alfalfa hay

Moisture Fat Protein Fiber

Ash NFE TDN

CaO P2O5

2.52 1.02 2.57 0.77

— —

1.8 2.6

11.2 12.3

14.1 19.1

17.1 11.2

— 9.0 9.6

3.8 2.2 1.8

18.0 11.2 14.3

20.5 28.6 29.6

13.3 — — 0.51 1.34 7.8 41.2 59.8 — — 8.2 36.5 50.3 — —

Source: Morrion (63); Braun (66); and Rao and Ayyangar (67).

— —

— —

64

Safflower

References 1. Henderson, D.W., Calif. Agric. 16: 11 (1962). 2. Progressive Agriculture, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 1951. 3. Knowles, P.F., Improvement of Oil-Seed and Industrial Crops by Induced Mutations, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1982, pp. 89–101. 4. Knowles, P.F., M.D. Miller, D.W. Henderson, C.L. Foy, E.C. Carlson, J.M. Klisiewicz, J.R. Goss, L.G. Jones, and R.T. Edwards. Safflower-Circular 532, University of California, Davis, California, 1965, p. 10. 5. Weiss, E.A., Castor, Sesame, and Safflower, Barnes and Noble, Inc., New York, 1971, pp. 557–765. 6. Chavan, V.M., Niger and Safflower, Indian Central Oilseeds Committee, Examiner Press, Bombay, India, 1961. 7. Argikar, G.P., I.R. Morbad, and V.V. Thobbi, Ind. Oilseeds J. 1: 228 (1957). 8. Temple, S.R., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 10: 371 (1970). 9. Rubis, D.D., Genetics of Safflower Seed Characters Related to Utilization, Safflower Utilization Research Conference, USDA, ARS Publ., 1967, pp. 74–93. 10. “Accidental Discovery Leads to New Type Safflower Seed,” Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, August 19, 1962. 11. Li, D., M. Zhou, and V.R. Rao, Characterization and Evaluation of Safflower Germplasm, Geological Publishing House, Beijing, 1993, pp. 10–233. 12. Leon, R., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 4: 441 (1964). 13. Fernandez-Martinez, J., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 17: 516 (1978). 14. Abel, G.H., and M.F. Driscoll, Crop Sci. 16: 213 (1976). 15. Ashri, A., D.E. Zimmer, A.L. Urie, and A. Cahaner, Crop Sci. 14: 799 (1974). 16. Rao, V.R., M. Ranacgabdran, and V. Arunachalam, Theor. Appl. Genet. 50: 185 (1977). 17. Khidir, M.O., J. Agric. Sci., Camb. 83: 197 (1974). 18. Subbia, V., and M.R. Sivaram, Ind. Oilseeds J. 9: 155 (1965). 19. Ashri, A., D.E. Zimmer, A.L. Urie, and P.F. Knowles, Theor. Appl. Genet. 46: 395 (1975). 20. Knowles, P.F., and M.D. Miller, Safflower in California, University of California, Davis, California, mimeographed bulletin, April, 1958, p. 10. 21. Abel, G.H., Agron. J. 68: 448 (1976). 22. Zhou, X., and Q. Zhang, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 897–902. 23. Claassen, C.E., Agron. J. 42: 381 (1950). 24. Ashri, A., and Y. Effron, Crop Sci. 5: 510 (1964). 25. Claassen, C.E., Bull. 171 Nebraska Agric. Exp. Sta., Lincoln, Nebraska, 1952, 28 pp. 26. Stern, W.R., and D.F. Beach, Aust. J. Agric. Res. 16: 801 (1965). 27. Urie, A.L., L.N. Leininger, and D.E. Zimmer, Crop Sci. 3: 747 (1968). 28. Sahasrabuddhe, D.L., Bombay Bull. No. 124, Department of Health, Bombay, India, 1925. 29. Aykroyd, W.R., Health Bul. No. 23, 4th edn., Ministry of Health, New Delhi, India, 1951. 30. Wu, Y., D. Li et al., Safflower, Agricultural Publishing House, Beijing, 1982, p. 146. 31. Hanelt, P., Zeit. Feddes Repert 67: 41 (1963). 32. Claassen, C.E., Agron. J. 42: 321 (1950).

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33. Knowles, P.F., in Hybridization of Crop Plants, edited by Fehr, E.R. and Hadley, H., American Society of Agronomists and The Crop Science Society of America, Madison, Wisconsin, 1980, pp. 539–540. 34. Ashri, A., Cytogenetics and Morphology of Carthamus L. Species and Hybrids, Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1957. 35. Wu, S., J. Fu, and R. Zhang, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing, 1993, pp. 869–889. 36. Wada, M., Japanese Patent 8,943 (1955). 37. Kuroda, C., J. Chem. Soc. (Japan): 752 (1930). 38. Obara, H., and J. Onodera, Chem. Letters: 201 (1975). 39. Mayer, F., The Chemistry of Natural Colouring Matters, Reinhold Publishing Corporation, New York, 1943. 40. Buclaverie, S., et al., (ed.), The Merck Index, 11th edn., Merck & Co., Inc, Rahway, New Jersey, 1989, p. 285. 41. Applewhite, T.H., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 406 (1966). 42. Vaughan, J.C., The Structure and Utilization of Oilseeds, Chapman & Hall, London, 1970. 43. Rubis, D.D., Abst. Am. Soc. Agron, 58th Meeting, Madison, Wisconsin, 1966. 44. Rubis, D.D., First Research Conference on Utilization of Safflower, Albany, California, 1967, pp. 23–28. 45. Ebert, W.W., and P.F. Knowles, Am. J. Bot. 55: 421 (1968). 46. Yuan, G., D. Li, Z. Wu, Y. Han, and Z. Fan, Proceedings of the Second International Safflower Conference, New Delhi, India, 1983. 47. Betschart, P.A., J. Food Sci. 40: 1010 (1975). 48. Guggolz, J., D.D. Rubis, V.V. Herring, R. Palter, and G.D. Kohler, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 45: 689 (1968). 49. Saunders, R.M., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 254 (1970). 50. Deosthale, Y.G., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 58: 988 (1981). 51. Burkhardt, H.J., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 48: 697 (1971). 52. Burkhardt, H.J., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 69 (1970). 53. Fedeli, E., N. Cortesi, F. Camurat, and C. Jacini, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 49: 233 (1972). 54. National Institute of Oilseed Products, Trading Rules, 1993–94, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1993, pp. 81–83. 55. Codex Standard 27–1981 Suppl. 1, 1983. 56. Salunke, D.F., J.K. Chavan, R.N. Adusle, and S.S. Kadam, World Oilseeds, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1992, pp. 339–348. 57. Muller-Mulot, W., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 53: 732 (1976). 58. Itoh, T., T. Tamura, and T. Matsumoto, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 50: 122 (1973). 59. Itoh, T., T. Tamura, and T. Matsumoto, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 50: 300 (1973). 60. Conte, L.S., N. Frega, and P. Capella, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 60: 2003 (1983). 61. Knowles, P.F., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 46: 130 (1969). 62. Allen, R.M.B., Feedstuffs 65: 28 (1993). 63. Morrison, F.B., Feeds and Feeding, Morrison Publishing Co., Clinton, Iowa, 1961, p. 600. 64. Bath, D., J. Dunbar, J. King, S. Berry, and S. Olbrich, Feedstuffs 62: 31 (1990).

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65. Daji, J.A., Indian Farming 4: 353 (1943). 66. Braun, P.J.C., Experiences in 1957 and 1959 of the Grazing Value of Safflower, Biloela Reg. Expt. Sta., Biloela, Australia, 1960. 67. Rao, N.P., S.G. Ayyangar, Ind. Oil. J. 1: 22 (1956). 68. Mehrotra, N., and G.P. Shukla, Haryana Agric. Univ. J. Res. 3: 195 (1973). 69. Mehrotra, N., S.K. Arora, and P.P. Jain, Sym. Strategy and Experimental Approaches for Genetic Improvement of Forages for Increased Animal Productivity, Abstr. 32, Indian Society of Genetics, Haryana Agricultural University, Hissar, India, 1975. 70. Singh, I.J., and N. Mehrotra, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 225–227. 71. Mehrotra, N., and B.D. Chaudhary, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 155–159. 72. Gopetan, C., B.V. Rama Sashri, S.C. Balasubramanians, Nutritive Value of Indian Foods, National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, India, 1982.

Chapter 4

Development of the PVO Strategy

In my talk at the World Conference on Edible Fats and Oils Processing in October 1989 (1), I outlined the PVO strategy:

1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

7.

8.

“Although PVO had a near monopoly on safflower planting seed and would sell its best seed only to those growers who contracted their production with the company, PVO worked hard to create a paternalistic project for the development of safflower worldwide, tying growers and consumers together through its good auspices. They used several methods to accomplish this: PVO offered growers contracts guaranteeing to buy whatever they produced from a given acreage at a guaranteed floor price, and provided planting seed for cash and credit and field service free of charge. In addition to the floor price, the grower was paid an additional bonus after harvest, reflecting the results of PVO’s market efforts. This was probably the first example of contract farming for a nonperishable crop. Growers were also offered long-term contracts that guaranteed to pay them a 50% share of PVO’s marketing results in return for their commitment to grow exclusively for PVO for the next 3–7 years. Pacific Oilseeds was encouraged to develop better varieties of safflower by being granted bonuses from PVO reflecting one-half the value of increase in oil or protein content produced by new varieties. Safflower oil and meal prices were kept as low as possible to try to encourage buyers to develop growing markets. PVO offered Requirement Contracts to buyers interested in assuring themselves of a steady supply of safflower seed. Under these contracts, buyers pledged to buy their entire seed or oil requirements from PVO and paid a small fee over and above normal contract price in exchange for being guaranteed to be supplied their full requirements. PVO built and operated four oil mills in California aimed at processing safflower together with three refining and kettle bodying plants; built additional oil mills to serve growers in Sidney, Nebraska and Culbertson, Montana; and with joint contract partners, built three plants in Spain plus one in Mexico and another in Australia. Planting seed subsidiaries were established, and programs were established to introduce the crop to growers in each of these other areas. In addition, PVO did cooperative work with the USDA and several state researchers in both the planting seed and utilization fields to develop varieties and cultural practices suitable for other localities and to develop better markets for safflower oil and meal.”

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how the strategy evolved. We will start with contractual relations with farmers. 67

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Grower Contracts The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s basic philosophy was to offer a guaranteed minimum price for the grower’s entire production from a given field, together with a maximum price. The grower’s final price was to be determined by PVO’s market price at the time of harvest. If the market fell below the guaranteed minimum, the grower was protected by the guaranteed minimum. On the other hand, PVO was compensated by having its upward risk protected by the maximum price. In 1951, the minimum guaranteed price was $85/short ton (ST) delivered to PVO’s San Francisco mill; the maximum was $100. In 1952, we offered several options to make this more flexible. The “A” option guaranteed an $80 floor and a $100 ceiling. A “B” option offered $90 for one-half of a farmer’s production with the balance priced at PVO’s market price at time of harvest. Option “C” allowed the grower to commit his entire crop to PVO, but left the price open until harvest time. This option was never very popular and was quickly dropped. By 1954, a “D” option was added as a response to growers concerned about the equitability of PVO’s price, since there were no other buyers around. The “D” option tied the price to the Chicago Board of Trade quotations for November delivery soybeans and December soybean meal. The grower was given a chart to determine the price and was allowed to declare the price on the entire crop or any 50-ton position at any time between March 20 and November 20, 1954. This contract resolved the farmers’ complaints about the lack of an independent measure, but it proved too complicated for most people and was dropped at the end of 1954. After that, PVO stayed with two basic contract formats—either a firm price negotiated at contract time for the entire crop, or a floor/ceiling contract with final price set by PVO’s market at time of harvest. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation also began to pay bonuses to growers over and above what was required on the face of its contracts. The intent of the bonus was to reward growers for contracting with PVO by sharing PVO’s marketing results with them. In later years, particularly when competitors began to emerge in the early 1960s, the bonus was used very effectively as a buying tool. For example, PVO could announce at harvest time that sales already made against the incoming crop would allow the company to pay each contracted grower a bonus of $5.00/ton the following March. Or, if the competition was making contracting tough for PVO and offering a slightly higher price for the next season than PVO was offering, a bonus could be announced in February, payable to all growers who delivered the previous crop. During the latter part of the 1950s, PVO went one step farther, creating the Profit Sharing Contract (PVO memorandum, Joe Smith to B.T. Rocca Jr., March, 1959). This evolved from a series of discussions between Claassen, Rocca Jr., Joe Martin Jr. (a law partner of PVO’s Attorney and one of its Directors, Dudley Miller), and me. At first we tried to devise a genuine growers’ cooperative that would hire PVO to manage its affairs and process its seed, but we felt that this would be quite unwieldy and dangerous, since its members would be able to fire PVO and join forces with a PVO competitor.

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After many drafts, we devised a contract in which the grower would commit to growing safflower exclusively for PVO for a stated number of years and to buying planting seed from PVO or its affiliates each year. In turn, PVO agreed to guarantee growers a minimum price of $70/ST for the first 2 years of the contract (it was extended later to the entire contract period) The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation would also enter into a standard annual contract with the grower each year for what ever acreage was planted at that year’s floor price plus one-half of PVO’s processing margin/ton of seed as calculated by PVO’s auditors. PVO’s long-term contract form was announced with great fanfare on June 13, 1960, at PVO’s annual grower meetings in Sacramento and proved to be an immediate hit. In later years the contract was modified to include PVO’s export margin as well. The bonuses PVO had paid to growers had been successful, but they were arbitrary since PVO made the decision of whether or not and when the bonuses were paid. At first, growers had viewed the bonus idea with skepticism, but some of this resistance broke down when they received the check. Over time, the bonuses created a feeling of loyalty toward PVO and indirectly to Claassen, PVO’s agent in the field; the long-term contract created a much stronger bond between PVO and its growers. Now, many growers felt that they were truly partners with PVO in its endeavor to promote greater amounts of safflower, and in fact they were legally bound (usually for 3–7 years) not to work with anyone else. This created a very tough hurdle for competitors when challenges to PVO began in the 1960s. The long-term contract allowed PVO to keep its account books confidential, since only PVO’s auditors made the long-term bonus determination. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation could still use its arbitrary bonus payment if it wished, and at times paid growers more than the audited figures would require in order to gain their favor for the ensuing year. Several other factors were built into all of PVO’s contracts that I believe helped make them very successful. The first was done at the very outset by getting together with the State of California to define a set of standards (see Appendix D), which were incorporated in the contract. The contracts called for safflower to be bought on a clean seed (pure) basis. This meant that the grower was rewarded for delivering a quality harvesting job. The contracts also provided for sampling and analysis to be performed by a third party. Sampling was performed by representatives of the state of California whenever possible or an outside elevator operator, if not, and the state of California performed the analyses. It was most helpful to have a knowledgeable and impartial third party involved in sampling and analysis matters to eliminate most disputes and remove doubt. Finally, the contracts called for prompt payment, and PVO believed in doing its utmost to pay the farmer as soon as weight certificates and analysis results were received. This also built a feeling of loyalty toward PVO—they could be trusted to pay a grower and the landlord quickly and accurately. Some growers did not want prompt payment. For tax reasons they preferred to be paid after January or March of the following harvest. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was happy to do

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this, and offered this method as an option, paying growers interest in return for accepting deferred payments. Copies of all settlements with growers were sent immediately upon payment to Claassen, Hoagland, and Albert Hoffman, or the individual that had actually executed a grower contract on PVO’s behalf. If the grower had a complaint about the calculation of the settlement, or if we misapplied seed from one contract to another, this placed our representative in a position to know what had happened and, if necessary, to intervene with either the company or the grower to correct any mistakes quickly. Copies of settlements were also used to determine and pay buying commissions to the company’s field agents.

Grower Service/Planting Seed Production and Research The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation paid Western Oilseeds Company a commission for contracting with growers; a similar commission was offered to other country buyers that PVO had dealt with in the past in purchasing flaxseed, sesame seed, or cottonseed. Little came from the other buyers, since they had little knowledge about safflower. Western Oilseeds provided field service to any grower that had questions about a safflower crop, including those signed by others, and they made no effort to steal growers from other agents. The addition of Hoffman, who established his residence in Stockton, California, supplemented this work. Hoffman also added another layer of business for Western Oilseeds. His specialty was hybrid castor bean seed production, and Western Oilseeds was soon engaged in contracting castor acreage on behalf of PVO under a government program to encourage U.S. castor production. By the end of 1952, Western Oilseeds had built up a debt to PVO of over $500,000, covering planting seed production, inventory cost, and research expenditures, none of which was recorded with a memorandum or note. In our efforts to spell out each side’s obligations, conflicts arose. Eventually, I suggested that perhaps the best solution was for PVO to acquire a share in Western Oilseeds by capitalizing the debt, an idea that appealed to Claassen and Hoffman but not to Hoagland, who went into business for himself. Finally, Claassen and Hoffman formed Pacific Oilseeds Inc., on February 15, 1954, and PVO acquired 50% of the shares while Hoffman and Claassen each held 25%. Claassen became President of the firm, Hoffman became Secretary-Treasurer (I soon became Secretary), and Claassen, Hoffman, Rocca Jr., and Ed Hill acted as Directors, while Joe Martin Jr. was Assistant Secretary and legal advisor. I was responsible for putting a proviso into the bylaws which, although it appeared innocent at the time, came back to haunt Claassen after Hoffman died. The proviso ordained that if a shareholder left the company or died, the shares would be acquired by the company for book value and be retired. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation made a contract with POI in which it agreed to share one-half of any gains in profit produced through the development of higher oil/higher-protein plantings by POI versus a yearly comparison with an

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oil/protein base established for competitive seeds. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation also agreed to provide POI access to any of its best commercial fields that POI might select to be used for planting seed stocks. By this means, POI was able to observe fields carefully to ensure that they were free of disease or weed problems, and then reserve this seed in identity-preserved storage until they could determine if it would be needed for planting seed. If not needed, it would be delivered to PVO for crushing. Consequently, POI had no inventory price risk, it sold all seed actually used to PVO, which then resold it to growers contracted on PVO’s behalf by POI, and PVO incurred any loss if the seed was not paid for. Pacific Oilseeds, Inc. chose not to produce seed under the State of California Certification program, but instead produced seeds of equal standard. It was Claassen’s contention that the certification program produced red tape, extra costs, and reduced the flexibility of being able to change quickly when new varieties appeared. In 1953, the N-10 line was introduced, and the Pacific-1 line was introduced in 1956. These varieties both were steps forward in yield and oil content. As acreage began to climb, POI realigned and added to its staff. First, Claassen moved to Woodland to be closer to the center of the acreage he was actually serving and also to be closer to the company’s research plots, most of which were placed on leased land in the Knights Landing or Sutter Basin areas. A technician was added to assist Claassen’s research, and field personnel began to be added to handle contracting and grower assistance for the Sacramento Valley and Delta.

Processing and Handling The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had a reputation of employing used equipment for their production operations, which can be a good strategy if wise decisions am made when acquiring used processing units and integrating them into a well-designed flow of operations. Buying all-new equipment can easily double or triple the cost of a plant, with no gain in productivity. In 1951, PVO acquired the surplus Wooster, Ohio, soybean solvent-extraction plant from General Mills, Inc. (GMI), and installed it at Richmond to process soybeans beginning in November, 1952. This operation was able to process 100 tons of soybeans/day and freed the Richmond expeller plant to process safflower seed. The Wooster extractor was an ancient Anderson vertical tower that did not offer good efficiency for handling safflower seed. In late 1951, PVO was able to install a continuous De Laval refining plant on its Richmond property in order to compete more effectively for contracts to refine cottonseed oil from Commodity Credit Corporation stocks. This also provided a better basis for refining safflower oil in the future. In 1952, PVO was operating a hodgepodge of plants, and flax and copra crushing were entering a long decline. At San Francisco, PVO’s original expeller mill was on its last legs. There was also a batch refinery, and facilities for producing methyl esters, extracting sesamin and sesamol, a drum-loading line, and a large bulk-storage plant primarily filled with oils stored by the Commodity Credit Corporation of

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the U.S. government. In Oakland, Western Vegetable Oil, owned 50% by PVO and 50% by Adolph Schumann, processed copra. In Richmond, the expeller plant crushed not only copra, but also safflower, flax, and castor, while the newly installed solvent plant was aimed at Midwestern soybeans. The Contra Costa Division of Port Costa Packing Co was located in San Pablo, near the Richmond Plant. It was operated by Gordon Roberts and PVO owned a percentage. It was a cramped, bailing wire operation located too far from the centers of cotton production, that primarily processed cottonseed, and peach and apricot kernels, walnuts, or almond surpluses if available. C. Zook Sutton, one of PVO’s founding directors, ran a small plant near Salinas, which PVO helped to finance, processing waste lettuce into lettuce meal feed. Finally, California Flaxseed Corporation operated an expeller mill and kettle-bodying plant at Los Angeles and a leased expeller mill and delinting operation for processing cottonseed at Blythe. The Los Angeles plant processed flaxseed, sesame, and quite often, restaurant waste, to extract low grade tallow or grease. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation operated a large business worldwide in tallow, lard, and grease with blending and refining operations originally at San Francisco, then at Richmond and Los Angeles. George Kopas, my for many years partner, was known as the “Great Master Blender” for his skills in blending various grades of tallow to improve processing margins—a skill he learned from Hill. Hill, who had been with PVO for 20 years in various production capacities, was elected Assistant vice president in early 1953. This was recognition from within PVO that the production side of the business was becoming a more important factor. His primary responsibility was to make sense of and consolidate the many plants that were employing a great deal of labor and only running part time. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was by nature a trading company, and the trading side of the business continued to wield the most power, influence, and privilege. But one only needs to review PVO’s annual reports to sense frustration from the lack of profitability in traditional parts of the business. For example, the 1954 Annual Report commented about the 1953 year: “Crushing margins were generally very unsatisfactory. One exception to the unsatisfactory crushing picture was in our safflower seed operations. Fostering the growing of safflower seed in California by our Farm Department was extremely successful. We were able to operate one mill continuously on safflower seed for most of the year. We are the only supplier in America” (2).

Over time, PVO began to realize that it was necessary in its industrial oil business to maintain more of a balance between production and marketing. Efforts to eliminate inventories at the end of a crop season had to be resisted, so that PVO’s sales representatives could always be in a position to ship safflower oil (or tung, linseed, or castor oils).

Farm or Field Crops Department I first assisted Mance Langford, and then Hill, directly in dealing with safflower contracting and the services involved with contracting, namely: purchasing, storing, and

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distributing planting seed; arranging storage for the crops; developing plans for transporting the crop from the field to the mill or elevator and later transfer of stored seed; setting up schedules for warehouse receipts (where needed), insurance, financing, sampling, and analysis; and finally, writing, printing, and distributing information bulletins and newsletters for growers, farm advisors, newspaper and radio editors, and generally arranging publicity. I headed a department that PVO established to coordinate these activities and to maintain close liaison with POI and any others involved with bringing in a new safflower crop. At first this was called the Farm Department, but eventually the department was renamed the Field Crops Department. As time went on, I was assisted in this effort by Oric Colyer in 1953 and later by Les Hefferline. Finally, in 1960 Wayne Wolcott moved from POI Fresno to take over the functions under me when I became Vice P resident and Secretary of the company. Parallel with the development of safflower acreage, PVO was heavily involved in promoting castor production in Texas, New Mexico, and other western states; this took more than one-half of my time during the 1953–58 period. Hoffman also spent considerable time developing them. As the crop developments spread and PVO’s search for safflower production and markets became worldwide, I assumed responsibility for all of the company’s domestic operations and eventually a division was established—the Domestic Operations Group. This comprised Personnel; Purchasing; Research; Engineering; Field Crops Buying; Industrial, Consumer, and Edible Oils Sales and Marketing; Public and Shareholder Relations; and Production. In 1959, it was decided that Hill would be made Special Assistant to the President, Kopas would become Production Manager and I would become Vice President in addition to being Secretary.

The Beginnings of the PVO Plan Rocca Jr.’s vision for development of a worldwide complex covering every factor in the safflower universe was the basic driving force in developing the PVO plan. By 1954, when Pacific Oilseeds was formed, it had become obvious that safflower could be a successful crop in California. Prices for linseed and soy oils were depressed that year, which forced PVO to lower its safflower minimum guarantee to $70. But in 1952, PVO had taken steps at home and abroad that would be used as stepping stones for safflower-marketing developments later. In 1952, PVO opened offices in Tokyo and Osaka with Japanese partners. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s Japanese offices suffered through some extensive legal battles with the partners involved, but Yuzo Wada, who subsequently became President of Taiheiyo Yushi Kabushiki Kaisha (PVO’s Japan subsidiary [TYK]) was a calm and steady force in getting this business on the right path. Wada started the first safflower business in Japan—initially in the oil form. Japan was extremely short of foreign exchange in the early 1950s. Quite small amounts of safflower oil were imported for paint purposes under a special foreign exchange allocation called Yusen Gaika. This allocation was a form of export incentive in which someone who made an export sale of some type could obtain a fixed amount of valu-

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able foreign exchange to use for importants. Taiheiyo Yushi Kabushiki Kaisha found it difficult to coonvince importers to use their foreign exchange earned in some other line of business for the purpose of importing safflower oil, so it made selling safflower oil quite difficult. In 1952, those of us involved in buying safflower and castor beans were asked to use our relationships with growers and elevators in California to assist with a new commdity for the company, rice, and Curt Rocca of Rocca-Cuvi began to deal in the paddy and brown rice business. This subsequently led to the creation of Pacific International Rice Mills and Stockton Elevators (the latter was a key chip in the development of PVO safflower seed exports). As stated previously, PVO erected its first solvent-extraction plant in 1952 and engaged in extensive cottonseed processing in two California subsidiaries, Contra Costa Division of Port Costa Packing Co. and at California Flaxseed Corporation. Safflower crushing had reached 30,000 tons. In 1953, Theodore W. Lort appeared on the safflower scene in Colorado and made PVO nervous because he reporesented a possible competitor. Lord was founder, President, principal stockholder, and a Director of Western Safflower Corporation. He had previous experience in Lord Grain Copany of Kansas during the 1930–50 period, as President and General Manager of Kansas Soybean Mills from 1940–50, and several other enterprises. In 1950 he began to study safflower. Western Safflower Corporation was founded “to pursue the growing and processing of safflower in Colorado” (3). This company sold some old Nebraska varieties of safflower seed to growers in Colorado in 1953, but abandoned the efforts to sell seed or get contracts started in California and Arizona but was principally successful in generating publicity with his stories about limitless acreage of safflower in the High Plains (4). The pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation began to pubsh for more sales of safflower oil around the nation by adding additional sales representatives (increased to 22 by the early 1960s) and salesmen (Bob Garoutte in San Francisco; Sam Ross, Tom McIneany, and Don Jordan in Los Angeles; and John Retkwa in New York). Dick Hammond, PVO’s Sales Manager, began to feature safflower oil regularly in his weekly PVO market letter, and PVO’s chemists were enlisted to develop a full line of blown, kettle-bodied and blown safflower oils to fill several pages in PVO’s catalog of products. By November 1954, PVO had already produced three safflower bulletins, the last a 78-page, bound volume listing 46 well-tested formulations featuring safflower oil for all types of paint, enamels, stucco coatitngs, undercoats, and primers, plus a full section on applications for conjugated 22G Safflower oil which had been introduced in a 22-page bulletin of its own in August 1953. Over the next 10 years, PVO’s researchers produced more than 20 technical bulletins to support PVO’s safflower sales efforts. Most importantly, PVO maintained a pricing policy for safflower oil that was not greedy. Safflower oil was superior to soybean oil in every way and close to linseed in many ways. For industrial uses in the West, safflower oil had a freight advantage over soy and linseed oils of Midwestern origin. Hammond tried to maintain safflower oil prices on an even keel for buyers who purchased 12 month supplies,

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generally at $0.015/lb over the price of soybean oil (see Table A.15). For the first 2 years safflower oil was marketed in this manner, then in ensuing years it was marketed at a flat price related to production cost. For buyers in the eastern United States, PVO tried to absorb a portion of the freight and handling cost necessary to transport oil to local consumers from eastern delivery points in order to build up volume and interest in future safflower sales. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation also tried to influence the European market, and so in 1953 PVO shipped 3,000 MT of safflower seed on the m.v. Vesuvio to France for Robbe Freres. This was loaded through the port of Oakland at Ralston Purina’s West Coast Wharf and Storage Co. Silo. An additional amount of safflower seed was subsequently shipped to Chiari and Forti of Treviso, Italy. These shipments did not lead to repeat business in Europe, and only occasional small quantities of safflower seed went to Europe, as distressed merchandise or, more importantly, as birdseed. This pattern continued until the 1970s when Portugal became an interested buyer. The safflower world would not sand still, therefore Rocca Jr. began to put together plans so that no foreign or domestic customer that wanted to expand consumption would be disappointed. One step was to improve productive capacity. Hill formulated a long-term master plan of improvement for the Richmond plant using some of the Wooster units, existing expellers for prepressing, incorporating a new Blawknox Roctocel extractor, and subsequently replacing the Schneckens Desolventizer with a new Blawknox unit. This plant was constructed in 1955 at Richmond with the desolventizer being added in 1957, doubling the plant’s capacity. In 1958, an improved mean-handling facility was added, and in 1959 a 10,000-ton safflower seed storage building was erected. At about this time, the dock facilities were also modernized so that oils could be loaded or discharged through a new bulk-oil terminal. In late 1954, PVO began to consolidate its production operations. It started by closing the expeller plant of the subsidiary California Flaxseed Corporation and absorbed that company into PVO as its Los angeles branch. In early 1955 PVO consolidated more of its processing into the Richmond plant, closing the Western Vegetable Oil copra mill. In 1956, Contra Costa Vegetable Oil was acquired with plans to shut it down, but a surge in safflower and castor production caused it to be furn for 4 months to supplement the Richmond plant, then it too was closed forever. In 1955, Kettles, such as those employed in Los Angeles for modifying safflower, were introduced into the Richmond refinery. Outside of PVO, the Stockton Elevators subsidiary was completed and began operations in October of 1955, and obtained capacity business from its inception. A two-story office building was built at Richmond plant in 1956 with first-class laboratory facilities for experimenta, control and research operations. The building also contained office space to allow the consolidation of production management personnel from San Franscisco to Richmond. By 1958, the tail-end decortication system developed by Kopas and Merton Boomer (see Chapter 7) was in full operation. This allowed PVO to deliver safflower hulls (6% portein), Safflower meal (18–20% protein), and high-protein safflower mean (42%). The pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation learned as it went along how best to process safflower seed. Fires in stored safflower expeller mean occurred at California

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Flaxseed Corporation, Contra Costa, and the Richmond plant. Transferring production to a prepress solvent-extraction operation ended these problems, and the mills built later at Sidney, Nebraska; Culbertson, Montana; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Sydney, Australia were designed to do so. Overseas, PVO opened an office in Zurich, Switzerland, in March 1954 and was lucky to obtain the services of Kurt Kretzschmar as Manager, and Otto Sander as Advisor. Both of these gentlemen were very experienced traders. In October 1955, the office was moved to Rotterdam. In Japan, Wada of TYK bravely applied for and obtained foreign exchange to cover the import of 100 tons of safflower. This quantity was consigned to Iwai Oil Mills Co, in Yokohama, and yielded approximately 30 tons of refined salad oil. It took TYK 6 months to sell this oil using a special promotion in which summer kimonos were offered as prizes to buyers. While it was not a large business, it pointed the way for others to follow once they realized safflower was exempt from some of the restrictions affecting other imports, such as soybeans.

Expansion of Production and Marketing In 1957, Sales Management magazine ran a story based on an interview with PVO’s Sales Manager, Hammond (5). This article stressed how PVO had tried very hard to run scared in developing safflower oil even though it had no opposition. Hammond listed several marketing problems that PVO had overcome when it started marketing safflower oil: 1. A price that was 5–10% above competing oils; 2. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was the only source, creating a natural reluctance on the part of buyers; 3. Safflower production had a history of failure; 4. Most prospects had no experience with safflower oil; 5. Rising transportation costs outside of California; 6. The necessity to react to market price fluctuations; and 7. The seasonal nature of the supply. In the article, Hammond was happy to report how PVO had solved their problems, but at the time of his report, PVO’s near-monopoly was at its zenith. Interest in edible safflower oil was only 1 year old in the United States and promised a bright future for safflower. Failure in the Pacific Northwest In 1954, Claassen informed Rocca Jr. that he felt PVO might soon run into a ceiling in California on the sofflower acreage that could be contracted at reasonable prices. Since Rocca was continuing to ask for greater production, Claassen suggested that we try contracting in the Palouse country of Washington and Idaho, perhaps expanding into the Columbia basin and the Pendleton area of Oregon. This idea was approved.

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Claassen immediately started the drums beating with messages to newspapers and county agents in southeastern Washington and Pendleton, Oregon, that PVO was interested in contracting lor 10,000–50,000 acres at a guaranteed minimum price of $70/ton delivered to Tacoma or Portland, basis seed as harvested from the 1955 crop. plans to visit elevators and advisors in the fall for a series of educational meetings followed by grower meetings in January were announced (6,7). The Spokane Chronicle of June 22, 1954, reported on a speech by Claassen before a joint meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Western Society of Agronomy in which Claassen revealed these plans, stating that the was convinced safflower was adapted to much of Palouse, and Walla Walla Counties, Washington, and Umatilla County, Oregon (8). Hoffman, Claassen, and I made numerous trips to meetings in Sherman, Columbia, Umatilla, and Walla Walla counties. We received excellent cooperation from many local elevators both in agreeing to handle the crop and in arranging meetings and encouraging their grower members/customers to sign contracts. Newspapers gave enthusiastic coverage to our meetings (9–11), but by March we had been able to sign up only 5,000 acres (12) and ended up with 6,021 acres in Washington and 1,475 in Oregon. Even though growers professed to be looking for new crops, it was very hard to break away from their wheat economy. We tried again in 1956 with similar luck, and by 1957 contracts had dwindled to 1,500 acres, with a production of 450 tons. In summary, the foray into the Pacific Northwest was not successful. Safflower did not yield well enough on irrigated land to compete with other options, and the results were only marginal on dry land. It did not appear to us that the effort required to get a reasonable amount of acreage contracted each year could be justified, so we withdrew. Since that time, small amounts of safflower have been growing in the area around Ritzville, Washington, but without a nearby market or local oil mill, interest wanes when safflower prices decline. In 1956, PVO began contracting for safflower acreage in Idaho because of its continuing desire to expand production and results were a little more encouraging. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation achieved a small acreage in 1956. Hill of PVO, Claassen of POI, and Wade Parkey, a USDA safflower researcher at Logan, Utah, spoke before a meeting at Tremonton, Utah, on February 26, 1957, and promised to build a plant in 3 years if sufficient acreage could be employed. A price of $70/ST plus $15/ST freight allowance to Richmond was offered on contracts (13). At an April 4, 1957 interview with the Utah Farmer, Claassen and Colyer of PVO reiterated, “We are presently formulating plans for a processing plant in the northern Utah–southern Idaho area” (14). In 1957, acreage increased to 13,000 acres, but yields were poor. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s Field Crops Department and POI began to question whether it was worthwhile to continue working in Idaho because it diverted valuable time the bigger projects in the northern Great Plains and Nebraska. In 1958 PVO announced that it would stop contracting and then reversed its decision in response to pleas from growers (and worries about newfound competition), offering to buy safflower at $70/ST minus in and out elevator costs delivered to local dealers in Tremonton, Utah, and Malad, Downey, Preston, arid American Falls,

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Idaho. Planting seed was offered by POI at $8.00/100 Ib sack. Because of the delay, only 4,000 acres were contracted, producing 580 ST that were later shipped to Portland for export. In 1959, PVO’s buying was concentrated through Virginia, Preston, and Malad elevators, but the latter two points were to be used for delivery only if at least 150 tons of seed were produced in each local area. Only the Virginia and Preston elevators received seed. In that season, the contracting price was $65/ST less in and out elevator costs, and PVO subsequently paid a $5.00 bonus at harvest time (probably because of the competitive activity described later). Planting seed was offered at $9.50/cwt. The Amalgamated Sugar Company had begun testing safflower about 1951 and continued this program for at least 8 years. Their aim was to determine if safflower could be a viable crop for the area and might allow them to utilize their old abandoned sugar plant at Burley, Idaho, as the nucleus for an oil mill. During 1958, they contracted for a small acreage through Union Seed company, and later sold the seed to PVO. Parkey, who had been the USDA safflower breeder at Logan, suddenly resigned in 1958, and took one-half of all the breeding material with him. This constituted another blow to POI’s planting seed monopoly. His assistant, Lee Urie, had been unprepared for his sudden departure. In addition to planting a research and breeding nursery in Idaho, Parkey began contracting safflower (350 acres) in 1959 on behalf of Amalgamated Sugar or a mysterious new buyer should Amalgamated choose not to exercise their option. This contracting was at $70/ST fixed price with delivery to an elevator within a 50-mile radius of the Clarkston, Idaho, area. As it turned out, the mysterious new buyer was Burden Barnhill of Caltana Seeds, Chinook, Montana, with whom Parkey was allied for the next few years. PVO Efforts in Japan Taiheiyo Yushi Kabushiki Kaisha was instructed to encourage Japanese mills to take advantage of the license, duty, and exchange loopholes that Wada had discovered, and in San Francisco Rocca supplied information about available safflower seed to Hatori, Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha’s San Francisco representative, and others. Soon most Japanese trading houses and mills wished to obtain safflower seed, but PVO could not supply all of them at once. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation first set up distributor arrangements with Mitsubishi and then expanded these arrangements to include additional trading houses (but left Mitsubishi with the biggest share) as production increased. No good record is available of the exact prices or quantities of those first sales, but Japanese customs data records quite clearly what began to take place (see Table A.17). These data are on a calendar year rather than a crop year basis, so it is certain that some of the 16,528 metric tons shown for the first year (1956) originated from the 1955 California Crop. By 1960, the imports had risen to 94,811 tons and by 1963 had jumped to 195,823 as PVO’s monopoly began to crumble and others started exporting. My own records of PVO exports showed 14,900 ST being exported from the 1955 crop and this grew to 74,230 ST for the 1959 crop and 96,215 ST of the 1960

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TABLE 4.1 Date of PVO’s California Division on Safflower Acreage, Production, Disposition, and Prices Paid to Farmers Year 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 a

Acreage Production Contracted (ST) 13,000 12,000 42,000 47,000 32,295 54,346 87,000 80,009a 74,000 134,121c 137,000 130,000 172,000

7,000 7,500 23,500 26,000 12,800 36,200 71,000 57,000 59,297 107,882 118,200 108,200 170,190

Export (ST)

2,500 5,500 14,900 28,000 19,800 28,658b 74,230 96,215 59,823 85,010

Crush (ST) 6,500 6,500 20,000 1,000 11,300 19,700 41,400 34,700 27,139 29,064 19,032 43,397 80,005

Planting Final Carryover Seed (ST) Price ($/ST) (ST) 500 1,000 1,000 77.35 1,500 1,600 1,600 2,500 3,500 3,463 3,420 4,000 5,175

70.00 97.28 93.00 74.00 74.00 74.00 76.00 76.00 76.00 80.00 86.00d 90.00

1,170

57,500 acres harvested.

b

Additional 4,000 MT exported from Canada.

c

122,000 acres harvested.

d

Additional $4.97/ST paid to lung-turm growers.

Source: Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; and J. Smith, unpublished data.

crop (Table 4.1), These correspond reasonably well with the Japanese calendar year figures for 1960. PVO Exploration into Other Uses for Safflower The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s program hud from the first been based on the sale of safflower oil as an industrial oil. Not much thought was given to using it as an edible oil. The Soltoft and Dollear paper had pointed out safflower oil’s shortcomings as an edible oil (15). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s first exposure and thought about safflower oil as an edible product was derived from a visitor from Freres of France. He reported that although safflower required double refining and deodorizing to achieve a good result, it could be made into a very nice salad oil, an idea that originally made us very wary. As the imports of seed to Japan increased, we knew that 80% of the oil extracted was employed as an edible product, but again we ignored this, believing that Japanese taste standards were different from ours. But medical research was beginning to show that safflower oil and other polyunsaturated oils might have an important role in fighting heart disease, or at least in lowering scrum cholesterol levels. As early as 1952, Kinsell et al, had published a study indicating this (16). Other studies followed (17, 18). This fact was not lost on some companies, such as Corn Products, which began to rush products to market targeted at this health market. Harry and Ned Robinson of Brush, Colorado, also saw the opportunity and realized that they could produce safflower oil and be competitive using some of

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Claassen’s old Nebraska varieties, sure that edible safflower oil could be sold at a substantial premium compared to safflower oil’s traditional U.S. markets. They formed Plains Oil Mill, Inc., in Sidney, Nebraska, in 1955 and built a small expeller mill with the aim of crushing soybeans or safflower seed (19). Since PVO’s attempt to increase production of safflower in the Pacific Northwest and in Idaho/Utah had not gone well, a decision was made in 1957 to move PVO’s efforts to the Nebraska panhandle, although we were only partially aware of the Robinson’s efforts. The Plains Oil Mill operation had not done well in 1956, but by the spring of 1957, 10,000–15,000 acres of safflower were growing in western Nebraska and central Colorado. The Robinsons were offering $64/ST for seed (20). Other Actions In 1957, many diverse actions were occurring that would accelerate the rush to produce more safflower oil and to find means for better control of production and marketing. For example, in January, 1957, we had learned that Ray Riggenbach was traveling around Colorado and Nebraska making a survey about safflower. We put a detective agency on his trail (PVO memorandum March 1957, Spinks to Smith). He was working for an unnamed client who was reputed to be one of the giants in the food industry. Also, Armour and Co. and Abbott Laboratories announced new products based on safflower oil, “Acrofac” and “Saff”, respectively (21–23). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation could not imagine where they were obtaining their raw material and guessed India. Sidney Garfield, the chairman of PVO’s advertising agency, made a proposal to start marketing a safflower oil to be sold through pharmacies on a joint venture with PVO. Up to this point, our strategy for helping a new crop get started and keeping the development going and growing had worked well. We were to apply this same strategy over and over again between 1953 and 1963 in expanding safflower production in the Great Plains states; in becoming the largest producer of castor beans in the United States; and in getting safflower started in Spain, Australia, and eventually in Mexico. This was a strategy where PVO acted as the catalyst to get growers, consumers, governmental and private researchers, and financial institutions all working together to help each other make the development go forward. It required a minimum of controls or governmental involvement, and one could easily change direction when a change was needed. It was at this point that Rocca Jr. devised the Requirements Contracts idea and tried it first on Charles Pfizer and Co., Inc. We quickly spread the Requirements concept to other consumers and eventually to Japan (22,23). As Rocca Jr. conceived of it, a buyer of safflower seed and oil would first be bound to PVO through a Requirements Contract. Under this contract, a buyer committed to buying safflower products exclusively from PVO or an exclusive distributor for a number of years, and PVO committed itself to supply the buyer’s entire needs at a discount from normal market prices. Prior to planting time each year, the buyers would advise PVO of their needs for the upcoming crop year, and PVO would arrange to procure the seed and processing necessary to meet the buyer’s requirements. If seed was sold through

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an exclusive distributor, the distributor paid a fee as well. Should more product be required, PVO would supply it at market price. In addition, PVO offered buyers a Technical Assistance Agreement where the buyers would be provided with assistance and guidance, whether it be in the processing and handling of safflower seed or the handling, storage, refining, and modification of safflower oil, the formulation of products made for edible oil or industrial grades of safflower oil, or the development of feeding formulas for cattle and poultry. In return, the buyer paid PVO a fee, usually about 3–4% of the gross sales involving these products. By instituting both practices, PVO hoped to tie up the best customers before competitors could find the ways and means to reach them.

Planting Seed Competition Until this time, POI had been free from competition in the development of new planting seeds. We need to look back in history to see how this changed and in turn add to the forces that would attempt to destroy PVO’s hold on the safflower market. In 1951, Western Oilseeds Company, POI’s predecessor, had entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s plant pathologist, Charlie Thomas, located at Beltsville, Maryland, to share materials. The purpose of this program initially was to isolate and determine resistance to the various races of rust in safflower, Thomas would screen various lines that Claassen submitted for resistance and when one was found, Claassen would attempt to backcross this line into his breeding material to gain a resistant variety. As time went on, Thomas looked into solutions for other safflower diseases as well. Both sides felt that this program was worthwhile. The USDA got access to a wide spectrum of materials and assisted the industry in finding solutions to worrisome disease problems; Western Oilseeds was able to develop better seed lines. There was, of course, an element of risk involved for Claassen because his lines, once shared, became public property. But because little other work was being done privately on safflower the risk was minimal. Thomas published extensively concerning his work with safflower rust and root rot (24–36). After POI was formed, a more formal agreement was worked out at the instigation of Leon M. Pultz, Thomas’ boss and head of the Division of Medicinal and Specialty Crops in the U.S. Bureau of Plant Industry at Beltsville. Pultz wanted to expand the program so that other USDA breeders doing basic research work in safflower could cooperate with Claassen and Hoffman as well. This seemed like a good thing to do, and the agreement went ahead. Crosses from this program were shared with the USDA safflower-breeding program in Arizona. After previous work with the USDA, Dave Rubis, an Assistant Agronomist with the University of Arizona Experiment Station at Tucson, developed a cooperative breeding program with his USDA replacement, Don Black, stationed at Mesa, Arizona. I visited Rubis on July 5, 1956; he was harvesting a section that survived root rot that killed 100% of the N-10 in his test. It was the selection that was to become

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the variety, Gila, and its release in September, 1958 (37) spelled the end of PVI and PVO’s safflower monopoly. Here was a variety that could be recommended for irrigated farming in Arizona, and this would soon be repeated all over the West and in Mexico as well. Rubis and Black’s own words describe how it evolved (Excerpt published by permission of Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station): Gila is a selection from a cross of N-10 x W.0.14 backcrossed to N-10 once and selfed four generations. Selected plants were bulked in the fourth selfed generation. The pedigree is as follows: (N-10 x W.O.14) N-10-S. (Pedigree: N-10 was a plant selection from N-852, which was a mass selection from an introduction from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. W.O.14 was a plant selection from a cross of N-8 x N977–1.6-1 backcrossed to N-8 four times and selected for rust resistance (Race 1). N-8 is a plant selection from Special Russian. N-977–16–1 is a plant selection from N-977 which was an introduction from Romania. Western Oilseeds 14 was developed by personnel of Pacific Oilseeds, Inc. (formerly Western Oilseeds Co.) and the other plant introductions and plant selections were made by Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Stution. The cross was made in 1952 to combine the good agronomic characteristics of N-10 with Phytophthora root rot resistance and rust resistance of W.O.14. (Races of Puccinia carthami were not discovered until 1954. Under the present classification (bur races have been identified. The varieties W.O.14 and Gila are resistant to Race 1.) The original cross, the backcross to N-10, and the first two sells were made by C.A. Thomas and L.M. pultz in the U.S. Department of Agriculture greenhouses at Bellsville, Maryland. The early segregating generations in the greenhouse were inoculated with safflower rust and Phytophthora root rot and selections were made for resistlince to both diseases. Greenhouse selections were planted in the field in the season of 1954–55 at the University Experiment Farm. Mesa, Arizona, where the field selection and early testing were done. In 1955–56 progenies from individual plant selections were tested in the root rot nursery. Selections were made on the basis of root rot resistance, yielding ability, bushel weight, oil content and earliness. One of the selections eventually became the variety, Gila. This selection, together with several other promising selections, was grown in replicated yield tests at the University Experiment Farms at Yuma-Valley, Yuma-Mesa, Mesa and Safford in 1957 and 1958 (Table 4.2). It was also compared with N-10 in drill-strip plantings at the Mesa Experiment Station Farm in 1958 (Table 4.3). Because of its excellent performance in comparison to other selections and commercial varieties in these tests, it was officially released as a named variety, Gila, in September, 1958.

Plant Characteristics Gila is very uniform for agronomic characteristics but is not genetically pure for flower color, having a mixture of orange and yellow flowers. In growth habits Gila is very similar to N-10; it has early seedling vigor and develops a very limited rosette in its early growth stages. It is a spiny variety similar to N-10 and other commercial varieties. Gila branches considerably more than N-10 and produces a denser population of heads (38).

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TABLE 4.2 Average Agronomic Characteristics of Gila Compared with Other Commercial Varieties at Mesa, Yumas, and Safford, Arizonaa Locationb Mesa Exper, Station

Yuma-Mesa Station

Saffod Exper, Station

Years Tested

Yield (lb/A)

Oil (%)

Bushel Weight (lb)

Date of 1st Flowering

Height (inches)

Gila N-10 N-6 N-8 Gila N-10 N-6 Gila N-10 N-6 N-8 Gila N-10 N-6 N-8

3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

2,636 2,258 2,231 1,831 2,812 2,314 1,939 2,230 1,742 2,206 1,990 2,438 1,675 1,718 1,113

38.0 37.1 33.9 36.3 38.5 38.5 32.5 34.7 33.6 31.0 34.9 36.6 35.4 31.8 31.3

43 43 44 39 43 42 43 42 43 43 37 43 43 43 36

May 12 May 9 May 17 May 20

43 42 47 45

aNo Phytophora root rot was evident in any of these tests.

Developmen of the PVO Strategy

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Variety

bApproximate elevations: Mesa, 1250 ft.; Yuma, 150 ft.; and Safford, 2,900 ft. Source: Reprinted by permission of Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station.

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TABLE 4.3 Comparison of Gila with N-10 in Drill Strips on Land in Which the Phytophthora Root Rot Organism Is Sporadically Present, Mesa Experiment Station, 1958

I

(Yield in Pounds per Acre) Borders II

III

Average

2,287 622

2,933 2,710

1,865 652

2,362 1,318

Variety Gila N-10

Source: Reprinted by permission of Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station.

It was apparent from Rubis and Black’s trials that Gila was a superior type. As they mentioned, it was not genetically pure when released, and consequently Gila served as the source of a number of other varieties released by others during the next few years. The other threat to POI’s planting seed dominance came from Parkey. Parkey had received his Ph.D. in Agronomy from the University of Nebraska in 1952, so he was no stranger to the safflower and castor work of Claassen and Hoffman. After doing castor breeding for USDA at Stillwater, Oklahoma, USDA transferred him to their station at Utah State University to do work on safflower in 1957. As mentioned previously, he quickly resigned from his work in 1958 and took one-half of the breeding materials with him. Some of the best POI advanced lines would have been included via the joint USDA-POI agreement. To make matters worse, Parkey allied himself with Barnhill and for awhile these two attempted to join forces with Lord as well. By 1958, Lord had formed a new company, the International Safflower Corporation of Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Colorado Department of Agriculture had forced him to close Western Safflower Corporation a few years earlier. Barnhill operated a seed business in Chinook, Montana, and had organized a Canadian company, Caltana Safflower Products Inc., with J.H. Yuill, the owner of Alberta Linseed Oil Company, Ltd. Caltana was registered in Montana, Arizona, and Utah, and Parkey made his headquarters at Twin Falls, Idaho. Barnhill’s style was similar to Lord’s. He would hold meetings where he would offer to buy, but not contract for, the farmers’ upcoming crop at a price in excess of PVO’s contractual offerings. For the next 2–3 years, Barnhill and/or Lord would appear in Canada, Idaho, Montana, California, or Arizona when PVO was operating and attempt to disrupt PVO’s program. As soon as Gila was announced, Barnhill moved quickly to obtain as much of the first increase of the seed and to capture the ensuing fields that were planted from the initial release of the seed. Although neither Lord nor Barnhill would profit greatly from their efforts, Barnhill in particular showed others avenues to export seed markets that they otherwise might have missed for a few years. Parkey did begin a breeding program of his own; while it was several years before he was able to release new varieties of his own, his presence gave some credibility to Barnhill’s efforts.

Further Steps to Expand Production and Marketing At this point in me narrative I return to early 1957. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was being besieged by many requests for safflower. The company began

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looking at steps it should take to try to satisfy the increasing demand and to control of production and demand insthe future. The technical assistance agreements were offered domestically first and by the 1960s would be the mode of operation in Japan as well. Rocca Jr. had determined that PVO’s attempts to increase production must reach out to the Great Plains, but he found that others were starting to look into the Great Plains as well. Finally, he realized that PVO must look at the expanding market for edible safflower and make decisions on the best way for PVO to participate in the added margins available in consumer products made from safflower oil. Edible Aspects of Safflower Oil The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had always had a preference for joint ventures, and this philosophy was applied again and again—it underlies every step of the PVO plan—trying to use the best features of one or more players in a combination for the common good. On February 18, 1957 (PVO memorandum, Joe Smith to B.T. Rocca, Jr.), I discussed PVO’s choices in dealing with edible safflower oil. We concluded that we had three choices aside from the medical field: 1. Setting up our own merchandising and research operation, capable of exerting an influence on the market; 2. Aligning ourselves with a nationally recognized food-processing company; and 3. Aligning ourselves with a pharmaceutical house. General Mills, Inc. was recommended as the best choice because they could satisfy options 2 and 3 (GMI was establishing a pharmaceutical branch). The Glidden Company would be a good choice for option 2. I recommended asking Stanford Research Institute to perform a market study to determine if edible safflower oil had a good chance of becoming a worthwhile product, if time was available to wait for a study. On the other hand, I concluded that we had more to offer a potential partner at the time of the memorandum rather than waiting. Our advantages were 1. We were the only source of oil and the only good source of information on the best production areas in the West; 2. We had the only good source of planting seed; 3. We had built up a good deal of confidential information on the medical aspects of safflower products; and 4. We had the best knowledge of industrial and overseas markets that offered stability to marketing. The final recommendation was to begin studying the addition of deodorizing and hyderogenation stage for our plant, since we were not equipped to produce salad oil in the Richmond plant and had to depend on a small unit at Strathmore, California. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s Research Department was headed by John Kneeland, who appointed Dick Purdy, his assistant, to handle PVO’s ongoing

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investigation into the medical aspects of safflower oil and its effect on cholesterol reduction and to assemble the best possible bibliography in this and related subjects. Kneeland, although he was an accomplished chemist, preferred to handle chemical market research, economic investigations, and long-range planning matters. He assembled a good group of chemists to back his efforts, particularly Ernie Jacobsen in the control laboratory who developed the AOCS method for safflower content analysis; Lowell Cummings, who generated a steady stream of new industrial products and patents; and Walter Rathjen, who did innovative work in both industrial and edible aspects of safflower oil research. Purdy and Kneeland’s other function at this time was to maintain communication with Laurance Kinsell, Director of the Institute of Metabolic Research of the Highland Alarneda County Hospital which he founded in 1950. As Karl Robe, Associate Editor of Food Processing described him, “It was Dr. Kinsell’s work in 1950–51 which first focused attention on the role of unsaturated fats as agents for lowering blood cholesterol in connection with heart disease problems” (39). Kinsell was more than a scientist; he very much believed in his work, in its usefulness to mankind, and was a very effective person in discussing his work in lay terms before large or small groups. Kinsell had impressed everyone he met at PVO, and Rocca Jr. was determined to enlist Kinsell’s efforts on behalf of safflower development. This eventually developed into Rocca Jr.’s proposing the formation of a Safflower Council, representing various factors interested in safflower, which could be used to impartially fund some of Kinsell’s research in addition to doing promotional work on behalf of safflower markets. On April 2, 1957, Sewell D. Andrews Jr., Vice president and General Manager of General Mills, Inc.’s Soybean Division, called Rocca Jr. to admit that his company had, in fact, been the one employing Riggenbach to survey Great Plains safflower potentialities. He said thai his company was interested in trying to develop safflower jointly with PVO. His company was not interested in forming a new corporation but preferred a 5–10) year joint venture. He suggested that PVO handle the procurement side of the business. General Mills would handle the processing, and perhaps both sides would work on marketing. After working with GMI for a number of months, PVO found that GMI had no plans in place to develop safflower oil consumer products but instead had confined its efforts to placing industrial advertisements in trade publications and started to study possible uses for safflower meal as a source of isolated protein. By September 25, 1957, PVO and GMI had reached an agreement to construct a jointly owned safflower mill in the Montana/North Dakota region (40) and on October 16, 1957, PVO’s Hill announced the purchase of the Plain Oil Mills, Inc., plant (41). This was a strange arrangement; PVO purchased the plant, made a partnership with General Mills to process safflower through the plant, and retained Riggenbach, GMI’s consultant, to manage the plant. Ned Robinson was soon put back in charge of the plant he had just sold. Ken Woodward, who had joined POI in Pocatello two seasons previously, was transferred to Nebraska to begin acreage-contracting efforts and to begin planning yield trials for new POI varieties. Guy LaLone, a GMI production engineer, began working with PVO’s personnel trying to design additions to the plant—the first substantial change was to aim

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to add a 200,000 bushel (approximately 5,000 ton) flat storage building in time for the 1958 harvest. (In January 1959, PVO sold a one-half interest in the Sidney plant to GMI after construction of a Northern Plains plant was postponed in July, 1958.) By November of 1957, Claassen and Woodward were in-Montana conducting meetings to sign up a hoped-for 50,000–60,000 acres in eastern Montana and western North Dakota (42). A week later, LaLone joined additional promotional meetings that promised potential growers $65/ST. Hannes Hallgrimson, a Montana resident, was soon added to POI’s staff as its local representative. At the Montana meetings, PVO promised that a plant would be built in the area just as soon as it became clear that safflower acreage could be sustained in the Northern Plains. As these meetings went on and additional meetings in Nebraska promised $66 for local safflower, PVO was looking over its shoulder, hearing that the E.L. McDonnell Co. of Spokane, Washington, would be offering $50/ST for up to 45,000–60,000 acres of cropland in north-central Montana and southern Alberta (43). While this price was low, McDonnell also offered planting seed at only $0.0275/lb versus $0.08/lb offered by POI for its much newer varieties. In Utah, Amalgamated Sugar and Parkey held meetings in May (44) offering to buy Idaho local safflower and considered converting its Hurley sugar plant to safflower crushing if acreage warranted. This prompted PVO to listen to pleas from its Idaho/Utah growers not to abandon its effort there, and PVO, reacting to the pleas, offered a local price of $70. Pharmaceutical Aspects of Safflower Oil In April, 1957, Rocca Jr. worked out an agreement with Sidney Garfield, President of Garfield Advertising, PVO’s ad agency, to form a new corporation to market safflower as a pharmaceutical product. Garfield had experience in the field, being one of the developers of a very successful over-the-counter sleep suppressant. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was to have 60% ownership, Garlield 40%. The company was to be capitalized for a low amount with the partners loaning the balance of capital requirements. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation would execute a requirements contract and supply research facilities to the operation; Garfield would have exclusive right to provide the new company’s advertising needs. Kneeland and I began to work on names tor the new company and for its product, and also to decide whether to offer an oil, an emulsion, an ethyl ester, or a flavored form. The name Safflower Products Corporation was chosen. “Saff-Lo” was selected, for the drugstore-product name, and Garfield named his son-in-law, John Levinson, to head the effort. The pharmaceutical efforts by Garfield and Levinson were not successful; prices were too high to attract many customers to the few pharmacies that stocked the product, and sales failed to reach 500,000 lbs. Subsequently, Garfield proposed a test marketing of a grocery product, “Saffola”. Because Garfield had experience in the pharmaceutical field and not with grocery products, PVO bought Garfield’s share of Safflower Products Corporation. A great help in the discussions at the time was Prentis Cobb Hale, PVO’s new Director, who provided the Board with a fresh viewpoint and had a solid ability to

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direct the company on new paths. At the suggestion of Schumann and Hale, PVO sent a bottle of “Saffola” oil and a report of Kinsell’s Lancet article on cholesterol research to each of its shareholders. This was one of PVO’s first attempts at stimulating interest in its stock. Hale advocated this in order to assist the company to raise capital later through a public offering. In May, 1957, Kneeland made a Chicago trip to visit both Abbott and Armour Laboratories to assess safflower developments in those two companies. At Abbott he found great resistance to the $2.265/lb delivered price of safflower oil that PVO was asking, compared to corn oil at $0.17/lb. However, they were trapped at that point into needing safflower oil because all of their research and publicity had been based upon it. Armour’s main concern was certainty of supply. Neither had fully worked out their program for market development. However, on the same trip Kneeland also held a long meeting with E.H. Ahrens, the world’s most respected authority on the subject of fats and atherosclerosis. Ahrens’ opinion was that PVO was sitting on top of the world with its position in safflower oil, expecting a big increase in demand because of its cholesterol-lowering powers. This solidified PVO’s resolve to push safflower development. On July 8, 1957, Joe Martin wrote to Ralph F. Kneeland Jr., Assistant Director of the Food and Drug Administration, on behalf of PVO requesting the FDA’s views with respect to labeling and promotional material for safflower oil. In August, Kneeland Jr. replied (Kneeland Jr. to Martin, August 7, 1957) stating that much needed to be learned about cholesterol reduction. In his opinion, safflower was being offered as a special dietary supplement and therefore should conform to FDA regulations. Accordingly, safflower oil should carry a label listing fatty acids present in measurable amounts and the percentage of each. It could not state that it was a source of essential fatty acid (not established according to Kneeland Jr.) or make claims that it was a cholesterol-lowering agent. In October, Martin wrote again to Kneeland Jr., enclosed a proposed front and back Saffola label and a prepublication copy of a Kinsell article that was to appear in a forthcoming issue of Lancet, and asked for comments on an advertisement being used by the Corn Products Refining Company touting Mazola corn oil’s linoleic level being beneficial regarding heart disease. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation got back an inconclusive answer more or less condoning the label but continuing to reiterate that not enough was known about cholesterol and pointing out that advertising was the FTC’s jurisdiction. While PVO felt that their Saffola label was okay for test marketing, they continued to be frustrated by what could and could not be said or claimed. Further Plans at Home and Abroad In 1958, PVO’s plans to expand production included an expansion into the San Joaquin Valley and Delta of California, and also Canada. Flooding in California’s Sacramento Valley, plus the need for more tonnage, prompted the move to the San Joaquin and Delta where it was possible to get late planted acreage using PVO’s new P-7 variety.

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It was PVO’s aim to reach 100,000 acres in the Great Plains in 1958. Contracting in Montana/North Dakota exceeded the goal of 60,000 acres that the company had demanded in order to consider building a plant in the area, but dry May weather caused a massive reduction in planted acres. General Mills and PVO jointly announced on July 23, 1958, that they would have to defer plans to build a mill in the area. The same article reported that safflower in Canada was doing well and that two companies, Caltena and McDonnell, reported that 2,000 tons of seed were exported to Japan in 1957, and it seemed that an export market could be established (45). In Nebraska only 30,000 acres of the desired 40,000 acres were harvested and the yield prospects were poor. The safflower production had been hampered by dry weather, but plans were afoot to expand production facilities to process a hoped-for expansion in acreage for the following year. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation entered into secret negotiations with E.L. McDonnell in Canada, against the objections of those of us in PVO’s Production and Field Crops Departments. Rocca overruled us and our Trading Department entered into a joint arrangement with McDonnell aimed at exporting the seed from Canada and stopping any activities in the United States. In 1958, PVO’s Treasurer, Ford Tussing was transferred to the Philippines as PVO’s manager, and was succeeded on the Board by Carlos Cuvi. One problem that arose was that PVO let its Philippine managers stay too long without proper auditing, and the company suffered a series of financial setbacks created by lack of attention to detail. For awhile these problems only caused grave disappointment at year’s end when bonuses were reduced because of sudden discoveries of lower copra-trading profits, but eventually this became a very serious matter with PVO’s banks. Cuvi was President of PVO del Sur, PVO’s very successful Latin American subsidiary. During this period he began to expand PVO’s business in Mexico, particularly into industrial oils through two subsidiaries, Nacional de Comercio and Sociedad Comercio y Industrial. Partly because of some interest expressed by GMI in trying to develop safflower spun proteins, it was decided that a decorticator based on work done at Richmond by Don Noren, a young PVO design engineer, should be installed at Sidney. This was based on shooting dry, cleaned safflower seeds through an air gun at an inclined metal plate, splitting the safflower seed in half and causing the enclosed meats to emerge as whole kernels. The stream falling from the plate was passed through a wire mesh trommel to remove the hulls from the meats and subsequently over an Oliver gravity table to do a better separating job. The device worked, but when it was turned on the first time, people in Lincoln, Nebraska, 300 miles away, were probably shocked by the sound. After extensive insulation was mounted around the area, it was used for awhile, but the concept was abandoned after a year because it required too much power, labor, attention, and maintenance to make it worthwhile. The year 1959 saw PVO aiming for even larger safflower acreage as sales of safflower seed to Japan expanded much faster than the edible use of safflower in the United States. Although the edible uses for safflower were getting great publicity in the United States, they achieved very little growth.

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The Culbertson, Montana, Plant The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation announced that it had set a 1959 safflower contracting goal of 80,000 acres in Montana and construction of a plant would depend on how the sign-up went. Hill, at times accompanied by Claassen or Hoffman, made trips surveying the possible safflower production areas in Montana and North Dakota, attending town meetings, and local development commission meetings in early 1959. After sifting through all of the data and opinions, the possible locations were narrowed down to Wolf Point and Culbertson, Montana, and Williston, North Dakota. Wolf Point was eliminated as being too far west of the expected center of production; Williston was dropped as being too far east. The Culbertson group vying for the plant provided a site east of their town and made a big pitch about local cattlemen being able to use the plant’s meal by-product. Finally, on March 4, 1959, Hill announced that Culbertson had been chosen as the plant site. As it turned out, Williston would probably have been a better choice for several reasons. Williston was a sizable town offering better housing options, and local inventories of small tools and parts that were not available in Culbertson. People from the Culbertson plant were constantly driving to Williston for parts and equipment. Williston was also just east of an important railroad freight rate break-point, which meant that for many years, the Culbertson plant suffered with high rates for eastbound safflower oil shipments. Once the Culbertson site was chosen, Hill began designing a plant aimed at getting erected as quickly as possible at a minimum cost. In order to reduce capital costs, Hill decided to move the Schneckens horizontal tube desolventizer/drier from the old General Mills equipment at PVO Richmond. Hefferline and Boomer were assigned to help Hill in the design and construction planning. They had disagreements about installing the Schneckens, but in the end Hill prevailed. This caused serious problems for the Culbertson plant until it was replaced several years later. V.D. Anderson Co. had designed a new concept in solvent-extraction design to get around the Blawknox patents. They offered the first model of their plant to PVO at a much-reduced price in exchange for getting working experience for their design. This extractor consisted of a long, oblong horizontal container inside of which a series of small open-topped cars were propelled along a track that circled the interior. The cars were shunted along the lengthwise track by one hydraulic ram that advanced the little cars one by one toward the opposite end of the extractor, a second ram pushed the cars that reached the end in a direction 90° to the right, and a third and a fourth ram pushed in opposite directions and returned the cars to their original positions. Countercurrent miscella was pumped into the top of the cars, allowing the hexane/oil mixture to percolate through the cake and out through a slotted bottom, and it was pumped to flush through the next car. Each car had a hinged door that tripped and dumped the spent cake before proceeding to be filled with a fresh change of prepress cake for its next circuit. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s people had little experience designing systems for the frigid temperatures they would face in Montana, and this caused

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operational problems during the plant’s first year of operation. Much of the construction of the buildings for the plant and its storage was subcontracted to a local Butler dealer, Jacobsen Construction, Inc. Several of the work crew became the nucleus of the plant staff upon completion of the construction project. One of these, Curt Halseide, became plant foreman and then superintendent. Another, Jerry Knick, was originally hired as a maintenance worker and rose to be Plant Manager after PVO sold the property. Hefferline was selected to be the plant’s first manager, and he arrived on the site in May of 1959. Hefferline was very systems- and detail-oriented, and he instituted an elaborate paperwork system for the plant and its record keeping that worked well. Unfortunately, his personal interactions caused problems with the plant personnel, with the POI employees assigned to Culbertson to buy the crop, and with some of the local townspeople. The plant was operational by December 1959. It had a prepress/solvent extractor designed with a capacity of 90 tons/day, plus a meal storage and pelleting facility, oil storage tanks, and 200,000 bushels of seed storage. Arne Skedsvald was hired during this period to assist Hallgrimson in contracting acreage and to concentrate on selling safflower meal. Few of the farmers who had said that they were interested in having a safflower-meal supply before the plant was built ever purchased meal. Most of the meal had to be sold to feed mixers, some as far away as Colorado. The Montana harvest of 1959 was hampered by rain and snow, and PVO had to add seed-drying equipment on an emergency basis. The following year, seed storage was doubled and additional truck unloading capacity was added. Hefferline’s successor, Ernie Ferguson, former manager of the PVO Richmond plant, was moved to Culbertson in 1962 to make room for the ascension of Kopas. While he looked at moving to Montana as akin to moving to Siberia, Ferguson quickly found that he liked the people and the quiet life of the area, and was quite popular with his crew and the townspeople. Problems with the Competition Howard Boone of Cargill requested that PVO supply safflower planting seed for the Nebraska area in early 1959. We turned him down explaining that there was an insufficient supply for one miller in Nebraska (we were having a hard time getting sufficient tonnage) and because our remaining stock of uncommitted seed appeared to be infected with rust. However, Cargill would not be the only one seeking seed. In late 1959, under pressure from J.G. Boswell Company and Cargill (via Dixon Drier), the University of California and USDA agreed to the certification of Gila and US-10 varieties of safflower in California. Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., objected, but their objections were ignored. US-10 was already being increased on 110 acres by POI and by Parkey in Idaho. Soon significant portions of these varieties were being produced in California, and Idaho, together with increases of old Nebraska varieties. Mexico began to buy safflower planting seed in quantity. Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., for example, sold 100 tons of P-1 and 50 tons of N-6 seed to Mexico in 1959.

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The escalation of safflower acreage in California (see Table 4.1) was bound to attract other buyers to start contracting or engaging in spot buying. Some began to add their own breeding programs (Boswell, Anderson Clayton, Cargill, and later Cal/West Seeds) in 1959 or the early 1960s. Caltana began offering $70 in Arizona in 1959, Producers Cotton Oil increased Gila seed and released it at cost to anyone who asked for it, and Spencer Kellogg and Liberty Vegetable Oil indicated interest in buying Arizona seed as well. By 1960, Caltana had been able to negotiate a sale of 5,000 tons of seed to Japanese buyers using California safflower crops it purchased through Continental Grain Company from J.G. Boswell. A new competitor in the Sacramento Valley was the Taylor Walcott Co. Early on, Rocca Jr. concluded that it would be better to work jointly with T.W. than to compete with them, and thought we could use them to contract with growers who might otherwise not want to sell to PVO through POI. Rocca Jr., Burt Walcott, and I engaged in a number of spirited negotiating sessions and what emerged was a scheme to purchase Taylor-Walcott’s safflower business for $500,000, payable over 5 years by means of our sharing one-half of our export sales margins. This agreement was concluded in secret and not disclosed to either POI’s or Taylor-Walcott’s field agents. Both POI’s executives and some within PVO felt we had given the store away. At the end of 5 years, Taylor-Walcott was out of the business and we had been able to take a tax deduction for the payments used to buy them out. The agreement was structured in this way to avoid any antitrust problems and to allow the payments to Taylor-Walcott to be treated as a cost and were tax deductible. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had to look at ways to try to contain competition in Arizona during 1959 and 1960. The Gila seed released by the University of Arizona in 1958 was planted in 1959 on 400 acres by a small group of farmers in Yuma, Arizona, plus one at Phoenix. The Yuma seed produced yields close to 4,000 lbs/acre. In 1960, Arizona-certified Gila planting seed production increased to 700 acres. Caltana Safflower Products targeted this seed, purchased the Phoenix lot through Advance Seed Co., and made tentative plans to purchase the Yuma seed as well. Barnhill boasted that Caltana was backed by Continental Grain Co., which had just purchased Advance. However, Mexican buyers were also trying to purchase supplies of planting seed and this caused the local producers at Yuma to resist selling to anyone, hoping to capture a bigger margin for themselves. Arizona Ventures All of the activity in Arizona made us at PVO nervous. We decided to get into the Arizona picture to protect ourselves. Whitman Seed Company of Yuma also joined the fray at this time, saying that it would be a buyer of safflower in the coming season. Bill Whitman was a well-respected dealer, and his announcement slowed Caltana’s momentum. We also heard reports that Lord’s International Safflower Corporation was offering to buy planting seed in Arizona. Both Producers Cotton Oil Company and Anderson Clayton were watching the situation closely but made no commitments.

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In late August 1959, PVO tried to determine if it was possible to work jointly with Continental Grain Company in Arizona. Continental’s executives told PVO that at the moment they were loosely tied to Caltana, but relations between the two companies were strained. From this meeting, it was clear that PVO could not tie up Barnhill through Continental, so both sides agreed to table any suggestion of working together for a few months and meet again. Continental suggested that in the meantime PVO work with Whitman. On March 28, 1960, PVO entered into a 5-year operating agreement with Whitman Seed Company at Yuma, Arizona, where Whitman would buy and accumulate safflower in the Yuma area on behalf of PVO, but under its own name, for a fixed fee of $8 for the first 5,000 tons and a lower amount for quantities above 5,000 tons. Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., was to provide planting seed and field advice at cost and share margins on sale of planting seed 50/50. Within a year, when interest in safflower cooled down in Arizona because of worse-than-expected yields, Whitman asked to void the contract and each side mutually released the other. Soon after entering into the Whitman arrangement in the Yuma area. PVO was also negotiating with Allen Rosenberg and Archie Kroloff of Continental Grain Company and Advance Seed Company of Phoenix on a safflower joint venture to cover production and exportation of seed from other parts of Arizona and New Mexico. In 1959, Continental had purchased Allied Grain Co. (a grain merchandising and elevator subsidiary) from Advance, a planting seed company. Rosenberg and Kroloff owned equal shares in Advance, and under the new arrangement, Rosenberg (who was Secretary-Treasurer of Advance) also became Arizona Manager for Continental. Kroloff remained with Advance as President and picked up some consulting duties with Continental. I met with Rosenberg and Kroloff on July 14, 1960, and proposed an arrangement similar to the agreement PVO had made with Taylor-Walcott, where Continental would agree to buy in Arizona on behalf of PVO and would refrain from entering the California market. Continental would market safflower elsewhere through PVO. Advance and POI were to work together to sell planting seed in Arizona, subject to Advance first being able to sell or use 300,000 pounds of Gila seed they had already made commitments to buy. These negotiations were eventually carried over to Continental’s New York headquarters with Loren Johnson, their Executive Vice president. The deal with Continental went ahead satisfactorily but was ended in a friendly manner 2 years latter, when Rosenberg became President of a new Arizona bank, and POI and Kroloff had trouble working together on seed development. Continental Grain Company withdrew from the Arizona market and sold the old Allied Grain elevator to Feeders Grain, a local group of powerful farmers. Hubert Hatch, Continental’s field agent, went along as Manager of Feeders Grain and did contracting on behalf of PVO and others in future years. Yet a third joint venture was attempted in Arizona. Vegetable Oil Products Corporation’s Arizona subsidiary, Arizona Cottonseed Products Co. at Gilbert, Arizona, was planning to run a test crush of 200 tons of safflower seed through one of the expellers in their cotton mill. For many years we had been acquainted with Charlie

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Piercy, Arizona Cotton’s Manage, and Sonny Webb, his assistant, as friendly competitors in the cotton oil refining business. Webb asked if Mel Conley, their superintendent, could visit our plant to discuss the processing of safflower and we said fine. It had always been Hill’s policy to be helpful to competitors and friends alike, since in this business one’s competitor might be one’s ally within a few months’ time. In June of 1960, we tried to make an arrangement with Arizona Cotton, where they would buy Arizona safflower seed for crushing and refining (the Continental deal was for the exportation of seed) through their cotton financing and milling operations. In the agreement, their parent, Vegetable Oil Products Company (VOPCO), would agree to work jointly with PVO in the marketing of oil that VOPCO would refine. This agreement never got off the ground, but it hurried PVO into working hard to try to negotiate more requirements agreements with PVO’s best edible oil customers, and it blocked VOPCO from agreeing to toll process for Barnhill. While Barnhill was able to contract perhaps 3,000 acres in Arizona for 1960, PVO’s maneuvers with Whitman, Continental, and Arizona Cottonseed managed to contain him. Since he soon had no outlet with Continental, he had to plan on shipping seed to Canada for crushing or find other buyers, This, poor yields, and a very poor payment record silenced Caltana by late 1961. PVO and Ted Lord In January, 1959, Lord contacted Claassen to buy planting seed and to state that he was now more interested in oil merchandising than milling. After discussion between PVO and POI, we decided to sell him 67,000 pounds of N-6 seed that was in inventory and whatever was needed from POI’s P-1 inventory. We then learned that he had plans to go into a milling project in North Texas. On March 7, 1959, it was reported, “Safflower Oil Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, and the Texas Farmers Union Friday announced definite plans to construct a one-half million dollar mill to be located somewhere in the Texas Panhandle—the world’s best area for safflower culture.” The article also reported that the joint project would begin signing contracts for $62/ton with area farmers immediately. It was also announced that Parkey would be employed in the new corporation (46). The latter never happened. Parkey and Barnhill had expected to contract on behalf of Lord, but had a falling out with Lord and went their separate ways. In March, POI confirmed a sale of 60,000 pounds of N-6 planting seed to Lord, which he planned to use in conducting a 10,000-acre test planting in Texas. In May, 1959, along with Texas Farmers Union Service Corporation, Lord’s International Safflower Corporation formed Farmers Oilseed Mills, Inc., acquiring 50% of the stock and electing Lord Vice President and Director. A number of Texas Panhandle farmers planted 4,200 acres and were required to pay the Farmers Union $5/acre to begin a mill construction reserve. Lord sold the planting seed to the growers at a high price. Hail damage resulted in the loss of 1,000 acres, and the balance had suffered from severe insect damage and excessive rain when I inspected it in July. By January 1960, it appeared that the project had been abandoned and on April 5,1 purchased from Farmers Oilseed Mills Inc. three lots of seed (130 ST) remaining

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from the project at a price of $67.50/ST FOB from various Texas and Oklahoma elevators. On April 16, I was notified by Charles F. Brannan (former Secretary of Agriculture and attorney for Farmers Oilseed Mills) that he did not agree to the sale, since our terms of payment would put money into Lord’s hands and would have constituted preference for a creditor of an insolvent corporation. We had known we were dealing with potential problems in dealing with Lord’s company, but we felt it was necessary in order to remove the seed from the market. On May 24, Brannan had announced an acreage program in Texas for 1960, but nothing came of it. Eventually we received our seed, but it was of extremely poor quality. We thought this was the end of Lord, but he soon appeared as a potential buyer at the Gurley elevator adjacent to the Sidney, Nebraska, plant. He subsequently reneged, and we purchased the seed that Gurley had acquired on his behalf. On March 20, 1961, International Safflower Corporation made a public offering of 59,900 shares of common stock at $15/share, of which $108,000 was to be allocated for the lease of land, a building, and oil-milling equipment for a proposed mill. It also was intended to pay off various liabilities and buy planting seed (47). The prospectus showed that the company was heavily in debt and pointed out that any funds used might not be sufficient to do what was intended. The offering was not oversubscribed and the organization faded away in about a year. The Great Plains and Mexico On March 26, 1960, PVO had a gala open house at the Culbertson, Montana, plant (48) and the occasion was used by visiting PVO and POI dignitaries to push for expanded acreage to allow the plant to run 10–11 months/year. Within weeks, the euphoria generated by the event was dashed by a disastrous fire at Sidney that destroyed the expeller mill and decorticating equipment, but spared the office, seed, and oil storage facilities (49). By the end of July, PVO had announced plans to reerect the plant at Sidney and to expand seed storage at the Culbertson facility by 250%. By June 1961, the reconstructed Sidney plant was processing the 1960 safflower crop at 100 tons/day, and in September PVO/GMI had added 315,000 bushels of additional seed storage. If the weather would cooperate, the two Great Plains safllower plants were poised to allow further expansion in U.S. production. In that year, the USDA had also ruled that safflower was eligible to be planted on the 20% of the acreage that farmers were required to divert from grain production. However, farmers wanted the diversion payment on the acreage not planted, so few chose this option. While PVO was increasing its capacity in the Great Plains, Cuvi was reacting to the experiments with safflower going on in Mexico. Initially, PVO had miscalculated about safflower’s ability to be produced by Mexican farmers and had tried to discourage production in Mexico. Pacific Oilseeds, Inc.’s early observations had been that rust would severely limit safflower production on Mexico’s west coast. Cuvi had also underestimated plantings and production of safflower during Mexico’s early days and instead had concentrated on developing a market within Mexico for oil imported from the United States. But once he recognized the trend, he was quick

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to change his views and began to investigate the most effective way to participate in the Mexican safflower picture. He enlisted POI’s assistance in preparing a bulletin in Spanish with recommendations for Mexican safflower production. In 1958, PVO del Sur’s subsidiary, Nacional de Commercio, S.A. purchased 390 metric tons of safflower seed in Mexico, toll crushing 290 tons in Mexico City in the Industria Aceitera mill. The oil was marketed as a premium product, the meal was blended into cottonseed cake, and the balance of the seed was saved for planting purposes. In 1959, cotton prices crumbled throughout the world, and farmers resorted to planting larger quantities of safflower in Mexico because it was a cheap crop to produce. Cuvi’s initial reaction in February 1959 was to participate in a joint safflower project in Baja California del Sur with the mill of Angel Rodriguez. A survey by Hill and Hoffman produced a negative report. Although Cuvi tried further, this gambit failed to produce much safflower over the next 2 years. Anderson Clayton flew Rubis to Mexico to conduct grower meetings. General Mills indicated to Mexican principals that it might be interested in Mexican oil. Boone of Cargill visited Mexico City to investigate the Mexican safflower business. All of this activity alarmed Cuvi, and in April 1959, he proposed to PVO that the most successful way to market safflower oil in Mexico was to control the processing of seed purchased from growers and to control the marketing of the oil to consumers as much as possible. He pointed out that contracting with farmers in Mexico would not work as well as it did in California. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had enjoyed very good compliance concerning all terms of a safflower contract in California, where growers were inclined to deliver to the company that they had made a contract sale with, whether the market at harvest time had advanced or declined versus the contract price. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had experienced some attrition in mid-western contracts when others like Caltana or Lord offered individuals a higher price than PVO’s contract. Cuvi argued that a contract meant little in Mexico if market prices advanced at time of harvest. Cuvi advocated joining with his good friend, Don Ceferino Sainz Pardo, owner of an expeller mill in Guadalajara (AGYDSA), to convert the mill to a prepress solvent operation for processing of safflower. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation moved quickly to put this arrangement together (see Chapter 8) and transferred its 50% ownership to Paveocor, A.G. on April 23, 1960. Paveocor, PVO’s international foreign trade and holding company, was established at Zug, Switzerland, and was the result of a favorable income tax basis negotiated with the Swiss government. In the future this allowed PVO to put its foreign earnings through Paveocor and substantially reduced its U.S. tax obligations. PVO Publicizes Its Stock Returning to PVO’s pursuit of edible safflower markets in the United States, it should be noted that the company applied for trademarks for three trade names, Saff-Lo, Safflora, and Saffola, in late March, 1967. The pharmaceutical market for Saff-Lo

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stagnated, and sales of edible safflower oil in the United States failed to increase radically during 1958 and 1959, but prospects remained bright. In 1959, PVO began a program to acquaint the public with PVO and its stock; a financial public relations firm was hired to assist in this effort. This involved an effort to increase the number of the company’s shareholders so it could reach the minimum number required to be listed on the daily NASDAC Stock Market Report on a national basis. Rocca and I began to visit stock analyst groups around the country to foster this effort. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s research laboratory developed a brochure extolling the benefits of edible safflower oil and, in particular, the benefits of oil produced by and from the “PVO Process” on which the company applied for a patent. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s laboratory demonstrated that salad oil produced from prepress oil (“PVO Process” oil) had a longer shelf life than that of oil produced from a mixture of prepress and solvent-extracted or pure solvent-extracted oil (50). On May 18, 1960, PVO made an offering of $2,500,000 of 6% Convertible Subordinate Debentures due April 1, 1975. Dean Witter and Co., and Hooker and Fay, Inc., were the principal underwriters. The offering was grabbed up by the investing public, showing the rising interest that people had in the polyunsaturated issue. By this time, PVO was showing sales of $115,636,339 and earnings of $884,837 for the prior year. Safflower operations constituted only 15% of operating revenues, so a great deal of revenue and earnings growth could be anticipated if safflower volumes continued to grow (51).

The Polyunsaturated Boom Rocca Jr. received a phone call in November 1960 from an executive of the publisher Simon and Schuster. He was asked if he could attend a meeting in New York to discuss the impact that a new book might have on the market for safflower oil. Rocca Jr. was leaving soon to visit Paveocor, so he arranged to stop in New York. Simon and Schuster wanted to see if PVO would be interested in a joint project to develop the book and any safflower products that might be associated with it. The author was Herman Taller, who had developed a radical weight-reduction diet that had received national attention when he delivered an address at the Ninth International Congress on Nutrition. The book was going to make statements such as: “Overall, the average obese person will lose best on a diet which is 65 percent fat. Two-thirds of that fat should be unsaturated. Thirty percent of the diet should be protein. Only 5 percent should be carbohydrate....Clearly, safflower is the most valuable by far.” Since Safflower oil was not readily available in all stores, he stated that the easiest routine would be to take two safflower oil capsules before each meal (52). Simon and Schuster sent a galley proof of Taller’s book to PVO’s Research Department for evaluation. When Rocca Jr. returned from Europe, Kneeland and Purdy had reviewed it with other medical consultants (including Kinsell) and reported to Rocca Jr. that weight loss from the diet could be attributed to the absence of high calorie carbohydrates and not necessarily due to any magic produced by

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safflower oil. Therefore, PVO turned down Simon and Schuster’s development offer and the publisher embarked on the project alone (53). Simon and Schuster were correct in their analysis of the book’s impact. It was released in June 1961 and surged to the number one spot on the National Nonfiction Best-Seller list 2 months after publication. Shortly after Rocca’s meeting with Simon and Schuster, the American Heart Association gave safflower oil a further boost by making an announcement on the value of unsaturated oils in the diet. The key statement in the announcement was that “studies have shown that reasonable substitution of polyunsaturated oils for saturated fats in the diet can be beneficial in the control of serum cholesterol in the blood” (54). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation would echo this statement again and again in their own promotional material. Rocca Jr. boldly told Merrill Lynch’s Investment Reader that PVO will “come right out and say that safflower oil is helpful in reducing blood cholesterol,” and that PVO was prepared to defend its position in court if the FDA objected (55). In yet another boost to PVO’s program, Harvey L. Slaughter, vice president of the Glidden Co. and General Manager of the Durkee Famous Foods Division of Glidden, and Rocca Jr. jointly announced a plan under which Glidden purchased 40,000,000 lbs of safflower from PVO (with an option to increase the quantity to 50,000,000 lbs) under a long-term requirements contract. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was to provide an annual guaranteed supply to Durkee; Durkee would be responsible for developing and marketing safflower margarine oil under the agreement. In early January 1961, PVO had released a 16 mm color film called “The Safflower Story.” It was cut to a 23-minute length to allow its use on commercial television in one-half hour segments. It was designed for multiple purposes: as an aid in grower promotional meetings; for the display before food editors, the financial press, shareholder meetings, and stock analyst groups; and for general public education concerning safflower. A number of copies were made available through TV distribution channels so it could be borrowed and used in public service segments by commercial television channels all over the country. With all of the activity, it appeared that the way had been cleared through the uncertainty left by the FDA, and PVO began to make plans to market consumer safflower products using the trademarked “Saffola” brand name. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had no bottling facilities of its own, so Hammond made an arrangement with Orrell Foods of Oakland, California, to prepare and package Saffola Salad Oil produced from prepress safflower, handled with minimum exposure to air, and stored in a dark amber bottle. Warren Overlid was hired to manage the Saffola brand marketing endeavor, and Maillard and Schmiedel, a noted San Francisco-based food brokerage firm, was chosen to handle the placement of the product in the market. A test market was laid out to try Saffola salad and cooking oil initially in the Sacramento and Stockton, California, marketing areas, to be backed with a $135,000 advertising budget and a promotional campaign. The test kicked off in June 1961 and was supposed to run for 4–6 months. By the end of September, the test was so successful that PVO expanded its marketing to the entire West Coast and included a Saffola mayonnaise and a Saffola French Dressing. The Pacific Vegetable Oil

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Corporation had concluded that it should market Saffola products nationally (56) and Saffola was introduced quickly, first into the Pacific Northwest and Arizona, and then into Florida, Washington, Baltimore, upstate New York, and Chicago. Leading food brokers in those areas were employed to market Saffola products assisted by John Krizek who worked for Theodore Sills, PVO’s public relations consultants. A famous design firm, Walter Landor and Associates was retained to produce a new logo and packaging for Saffola, and Saffola stick margarine was introduced onto the market in December 1961. Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation growers were offered bonuses in all areas in an effort to increase production. In Nebraska, a modified long-term contract of 3–5 years’ duration offered an additional $2 bonus to those who signed. Preceding Saffola onto the market was Hain Safflower Oil and Hollywood Health Food’s Safflower Salad Oil and Margarine. Hollywood was a wholly owned subsidiary of Hain Pure Foods Co., Inc., and Hain Pure Food Co. Distributors, a Los Angeles health food distributor and supplier of healthful juices and oils, respectively. Hain had been started in 1926 by Harold Hain and sold to George Jacobs and his two brothers-in-law in 1952. By 1955, Jacobs had pushed Hain into the black and by the time interest in safflower oil first became apparent, the Hain line of health food products was known nationwide. In 1959, Hain began to feature safflower oil that he purchased from PVO and from VOPCO in its health food line. He took a big step in 1961 when he incorporated Hollywood, and began marketing Hollywood Safflower Oil (which he bottled himself) and then Hollywood Safflower Margarine (produced for him by VOPCO) to grocery stores. In less than a year his sales volume went from zero to over one million dollars, more than the gross for the entire Hain business in any of its 10 years since it had been purchased by Jacobs. Jacobs always said that he was lucky to have started at the right time, but more than luck was involved as he, and later his sons, expanded their safflower business exponentially. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation tried to capture Hain with a requirements contract, but he preferred to buy year by year. Hollywood and Saffola were not the only safflower margarines. The Borden Company, Lever Brothers with “Golden Glo,” and VOPCO with “Golden Sweet,” announced safflower-based margarines at about the same time. This was followed later by Kraft’s “100% Safflower Margarine,” and Anderson Clayton’s “Chiffon.” Anderson Clayton built a special plant in Fresno, California in 1963 to produce the “Chiffon” product. Starting in 1960, Frozen Desserts Co. of Los Angeles, a PVO client, had another interesting product. They began to offer six flavors of “Hi-Saff” imitation ice cream with safflower oil replacing the butterfat fraction. By 1962. “Hi-Saff” sales had increased 300% over the prior year, and it had achieved good distribution in California, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona. Some of the edible products from safflower were not successful. The Carnation company began serious work during this period on incorporating safflower into a canned milk product, but this never reached market status. Shedd-Bartush Foods, a subsidiary of Beatrice Foods and the country’s largest margarine producer, was selected by PVO to manufacture and package its Saffola

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Margarine in Shedd’s Sunnyvale, California, factory. A formulation developed by Durkee Famous Foods’ chemists and centered around their safflower margarine oil was used. In April, Shedd also announced that it would manufacture a safflower margarine of its own, starting with an introduction in the Detroit area that would be expanded to a national basis as more safflower oil became available. SheddBartush chose to promote its product as “the best tasting,” hoping to avoid controversy with the FDA. Its formulation incorporated 50% liquid safflower oil within a hardened lattice; it was one of the first examples of a soft tub-type margarine (57). During this time, not all innovations concerning safflower oil were concerning edible uses. PVO 44–0 was introduced during this period of frenzied edible activity at the Western Coatings Technology Symposium Materials and Equipment Show held in San Francisco in March 1962. It was a vehicle for superior quality exterior oil paints that could be thinned with water, dried in less than 1 hour, were easy to clean up, and displayed excellent adhesion to chalky surfaces. PVO 44–0 (a concentrated emulsion of bodied safflower in water) was a product of PVO’s researchers, particularly Cummings, and in 1966, Cummings and Kneeland were granted a patent (assigned to PVO) for the background work inherent in this product (58). Problems Arise Still displaying optimism, PVO/GMI announced plans to double the capacity of the Sidney plant by adding a French stationary basket extractor, new storage and office space. These additions would increase tonnage to 200 tons/day on a prepress solvent basis (59). On the same page of the paper announcing PVO/GMI’s expansion program was another story, “No Trace of Missing Plane” (60). On Good Friday, April 19, 1962, POI and PVO were struck by tragedy. Hoffman, flying back from Montana in the POI airplane, stopped in Colorado to pick up his family, and Claassen’s wife and sister-in-law. Later the plane crashed into the reverse slopes of the Ruby Mountains, in Nevada, killing everyone on board instantly. His loss was a devastating blow to POI. Claassen and Hoffman were a unique blend of individual strengths and faults that complemented each other perfectly. Hoffman’s loss in the company removed a counterbalance to Claassen’s dynamism. Even more personally devastating to Claassen, aside from the death of his wife, was the fact that Hoffman’s death changed POI from being a 50/50 partnership between PVO on one side and Claassen and Hoffman on the other to a partnership where PVO had the controlling power with a 66 2/3 share of the common stock once Hoffman’s stock was retired. This created no immediate problem, but once control of POI changed, Claassen’s business life became very frustrating. Although POI continued to prosper at times after Hoffman’s death, its soul was gone and the creative syner-gism between Claassen and Hoffman could not be recaptured by others. Further dark clouds were gathering on the horizon for safflower and PVO. Corn oil–based margarines were not the problem, although Standard Brands’ Fleischman’s Corn Oil Margarine, introduced in 1959, and Corn Products’ Mazola Margarine, introduced in 1960, commanded large nationwide slices of the polyunsaturated market and were supported by well-entrenched and knowledgeable marketing firms.

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On January 21, 1962, PVO had declared its regular $0.20 quarterly dividend, feeling great about the safflower world and the progress it was making. But on January 24, 1962, action by the Food and Drug Administration was reported, “The FDA announced it had seized 58,000 capsules of safflower at a United Whelan Drug Store warehouse in Brooklyn, NY, and 1,600 copies of the book, Calories Don’t Count, by Dr. Herman Taller, an obstetrician and gynecologist, on the grounds of misleading labeling.” While Malcolm R. Stephens, the FDA Director of Enforcement admitted that FDA did not have jurisdiction over books as such, he said the government alleged that the capsules and accompanying books, sold as a promotional tie-in, constituted point-of-sale material falsely claiming weight-control properties. But the most damning part of the FDA’s action was a statement that, “Safflower oil is not an effective reducing aid and the amount of safflower oil recommended by the book for daily diet is not significant for any purpose” (61). Rocca Jr., President of the National Institute of Oilseed Products that year, replied from Ojai, California, where the NIOP was holding its annual convention, and addressed a message to George O. Larrick, Commissioner of the FDA. “The FDA’s action in the seizure of 1,600 copies of the best-selling diet book, Calories Don’t Count, and 58,000 capsules of safflower oil from a Long Island drug firm, has focused national attention on safflower, and has had the unfortunate consequence of being interpreted as a reflection on the value of safflower as a food product.”

Rocca went on to point out the benefits of safflower in food, citing the American Heart Association announcement; explaining that none of the growers or processors of safflower oil had made claims that safflower oil would act as a weight reducer; and indicating that safflower crop production was expected to increase 50% in 1962, and oil from the crop was destined for many products nationwide, “in keeping with our policy of providing an ample supply of polyunsaturated oils in response to public demand for food products which will aid in the fight against heart disease. These food products...are priced and packaged as grocery products and not as drugs” (61). The National Dairy Council loved it. At their annual meeting in Philadelphia, the head of Cornell University’s Department of Biochemistry, “warned against the overuse of polyunsaturated fats in the hope of preventing or minimizing heart disease,” and in another talk at the same meeting, the directors of the Institute of Natural Sciences, Columbia University, warned that “nutritional quacks are making money and endangering the nation’s health.” (62). None of these worries stopped PVO or its growing list of competitors from moving ahead during early 1962. On January 19, 1962, Piercy, Arizona Cottonseed Products Company’s Vice president and General Manager, announced that ground had been broken at the Gilbert, Arizona, plant for construction of an $800,000 Anderson horizontal solvent extractor to enable them to crush 50% of Arizona’s 1962 safflower crop (63,64). Arizona Cottonseed’s move was probably hastened by the December announcement (65) that Serape Cotton Oil, a cooperative oil mill at Chandler, Arizona, was making a $400,000 addition to its expeller plant in order to be able to prepress/solvent extract safflower seeds. Serape was headed by Earl D. Cecil, the son of Earl J. Cecil who was

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the General Manager of Ranchers Cotton Oil and one of the pioneers of cooperative cottonseed oil mills. March 2, 1962, Boone, Regional Manager for Cargill, Inc., announced, “We’re interested in all the California acreage we can contract,” and stated that Cargill would also offer contracts later in the spring in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas (66). The same article also mentioned that Diamond Walnut Cooperative of Stockton, California, would begin processing safflower seed in its expeller mill on behalf of its grower-members. By April, John Talbott, Cargill’s newly retained Director of Safflower Production, would be in Conrad, Montana, seeing about Cargill’s contracting plans (67). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation announced bonus payments for 1961 growers, $7 higher prices for 1962 growers and long-term options for growers in the regions surrounding both of its Great Plains plants. Co-op representatives from eight districts in Colorado and Nebraska met in Lincoln, Nebraska, to probe ways of opening new market opportunities for safflower grown by their members and looked for $90 prices (68). Lord announced that his International Safflower Corporation would post daily prices through one Wyoming and four Nebraska grain dealers and that a new oil mill would be erected the next September (68). It was subsequently announced to be in Lamar, Colorado (69). In California, Parkey, now with J.G. Boswell Co., spoke before the Corcoran, California, District Chamber of Commerce on safflower’s increasing importance (70). Not to be outdone by their Gilbert and Chandler competitors, Western Cotton Products Co., a subsidiary of Anderson Clayton, rolled out a press day at their Phoenix plant, pointing out that their plant would prepress/solvent extract 15,000 tons of safflower. The story featured a picture of the plant’s Anderson tower extractor; they would soon find that it was not the ideal medium for extracting safflower seed (71). Even Congress got into the act, but could not get its facts straight. U.S. Representative Ben Reifel (Rep-SD) got a bill passed by both houses of Congress in one week that would allow the Secretary of Agriculture discretion to pay up to 50% of diversion payments (from wheat or corn) to a farmer who planted acreage to crops designated as nonsurplus, such as safflower (72). In June, 1962, Claassen announced expansions in POI’s operations to handle increasing safflower business. Wolcott, former manager of PVO’s Field Crops Department, was made Vice president and Treasurer of POI (replacing Hoffman in these duties) but remained stationed at PVO’s office in Richmond, California. Donald Smith, POI’s Research Director since 1958, was promoted to Vice president in Charge of Research. L.S. “Mike” Gleason was appointed District Manager in the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California, and Arizona (again replacing a Hoffman function), Harold Bain was appointed District Manager for the Pacific Northwest, reflecting a second try by PVO for contracts in that area. George Meckfessel was made District Manager for the Sacramento Valley. Finally, Producers Cotton Oil Company of Fresno, California, announced that it would conduct a three million dollar modernization of its facilities, “to process one of the first significant tonnages of safflower to be handled in the San Joaquin Valley program” (73). Still, it was apparent that PVO was also seeing the dark clouds gathering. On July 11, 1962, Rocca Jr. issued a new statement,

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“Periodically we at PVO hear of actions involving the FDA, various drug firms and certain publications regarding safflower oil. Many such news items reflect unfavorably upon the entire safflower oil industry. Therefore, I believe that I should again repeat what I have said many times in the past—that edible safflower oil is a grocery-store item, not a drug store item” (74).

This statement was prompted by additional seizures of safflower products by the FDA. Of course, in the back of Rocca’s mind was the continued threat implied by the FDA long before, in a December 10, 1959, policy statement that advised manufacturers and distributors of unsaturated fats and oils that promotion of these products for the prevention of heart disease would be in violation of the Federal Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics Act. Subsequent rulings prohibited direct quotations from the American Heart Association’s press release and forbade the use of phrases such as “will reduce cholesterol” (8). On August 2, 1962, the American Medical Association muddied the water and in ensuing months would muddy it more. The AMA’s Council on Foods and Nutrition issued a report directed at physicians as a guide for treating patients. The report stated that treatment of hypercholesteremia with a low-fat diet was not effective. The Council said that increasing the ratio of polyunsaturated fat to saturated fat in the diet is the preferred method (although experimental) for treating the usual hypercholesteremia (75). The following month, the FDA said that the AMA policy statement had absolutely no effect on FDA policy and moved to seize 61 cases of safflower shortening from a Safeway Stores warehouse in Salt Lake City. The FDA also seized copies of a booklet, “Pocket Guide for Poly-Unsaturates,” produced by Vegetable Oil Products Co., claiming that the book promoted the shortening as effective in the control of blood cholesterol levels and reducing body weight, and would keep users fit and active (76). Eventually some Saffola products were seized as well, but we were able to get them released because they were not being used in connection with any inflammatory literature. Both the FDA and the AMA received record amounts of mail after their actions, and the AMA blinked. On October 12, 1962, the AMA issued a press release that decried food fadism and recommended seeking medical advice before making drastic dietary changes. This caused more confusion, and on December 29 the AMA clarified its position in an editorial in the Journal of the AMA, again reversing its position (77,78). It stated that dietary treatment could significantly alter the fat concentration in the blood of patients with high cholesterol levels; lower cholesterol levels were associated with lower mortality rates, but this had not proved a cause-and-effect relationship; there was still not enough information available to warrant changing diet to prevent heart disease. The National Dairy Council ran full page advertisements of the October 12 “clarification” and the public was confused further. Whereas a few months before, PVO had been forced to buy back safflower oil from industrial customers and import safflower oil from Japan at high prices to keep up with surging demand, once the FDA seizures began, capsule manufacturers were imploring PVO to cancel sales contracts. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s safflower sales fell 50% by April of 1962, yet in Buckeye, Arizona, the town fathers

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were organizing a Safflower Festival for September 6–9, complete with the world’s first Safflower Queen, Shirleyan Cambron, celebrating the over 60,000 acres that everyone was expecting to yield so well. It was my sad duty to give a damp blanket type of speech at the Festival’s banquet, pointing out the fact that prices for safflower seed had plunged from a high of $100 to the present level of only $80, and warning all concerned that production appeared to be outstripping consumption. It was a speech nobody, including our competitors, wanted to hear. In the following year we would see production increase to new highs in many areas. Yet most of the mills eagerly planning for the solvent extraction of safflower for the first time had only vague marketing plans for all of their oil. SheddBartush’s margarine-marketing campaign collapsed within weeks after starting, and Durkee Famous Foods demanded that their contract be renegotiated (i.e., ended). More competitors appeared or announced their presence. Diamond Walnut Growers, Inc., reported that it was ready to crush 5,000 tons of safflower in its Stockton, California expeller plant (79). Farmers Union Grain Terminal Association announced that it had purchased 1,000 tons of 1962 safflower seed in the Great Plains for an experimental crush at its Minnesota Linseed Oil plant in Minneapolis, adding that it planned to buy several thousand tons in 1963 (80). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was also faced with having little to run in the Long Beach facility that I had urged the company to acquire. In June 1961, we had acquired the property after months of negotiating. The property, originally owned by Spencer Kellogg and Sons, Inc., was secured by a 25-year lease with option to buy from the Union Pacific Railroad. The reason for acquiring the Long Beach facility was to supplement the excellent export facilities at PVO’s Stockton Elevator with an elevator facility capable of economically elevating Southern California and Arizona safflower from its deep-water location. The plant also offered the ability to process and refine copra and flax, plus the opportunity to consolidate PVO’s other Los Angeles operations in one location. Now we were faced with the prospect of having to curtail safflower production after spending a large sum to modernize the elevator. Going into 1963, PVO was being forced to talk much lower prices and to reduce contracting goals in California and Arizona because we had 12,000 tons of safflower oil unsold. We felt that our competitors were unwisely pushing forward for ever larger acreage commitments in 1963. We believed that we would be able to protect our acreage base if we chose to do so because of our fine relationships with California and Great Plains growers in the past, together with the strength of our long-term grower contracts. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had tried not to be arrogant in its dealings with growers and consumers. In general, growers and most domestic customers were satisfied with their arrangements with PVO, but Boswell and Kingsburg’s grower-owners had a different view of us, and it probably fueled their desire to go it alone. For example, these were the words of James Yost of J.G. Boswell Company’s Ranching Department: “Thank you for your letter of September 22nd, which outlined briefly your proposition for the contraction of our Safflower production. [I had offered a long-term contract.] Unless I have some more information than you presented in your letter,

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I do not believe that we would be at all interested in such a contract. We do not mind at all being competitive on a production basis with other farmers either in this area or in other areas, and at the same time we like to be able to be as free as possible in our marketing of our production. In other words, we don’t mind taking our lumps, but we want to be able to take full advantage of any price situation that may arise. We feel that with the new seeds that have been developed along with our ability to grow this crop that we have a little bit of an edge in production on other areas” (9/24/59 letter to J. Smith at PVO from J. Yost of J.G. Boswell).

Boswell and Kingsburg and others, such as Cal-Ladino and Cargill, found them-selves blocked from most Japanese trading companies by PVO’s web of requitements contracts and licenses that included Mitsubishi, C. Itoh, Sumitomo, Kanematsu, Yuasa, Taiyo, and Saiwai trading companies. Marubeni had also been a buyer of PVO safflower seed, but had rebelled against the requirements contracts, feeling that PVO’s policy made the Japanese buyers into a PVO colony. (4/30/89 personal letter to J. Smith from Y. Wada). Mitsui also remained outside the PVO group. From 1954–62, PVO had its own way. In 1962, Tetsuya Satoh of Toshoku Ltd.’s Tokyo Oil and Fat Section repeatedly requested that PVO include his company as one of our distributors (12/11/89 personal letter to J. Smith from Satoh), but PVO was forced to turn Toshoku down cold, because it would have infuriated PVO’s other distributors and the seed was necessary to supply PVO’s growing domestic needs. 1962 happened to be the year that both Boswell and Kingsburg began producing safflower seed in earnest. Toshoku’s desire for a source of seed coincided with Kingsburg’s desire to sell freely, and by autumn of 1962 Toshoku had purchased 4,000 metric tons of safflower seed from Kingsburg through Marwood (12/11/89 Satoh letter) and the race was on. TABLE 4.4 Data of PVO’s Sidney, Nebraska Division on Safflower Acreage, Production, Disposition, and Prices Paid to Farmers Year

Acreage Contracted

Production (ST)

1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967

6,000a 30,000b 39,043 54,000 75,000 120,000 25,000 8,000 23,450 13,166 2,022c

2,000a 4,766 9,736 12,854 19,950 17,390 6,440 2,558 1,000 300 100

a

Export (ST)

5,081

Crush (ST) 1,900 4,000 7,650 6,798 18,750 16,990 7,230 3,686 960

Planting Final Seed (ST) Price ($/ST) 100 766 2,086 975 1,200 400 117 40

Purchased from open acreage (harvested).

b

Harvested.

c

1,000 planted.

Source: Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; and J. Smith, unpublished data.

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64.00 67.00 66.00 68.00 77.00 80.00 75.00 70.50 70.00

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Acreage, Production, and Prices During the 1950–62 crop years, PVO faced little competition from others, and the changes in acreage, production, prices, and regions of production were caused by changes in weather and acts of government, but primarily from PVO’s own decisions. Tables 4.1, 4.4, and 4.5 list the U.S. acreage and production that PVO dealt with during the 1950–62 period (through 1967 for Nebraska and Montana) and the prices paid to the farmers in each area. Table 4.6 is a compilation of safflower and meal prices for the 1950–62 crop years. By 1962, PVO was facing sizable competition in production from 10 dealers and millers in the United States, and competition in the Japanese market with outside trading companies competing against PVO’s group of distributors. TABLE 4.5 Data of PVO’s Culbertson, Montana, Division on Safflower Acreage, Production, Disposition, and Prices Paid to Farmers Year 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967

Acreage Production Contracted (ST) 7,366 57,000 76,478 50,000 90,750 60,000 40,000 25,000 15,000 6,490a

Export (ST)

Crush (ST)

6,500 7,048 17,368 8,066 21,116 20,846 12,587 7,500 5,050 900

3,022

6,739 13,579 7,366 21,116 19,140 10,442 7,000 5,050

Planting Seed (ST)

Final Price ($/ST)

866 309 767 700 375 916 900

70.00 65.50 65.00 75.00 80.00 75.00 69.50 75.00

a1,800 planted. Source: Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; and J. Smith, unpubnlished data.

TABLE 4.6 Average Prices of Safflower Oil and Safflower Meal, 1950–1962 Year 19500.154 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962

Safflower Oil, nonbreak ($/lb, tank cars, NYC) 0.168 0.158 0.152 0.168 0.171 0.161 0.159 0.160 0.159 0.155 0.172 0.189

Source: J. Smith, unpublished data.

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Safflower Meal $/ST FOB mill California Nebraska Montana

Ranged from a high of $35 to a low of $15

29.70 30.50

Ranged from a high of $35 to a low of $15

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References 1. Smith, J.R., Edible Fats and Oils Processing: Basic Principles and Modern Practices, edited by D.R. Erickson, The American Oil Chemists’ Society, Champaign, Illinois, 1989, pp. 324–330. 2. Annual Report, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, San Francisco, 1954. 3. Offering Circular, International Safflower Corporation, March 20, 1961. 4. Engle, W. American Weekly, August 15, 1954. 5. Sales Management 79: 102 (1957). 6. Ritzville Journal-Times, Ritzville, Washington, August, 1954. 7. The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, August 26, 1954. 8. The Spokane Chronicle, Spokane, Washington, June 22, 1954. 9. The Spokesman Review, Spokane, Washington, July 11, 1954. 10. The Dalles Optimist, Dalles, Washington, October 7, 1954. 11. The Union Bulletin, Walla Walla, Washington, October 26, 1954. 12. Farm Management, p. 38, March, 1955. 13. The Box Elder Journal, Brigham City, Utah, p. 1, March 1, 1957. 14. The Utah Farmer, Salt Lake City, Utah, April 4, 1952. 15. Soltoft, P., and F.G. Dollear, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 28: 335 (1951). 16. Kinsell, L.W., J. Patridge, L. Boling, S. Margen, and G.D. Michaels, J. Clin. Endocrinol Met. 12: 909 (1952). 17. Ahrens, E.H., Jr., W. Insull, R. Bloomstrand, J. Hirsch, T.T. Tsaltas, and M.L. Peterson, Lancet 1: 6976 (1957). 18. Bronte Stewart, B., A. Antonis, L. Ealse, and S.F. Brock, Lancet II: 521 (1956). 19. The World-Herald, Omaha, Nebraska, October 17, 1957. 20. Feedstuffs, March 3 (1956). 21. Wall Street Journal, June 25, 1957. 22. Hillery, V., Wall Street Journal, p. 1, August 14, 1957. 23. The Northwest, Northern Pacific Railroad, p. 7, November-December (1957). 24. Thomas, C.A., Plant Dis. Rptr. 33: 453 (1949). 25. Thomas, C.A., Plant Dis. Rptr. 34: 391 (1950). 26. Thomas, C.A., Plant Dis. Rptr. 35: 454 (1951). 27. Thomas, C.A., Phytopathology 42: 21 (1952). 28. Thomas, C.A., Phytopathology 42: 108 (1952). 29. Thomas, C.A., Phytopathology 42: 219 (1952). 30. Thomas, C.A., Herbs and Other Special Crops—Yearbook of Agriculture, USDA, Washington D.C., 1953, pp. 867–868. 31. Thomas, C.A., Plant Dis. Rptr. 39: 652 (1955). 32. Thomas, C.A., Phytopathology 46: 29 (1956). 33. Thomas, C.A., Phytopathology 48: 398 (1958). 34. Thomas, C.A., Plant Dis. Rptr. 42: 1089 (1958). 35. Thomas, C.A., Plant Dis. Rptr. 43: 1250 (1959). 36. Thomas, C.A., Phytopathology 50: 129 (1960).

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37. Rubis, D.D., and D.S. Black, Safflower Recommendations for Arizona—Report 170, Agri. Exp. Stn., University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 3 pp., October, 1958. 38. Rubis, D.D., and D.S. Black, Arizona Bulletin 301: Gila—A New Safflower Variety, Bulletin 301, Agri. Exp. Stn., University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, November, 1958, 5 pp. 39. Robe, K., Food Processing: April 26, 1958. 40. Minneapolis Morning Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 25, 1957. 41. Sidney Telegraph, Sidney, Nebraska, p. 1, October 16, 1957. 42. The Searchlight, Culbertson, Montana, p. 1, November 7, 1957. 43. Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, Montana, March 2, 1955. 44. Commercial Review, Portland Oregon, May 20, 1958. 45. The Sidney Herald, Sidney, Montana, July 23, 1958. 46. Amarillo Daily News, March 7, 1959. 47. International Safflower Corporation—Offering Circular, Copley and Company, Colorado Springs, Colorado, March 20, 1961, 22 pp. 48. The Searchlight, Culbertson, Montana, p. 1, March 31, 1960. 49. The Sidney Telegraph, “$500,000 Blaze Destroys Sidney Safflower Plant,” May 2, 1960. 50. Purdy, R.H., and J.A. Kneeland, PVO Process Safflower Oil, Edible Grade, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, 1957. 51. Pacific Vegetable Corporation $2,500,000 6% Convertible Subordinated Debentures—Prospectus, Dean Witter and Co., San Francisco, May 18, 1960. 52. Taller, H., Calories Don’t Count, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1961, pp. 152–153. 53. Rocca, B.T., Oil and Troubled Waters—The PVO Story, Private Publication, 1986, pp. 62–63. 54. The American Heart Association, December 1961. 55. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith, Investor’s Reader 37: 4 (1961). 56. Rocca, B.T., and B.T. Rocca Jr., Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation Annual Report, September 1961, p. 2. 57. Business Week, April 21, 1962. 58. Cummings L.O., and J.A. Kneeland, U.S. Patent 3,266,922 (1966). 59. The Sidney Telegraph, Sidney, Nebraska, p. 1, April 25, 1962. 60. Wall Street Journal, p. 2, January 29, 1962. 61. The Sidney Telegraph, Sidney, Nebraska, January 29, 1962. 62. The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, February 2, 1962. 63. The Phoenix Gazette, Phoenix, Arizona, January 19, 1962. 64. Arizona Farmer-Ranchman, Phoenix, Arizona, February 10, 1962. 65. Arizona Farmer-Ranchman, Phoenix, Arizona, December 16, 1961. 66. Farm Journal, March 1962. 67. Independent-Observer, Conrad, Montana, April 12, 1962. 68. The Sidney Telegraph, Sidney, Nebraska, April 16, 1962. 69. Plainsman-Herald, Springfield, Colorado, May 10, 1962. 70. The Journal, Corcoran, California, April 19, 1962. 71. Arizona Farmer-Ranchman, Phoenix, Arizona, April 21, 1962. 72. Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, May 11, 1962.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Developmen of the PVO Strategy

73. The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, June 28, 1962. 74. The Sidney Telegraph, Sidney, Nebraska, July 11, 1962. 75. The Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, August 3, 1963. 76. Barnes, P., Supermarket News, p. 1, September 3, 1962. 77. Arizona Farmer-Ranchman, Phoenix, Arizona, January 26, 1963. 78. Snider, A.J., San Francisco Chronicle, January 6, 1963. 79. The Record, Stockton, California, September 22, 1962. 80. Farmers’ Union Herald, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 7, 1963.

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Chapter 5

Alternatives to the PVO Strategy A number of companies have entered and left the safflower business since 1950. This chapter examines the history of some of those firms and will compare their approach to the safflower business to that of PVO. None of the companies that engaged in the safflower business in 1950 are involved with safflower today. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Company was the principal player from 1950–62, when it enjoyed a virtual monopoly in safflower operations. Today, PVO no longer exists. Oilseed Products Co. sold out to Ranchers Cotton Oil, but Ranchers has had no involvement with safflower for over 15 years. The Glidden Company abandoned safflower operations after 2 years. The companies operated by Lord, Caltana Safflower Products Co. and E.W. McDonnell, are all out of business. Spencer Kellogg and Sons made only a brief attempt at safflower processing. California Cotton Oil Company of Los Angeles was a toll processor for PVO in safflower’s early years, but they stopped operating years ago, as did S.A. Camp of Bakersfield, California. This chapter will also look at some of the firms that entered the picture a little later and had more staying power. Cargill, Inc. actually preceded PVO in trying safflower for the first time, and is an example of a company staying with safflower because it complements other aspects of its business—grain merchandising, planting seed sales, and grain elevation and storage. J.G. Boswell Co. and Kingsburg Cotton Oil both approached safflower from a farmer’s viewpoint. Boswell processes safflower in its own oil mill as a complement to its cottonseed processing, but it is as a farmer that it has always approached the crop. Kingsburg never seriously tried to process safflower in its oil mill, and its decisions to enter and leave the safflower business were basically farming decisions. Cal/West Seeds, formerly Caladino, is a farmer-owned cooperative, and its approach to the safflower business has been to try to find good markets for its members. Cal/West has built storage and cleaning operations especially for safflower, has engaged in planting seed research and sales, and has toyed with the oil side of the business through periodic joint ventures. Others that entered the safflower market when acreage began to expand in the late 1950s, such as Anderson, Clayton Company, and Producers Cotton Oil Company, were interested both as farmers and as oil millers, but in both cases safflower was a secondary business interest. Anderson, Clayton Co. later made fully integrated decisions by going into the consumer market, and engaged in planting seed research for a time. Vegetable Oil Products Company (VOPCO) and Arizona Cottonseed Co., its affiliate, became involved in safflower to increase utilization of Arizona Cottonseed’s mill and because of the polyunsaturated boom. Both companies no longer exist.

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The end of this chapter compares the history of safflower production in the other parts of the United States with California options. The climatic and cultural differences in each area will be explored and compared to those of California.

Anderson, Clayton Co. For many years, Anderson, Clayton Co. was the largest cottonseed processor in the world. Anderson, Clayton Co.’s relationship with safflower was primarily through its San Joaquin Cotton Oil Company, and Western Cotton Oil Division in California and Arizona, which eventually were incorporated under its Oilseed Processing Division headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona; Anderson, Clayton Co., S.A. in Mexico; the Vista del Llano Ranch Division located near Mendota, California; and the Anderson, Clayton Co. Foods Division branch at Fresno, California. The first person to pay attention to safflower within Anderson, Clayton Co. was probably Carl Teeter, Field Operations Superintendent with the company’s Phoenix operations. Teeter watched the early trials of safflower by Dave Aepli at the University of Arizona Experimental Station in nearby Mesa, Arizona, and purchased a small quantity of safflower seed in 1950. At this point, Anderson, Clayton Co.’s interest in safflower was to increase operating time at their cotton mill operations, and as a source of revenue (seed sales) from Vista del Llano ranch. During the 1950s, Anderson, Clayton Co. was unable to do much with safflower in the San Joaquin Valley or Arizona, because they had no planting seed of their own, and they did not have access to, or knowledge of, the industrial oil markets in which PVO was selling its safflower oil. They were only experienced in marketing large quantities of cottonseed oil to edible oil consumers. However as soon as the Gila seed was released, Anderson, Clayton Co. obtained portions of its first release to test in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Gila seed was also introduced into Mexico by the company. The company’s Vista del Llano Ranch, managed at times by Rufe Aker and Ralph Carr, conducted trial plantings and, as can be seen from Table 5.1, production quickly increased in both California and Arizona as edible markets for safflower oil expanded. When the FDA actions turned off the market in 1962, Anderson, Clayton Co. continued to contract very aggressively in 1963, even engaging in grower contracting in the Sacramento Valley. Belatedly realizing it had far too much oil for that season’s market to absorb, it began to cut oil prices drastically from the $0.165/lb level to a low of $0.09. Rocca Jr. viewed this as an attempt to destroy his company and filed an antitrust suit. The suit, and a countersuit filed by Anderson, Clayton Co. were eventually dropped by mutual consent in 1967. It is more likely that Anderson, Clayton Co.’s expanding acreage had been partially influenced by plans for Chiffon, a revolutionary new product based on safflower oil. In 1963, the Anderson, Clayton Co. Foods Division began construction of a new refinery and margarine-manufacturing and -packaging plant which was put into operation at Fresno, California in mid-1964. It was meant to produce Chiffon, the first soft margarine to reach the market. Advertisements pointed out that it contained, “pure liquid safflower oil.”

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TABLE 5.1 Anderson, Clayton Co. Safflower Seed Production Statisticsa California

Arizona

Crop Year

Acreage

Production

Acreage

Production

1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1975 1979 1993

8,000

5,000

7,000 15,000 2,200 7,500 32,000

38,940 30,000 20,000 16,000 16,000 9,000

9,000 70,000 40,000 32,500 43,000 43,000 39,000 35,000 24,000 15,750 18,000 10,950

640 40

600 50

7,000 20,000 8,000 15,090 17,700 12,000 500 1,500 2,500

8,730 23,600 8,000 16,370 19,500 11,100 700 1,125 2,500

aYears not listed had negligible production. Source: Estimates by Pacific Vegetable Oil Corp., unpublished data; Agricom International, unpublished data; and Oilseeds International, Ltd., unpublished data.

After testing, Chiffon reached national markets in late 1965 along with a line of Seven Seas salad dressings, some of which contained safflower oil. A massive advertising campaign, reputed to have cost $10,000,000 annually, was employed to propel Chiffon on the national markets. Chiffon achieved and surpassed its market share goals, but once promotional efforts were scaled back, sales declined. To further build an integrated safflower program, Donald (Gene) Lorance, who had 8 years of experience in safflower breeding with the USDA in Mesa, Arizona, joined Anderson, Clayton Co. as Agronomist in Charge of Safflower Development and Research Staff in January, 1966 (1). During his two decades with Anderson, Clayton Co., he released the AC-1 and AC-2 varieties of safflower seed and did considerable research on improving safflower culture. When Anderson, Clayton Co. cut back its activities in the 1980s, Lorance went into barley, corn, and cotton research for others, but he continued to consult for Anderson, Clayton Co. on some safflower matters. As production costs for safflower oil began to increase. Anderson, Clayton Co.’s Foods Division became concerned and changed the emphasis of their advertising campaign from featuring safflower oil to glamorizing the name Chiffon; eventually the formulation of the product dropped safflower oil and incorporated cheaper soybean oil. This spelled the end of Anderson, Clayton Co.’s involvement with safflower for most of the 1980s, when the company began selling off many of its divisions in the United States and Latin America. In 1983 it decided to sell the Food Division’s Fresno plant to Allied Vegetable Oil of Australia in an arrangement brokered by Oilseeds International Ltd., with Oilseeds obtaining access to the refinery and oil storage portion of the facility. In 1987, a group organized by Julien Hohenberg of Memphis purchased Western Cotton Services, the Anderson, Clayton Co. Arizona and California branches.

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The Anderson Clayton trade name was also included in the sale. In 1990, Valkart Brothers Holding Co. Switzerland purchased Western Cotton Services in order to obtain the company’s ginning facilities. As cottonseed crushing opportunities began to decline, Western Cotton made a long-term toll-crushing agreement with Oilseeds International in order to provide more crushing time for its Chowchilla plant in years when cotton crushing was sparse. In 1993, the Phoenix mill decided to try a small project in safflower contracting and crushing when safflower prices escalated. The people at the Phoenix mill believed that safflower offered a reasonable alternative for local farmers facing problems with white fly attacks on cotton production and for producers having access to certain supplies of low-cost water.

J.G. Boswell Company “The best farmers in America,” reported Forbes magazine in 1989 (2). “It is the largest, most profitable, most technically advanced cotton farm in the world,” said Ralph King Jr. in the same article. For much of the time it has been involved with safflower, the same could be said about its safflower-farming efforts. Although the Boswell Company operates an oil extraction plant on its Corcoran, California, ranch, its approach to safflower has been as a farmer. The Boswell Company was started in 1924. The Boswell brothers, William and James G., founded farming and feeding operations at Corcoran in California’s San Joaquin Valley and near Phoenix, Arizona. They operated a cotton-merchandising business as well, subsequently expanding into cotton ginning, milling, and financing. In 1952, J.G. Boswell II (William’s son) was called to take charge of the business on the death of his uncle. Since that time he has taken the company from a large farm of 60,000 acres to the empire of today, comprising 160,000 acres (about 120,000 contiguous) located primarily in the Tulare and Kern dry lake beds of California, plus additional holdings in other parts of the West, together with a 25,000 hectare farm in Australia that has been acquired, sold, and reclaimed over the years. The Arizona property was developed jointly with Del Webb Corp. into the huge Sun City retirement complex. At about the time J.G. Boswell II took command of the farm, Brooks Pierce joined the company in Los Angeles. Boswell wanted to develop the company into a self-sufficient enterprise. Pierce handled merchandising of the company’s products and made a solid partnership with Audie Bell, who managed the company’s farming operations. In March 16, 1989, I asked Pierce who had proposed that the company begin producing safflower. He said that J.G. Boswell II had no direct hand in the safflower program, but he gave Pierce and Bell authority to find crops that would allow them to produce income from idle land. Until Earl Butz became Secretary of Agriculture, the USDA policies were extremely limiting on the crops that Boswell could produce profitably. They had been producing 75–90,000 tons of barley annually at a loss. Together Pierce and Bell developed programs for safflower and alfalfa seed that became important parts of the Boswell Company’s farming mix. Bell began experiments and found that safflower would respond to the lake bed’s heavy soils, and in many cases needed no additional irrigation after initial preirrigation

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that filled the soil profile. Additionally, the following cotton crop benefited greatly because the safflower root structure mellowed the soil. J.G. Boswell II demanded that the farm adapt the components of large-scale manufacturing. Bell applied this edict in a number of ways. For example, he ruled that no one machine should be driven more than once over the same piece of land in order to avoid soil compaction. He forced his operators to farm the land to the edge of the highways and roads, making them execute end-row turns on the road instead of the farm acreage. Boswell had acquired the water rights on the parcels of land that it acquired. The company employed the services of four water engineers full-time and spent a fortune in legal fees and lobbying State and Federal legislators to protect those rights. Three California rivers flowed into the Boswell properties and were entirely consumed or stored in Boswell’s vast system of ditches and holding basins (Figure 5.1). Since safflower was planted on preirrigated land, it was not necessary to spend money, time, and energy constructing beds. If safflower did require another shot of water, Boswell engineers had developed a special portable pump called a “moon buggy” (Figure 5.2) to lift an enormous amount of water from the huge ditches on the Boswell farm and deposit it gently and quickly on fields that are laser-tailored to drain quickly. Initially, Boswell was forced to obtain planting seed from POI, and sell its crop to PVO, since PVO had control of the premium markets for safflower. In March 1959, Boswell hired Parkey from Caltana to do safflower breeding, evaluate seeds from other breeding programs, to develop sound cropping plans for safflower on Boswell’s various soil types, and to measure the dollar/acre effect of growing safflower in various crop rotations. Parkey was hired because Pierce had seen that the public release of the Gila variety of safflower and the aggressiveness of Toshoku Ltd. would enable the

Figure 5.1. Boswell’s water management system.

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Boswell Company to break free of PVO’s dominance in the safflower picture. Boswell expanded its plantings, first using Gila seed and later using the B-51 variety, a higher oil selection bred by Parkey from the Gila variety. Their safflower program prospered. In 1962, Pierce pushed for one of the few formal studies done for Boswell to design a new oil mill to allow them to process safflower and cotton more efficiently. They purchased a V.D. Anderson horizontal basket extractor and purposely designed the plant with inadequate cotton delinting, in order to allow the plant to process safflower seed for approximately 10 days while the delinting plant stockpiled black cottonseed. They would then shift back to cotton processing for 30 days, allowing them to ship safflower meal while they were not crushing safflower. The Boswell policy in marketing safflower oil and meal was simple: try to sell to one or two large, reliable buyers who would pay on time, and take delivery when promised at the plant’s front door. Pierce’s policy was to spend a minimum amount of time worrying about delivery problems or converting crude oil to other grades. He was one of the first to recognize the potential of oleic safflower when it became available. His view was that it was a good oil that should find its own place in the market. At the time, he was also worried that normal safflower oil was being overpromoted as a “health cure,” incurring the government’s wrath against all references to cholesterol. Pierce also reasoned that Boswell could do a better job of keeping oleic and linoleic safflower seeds separated within its own orbit than outsiders could. Frito-Lay proved to be a good customer for oleic safflower oil, and substituted it for peanut oil in their frying mix in most of their western factories. This business continued for several years, until safflower oil moved up to premium prices and

Figure 5.2. Moon buggy, the pump used to quickly move water from the water-management system and gently deposit it onto safflower fields.

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Safflower

forced Frito-Lay to drop it. By then, Boswell had found markets for crude oleic safflower oil in Europe, but as usual, selling in that direction made Pierce nervous. As the years went on, Boswell sold less and less in the seed form, and concentrated more of their safflower business on the oil and meal forms. Of course, dealing with Boswell was usually a purchasing agent’s dream, but sometimes it was a broker’s nightmare since Pierce could become very demanding at times. The Boswell Company was in the enviable position of not having to buy any of its raw materials, which resulted in its being able to set a price based almost entirely on its view of its costs plus a fair return. Boswell remained very loyal to good customers and could agree to supply oil to a customer at a level price for several seasons in return for assurance of their exclusive business. With the exception of Kingsburg Cotton Oil (which chose to handle its sales as a trading matter), no other supplier has been able to offer this type of a pricing policy. On the other hand, Boswell could and would make decisions that were not related to what was going on in the market but were dictated by farming decisions that would effect marketing decisions. General Mills’ Betty Crocker safflower line was put out of business by such a Boswell decision. A decision was made to reduce plantings of normal safflower. At the last minute this became known to General Mills; it was too late for them to arrange for an alternate supply of oil and they chose to suspend the line. In 1982, those of us at Oilseeds were able to convert Boswell from its policy of selling only crude oils. We had been involved since Wyeth Laboratories started incorporating oleic safflower oil in their S.M.A. infant formula. Having left Agricom, we were under a legal restriction against our engaging in safflower activity for a year. As I was concerned that Wyeth might not have a reliable supplier, we arranged for Boswell to meet Liberty Vegetable Oil to arrange for production of refined, bleached, and deodorized (RBD) oleic safflower oil and then for Wyeth and Boswell personnel to meet each other. In effect, they put their own sale together, but Boswell paid us a commission after the time limit had expired. Even though Boswell is our principal competitor for Wyeth business based on our present position in the market, we are pleased have assisted the two companies in developing a business relationship. We also performed a similar service between Boswell and Fuji Vegetable Oil through C. Itoh and Co. Boswell found that they were able to handle shipments of crude and refined oils to other distant customers. In more recent times they have even expanded their regime to include refining crude oleic oils in Europe and shipping RBD linoleic oils to the leading U.S. consumers. In 1985 the Boswell Company went through a massive restructuring, offering early retirement to many long-time salaried employees. Boswell showed good foresight in realizing and preparing itself for a shakeout in the entire cottonseed oil business that forced Ranchers Cotton Oil and Producers Cotton Oil out of the extraction business. They have improved their oil mill in the last few years, adding a new extractor and supplementing their expellers with caged extruders that will replace expellers as the prepressing units of their mill. Although the Boswell farm is probably the best single location in the world to produce safflower, violent acts of nature can and have cramped their production at

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times. In 1982, California experienced huge amounts of rain, creating unusually heavy runoffs from the mountains feeding the rivers draining into the Tulare Lake bed. In no time, Boswell found 25% of its prime farmland flooded—a lake that lasted for 18 months (Figure 5.3). The flood was only limited to 25% by truly heroic efforts to confine the water. Still, Boswell was able to keep its customers supplied—a remarkable feat. During Pierce’s tenure, Boswell acquired its Australian ranch by default—a $2 million financing loan to two promoters who were farming a huge parcel adjacent to Boswell defaulted when the neighbors were wiped out by a flood in 1964. Boswell personnel had gone to Australia to demonstrate that cotton could be produced profitably and successfully in northern New South Wales. It was not easy, because they found that the soil types did not release moisture to plants like the U.S. soil types they were used to. Their cotton would wilt at a 45% moisture level versus a 30% level in the United States. Yet they conquered these problems, produced successful crops of cotton and alfalfa, but not safflower, and created a farm that was immediately identifiable as a Boswell operation—no weeds anywhere. It has always been a Boswell policy to immediately eradicate any weed found on its farm. The reason is that eliminating weeds at their onset produces long-term crop management savings. The Boswell Company continues to be a very serious and important source of safflower oil and meal, as can be seen from Table 5.2, which lists our estimate of their production during their long history. The Boswell Company is the only survivor of all of the companies that began producing safflower oil in the 1950s and 1960s. They do not have the lowest cost of production of all U.S. suppliers (Great Plains safflower can be cheaper but can not be relied o), but they have certainly the most

Figure 5.3. Boswell farmland flooded in 1982.

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TABLE 5.2 J.G. Boswell Company Safflower Production (Oleic Safflower in parentheses) Year 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Planted Acres 500 1,400 5,000 NA 20,000 NA NA NA NA NA 16,000 10,000 17,000 15,000 8,500 2,000

NA NA 8,000 15,000 18,000 1,500 5,000 NA 24,000 26,000 24,000 25,500 29,000 27,000 29,500

(9,000) (13,866) (2,000) (10,000) (7,500) (18,000) (16,000) (17,300) (17,300) (15,000) (14,000) (13,000) (12,000) – (5,650) (12,000) (12,000) (12,000) (6,000) (6,000) (5,000) (5,000) (6,000) (6,000)

Production (ST) 400 1,000 4,375 NA 25,000 28,000 31,000 30,000 33,000 36,000a 18,000 13,866 15,000 18,000 10,000 3,000

7,300 200 5,000 2,500 22,500 1,500 6,500 13,000 20,000 41,000 28,800 33,000 35,000 30,000 22,750

(9,000) (14,868) (2,000) (13,000) (10,000) (15,000) (18,000) (22,000) (20,700) (19,000) (8,000) (16,000) (15,268) (15,000) – (5,300) (11,500) (11,100) (13,000) (7,500) (7,200) (8,000) (7,000) (4,500) (6,000)

aAdditional 1,900 ST produced in Arizona. All other acreage and production was in California. Abbreviation: NA, not available. Source: Smith, J., unpublished personal estimates; Boswell Ranch personnel, unpublished data.

efficient, reliable production of anyone. Unless government policies remove their rights to water, they should be a force in the safflower business for as long as they choose to be.

Caladino Farm Seeds, Inc.—Cal/West Seeds In 1959, Harry Kinder, who had just become General Manager of Caladino Farm Seeds, Inc., of Artois, California, was approached by Barnhill of Caltana Safflower

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Products to produce safflower seed in the Sacramento Valley. Previously, Caladino had concentrated on the production and sale of ladino clover planting seed, and operated as a cooperative of growers. Caladino had embarked at the time of Barnhill’s contact on an extensive expansion program. During the preceding year, the company built its own seed-cleaning plant and expanded its planting seed production activities into other legumes, such as alfalfa, besides its traditional ladino and red clover seed. Iver Johnson, formerly head of the Farm Crops Department of Iowa State University, was hired to begin a breeding program that was to be conducted by new employees at several research stations. Caladino needed to add volume that its field representatives could handle in addition to their work with legumes and desired to give its members an alternative crop to add to their rotation. Safflower offered such an alternative. After some indecision, Kinder decided to go ahead and purchased two truckloads of Gila safflower planting seed from Caltana, contracting with member growers to plant it on approximately 3,000 acres, mostly in fields west of Artois, Williams, and Maxwell, California. Caladino contracted with growers, guaranteeing member growers $80/ST plus a share in marketing returns and sold the resultant crop to Caltana at a price $2 higher than PVO’s reported selling price to Japan, subject to production. Yields were very poor, but Caladino’s appetite had been whetted. Caladino and its successors appealed to a certain percentage of the grower population. Many farmers are very individualistic and prefer to receive the total proceeds for their crop just as soon as they deliver the harvest. They feel that they have uses for the money that they can best direct themselves. A cooperative such as Caladino does not appeal to them. Caladino’s method was to pay a guaranteed minimum price to its members at harvest time, and then to pay one or more additional payments based on marketing results with the full payment made almost a year after delivery. Even then, a small portion of the total value would be retained by the cooperative to fund future research or building programs and would be returned perhaps 7 years later if any portion of it remained. The argument between cooperatives and corporate buyers has raged for most of this century, but for a certain percentage of growers, the cooperative’s performance has been satisfactory, and cooperatives have continued to survive. One reason has been the comparison of prices paid by Caladino—Cal/West versus the competition. When Caladino—Cal/West was getting started, it was able to show this record: Year 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970

Price compared to PVO +$ 8.80 +$ 4.20 -$ 0.60 +$ 3.50 +$ 4.80 +$ 5.79 +$15.00

Cal/West, Caladino’s successor, was able to show similar results against its competitors in many years. These differences, of course, do not take into account the cost of and use of the money retained by the co-op, but it makes an impressive argument.

120

Safflower

Cal/West’s policy of selling cautiously has resulted in its selling seed over a number of months each year. In a large majority of the last 20 years, selling later versus earlier was advantageous and resulted in a higher average price for the co-op. By 1962, Caltana had left the market and Caladino sold its seed to PVO. But it soon found other markets selling either to Producers Cotton Oil Company for toll crushing or to Japanese buyers via brokers. During the rest of the decade, Caladino’s production was confined to the west side of the Sacramento Valley and remained constant. In 1969, Caladino and Calapproved Seed Growers of Modesto, California, merged to form Cal/West Seeds and moved its headquarters to Woodland, California. Calapproved was a major force in alfalfa seed production and added many new growers, providing a more reliable production base for Cal/West. During 1970–72, Cal/West formed a loose relationship with a sister cooperative, Ranchers Cotton Oil Company of Fresno, wherein Ranchers committed to make its oil milling facilities available should the market for sales of safflower seed deteriorate; the two also conducted some joint research into safflower and sesame seed. In the following 2 years, Diamond Walnut Growers, Inc., another cooperative, offered Cal/West a similar crushing option. Cal/West was first and foremost a planting seed company that had been a pioneer in legume research. In 1974, Don Smith departed from Pacific Oilseeds and was encouraged by Johnson to join Cal/West with the idea that he would become Research Director upon Johnson’s retirement and could bring experience in safflower and sunflower research to Cal/West. Smith was able to release a new seed variety quickly, and began a dual research program to find a fusarium-resistant safflower type and a line with higher oil content. Later, when Cal/West decided to de-emphasize work in sunflower, funding for Smith’s research work deteriorated, and he became frustrated. In 1984 Smith left to form his own consulting business and Cal/West’s safflower research languished. Jon Reich joined Cal/West the same year to do legume research and, in recent years, has reinstituted a safflower planting seed research program concentrating on identifying and producing types with unusual fatty acid distributions. In 1984, Cal/West hired Ken Woodward to act as its safflower field agent. Woodward had many years of experience, first with PVO/POI in Utah, then Nebraska, and finally California. After PVO cut back, he worked as an independent contractor on behalf of Producers Cotton Oil with growers in the Utah/Idaho area. Cal/West was able to offer Woodward full-time employment rather than his having to depend on the variable tonnage he could obtain in Idaho/Utah for PCO. In turn. Woodward was able to provide them with good field representation all over California, and brought to Cal/West a group of growers in Utah that could produce seed for Cal/West’s safflower birdseed business. During the 1970s and 1980s, Cal/West was able to expand its annual production to a comfortable level, 12,000–20,000 tons of seed. Table 5.3 displays Caladino and Cal/West’s history of safflower production. In 1980 the company built a 20,000 ton elevator and cleaning complex to allow it to store and clean seed destined for export at a later date through the Port of Sacramento. Cal/West also engaged in birdseed sales on an international basis, using seed from its contracting in the Mountain states

Alternatives to the PVO Strategy

TABLE 5.3

Caladino and Cal/West Safflower Seed Statistics California

Crop Year 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

121

Acreage 2,500 5,000 7,500

2,500 3,000 5,000 9,500 6,000 12,000 9,000 20,000 6,000 8,000 17,700 15,500 7,710 10,000 10,000 14,500 16,000 16,500 14,500 14,000 14,000 16,500 14,000

Utah/Idaho

Prod. (ST) prices ($/ST) 375 3,000 4,000 3,500 1,500 4,400 4,000 2,750 2,281 2,800 4,500 9,300 6,000 7,550 9,400 20,000 4,300 8,000 17,700 12,912 9,482 8,800 6,000 10,000 16,500 11,550 14,900 12,600 14,000 17,700 17,600

Acreage Prod. (ST)

Arizona Acreage Prod. (ST)

93.60 102.50 57.50 91.20 97.40 90.40 86.80 90.77 110.00

365.00

450

5,000 7,000 8,000 2,000 7,000 3,000

338

2,400 2,800 2,700 500 2,800 1,000

Source: Estimates by Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; Agricom International, unpublished data; and Oilseeds International, Ltd., unpublished data.

which at times was supplemented by California seed. Finally, each year a portion of Cal/West’s production may be sold to local oilseed buyers. The Caladino and Cal/West safflower program has constituted perhaps 10% of the cooperative’s total volume of business. Cal/West’s program has been successful because it has been careful to only sell what it was certain it could supply and because it has been able return a higher price to its members than the prices offered by most other buyers.

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Cargill Cargill is the first in Forbes Magazine’s list of the 400 largest private companies. In Wayne G. Broehl Jr.’s 1007 page history of Cargill (3), safflower is mentioned in only 10 lines. Safflower’s small place in international trade has kept the Cargills of the world from showing much interest in it, and in turn it has provided a place for smaller companies to operate successfully. Even so, Cargill has maintained an important presence in the development of the safflower industry and trade. Table 5.4 lists my estimates of Cargill’s safflower seed purchases since 1947. TABLE 5.4 Safflower Production History of Cargill, Inc.a Acreage Crop Year 1947 1948 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

California

25,000

Production (ST) Other 8,000 7,000 1,500 2,000

9,000 15,200 15,000 20,000 19,000 26,000 15,000 13,000 2,000 20,000 15,000 14,700 3,140 2,200 3,000 12,000 15,000 15,000 14,000 15,500 16,000 18,000 8,500 8,500 10,000

California

22,000 15,000

8,850 12,000 15,000 18,550 17,000 23,000 15,000 14,300 2,000 28,000 16,000 13,400 4,100 2,200 3,300 11,000 17,000 17,600 13,500 17,500 11,900 19,074 9,800 8,800 11,750

Other 1,000 1,000 750 800 20,000 20,000 24,000 11,400

2,500

aYears not listed had negligible production. Source: Estimates by Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; Agricom International, unpub lished data; and Oilseeds International, Ltd., unpublished data.

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In 1947, Cargill was the first processing company to offer farmers contracts to grow safflower. Cargill managers, Hank Schroeder and Claude Haldeman, his assistant, convinced their company to give safflower processing a try. In those days, Cargill was large, but not the international giant it is today. For 2 years, Cargill’s Conrad, Montana, office enlisted farmers in Montana (and subsequently in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming) to try safflower, and 1,000 tons were processed in the Minneapolis mill in both 1947 and 1948. This project made a lasting impression on some growers in Montana and Colorado who continued to try the crop for a number of years thereafter, even though Cargill decided that this project was a failure. After dropping its interest in Plains safflower, Cargill again looked into the crop a few years later when the acreage began to expand in California. The approach followed the typical Cargill style. In April 1951, Cargill suffered an extensive fire that destroyed its copra-processing plant on Army Street in San Francisco. The plant was quickly rebuilt. A DeSmet solvent-extraction system replaced the expeller-processing plant and greatly increased the daily operating capacity to more than copra processing could fill. In 1962 with Gila planting seed being freely available, Cargill’s local Vice president and Manager, Howard Boone, decided to employ this unused capacity to process safflower seed. Cargill had a network of field buyers purchasing grain for the company, so it was easy for them to contact grain farmers and ask them to grow safflower for the company as well. John Talbot, a California Polytechnical graduate in Agronomy, was hired to coordinate the field program in which Cargill would provide grower contracts and sell planting seed and fertilizer. Subsequently, Barney Hill, Knowles’ collaborator in the discovery of oleic safflower, was retained to work full-time on a safflower planting seed breeding program, located in nearby Dixon, California. In 1964, Cargill built an elevator at Sacramento. Initially landlocked, it was located on the bank of a proposed Sacramento ship channel to give Cargill a way of directly competing with PVO’s Stockton Elevators. When the channel was completed, Cargill concentrated its safflower efforts there and began exporting safflower seed to Japan through its own facilities. The Cargill oil mill in San Francisco was closed down and dismantled in 1974. Two of the expellers from the plant were sold to the newly constructed Agricom Oilseeds Inc. mill at Grimes, California. Probably because of the trading nature of its West Coast operations, Cargill’s approach was more successful in exporting seed than in marketing safflower oil. Opportunities created by huge surges in copra prices sometimes dictated that the San Francisco mill would not process safflower for a year or more, and all of the seed purchased during these periods would be exported or sold domestically. Most saffower oil or meal buyers wanted to be able to have oil available steadily on a yearround basis. Cargill’s trading philosophy in the West limited their ability to sell safflower oil in spite of the built-in advantages in reaching the oil market because of their huge presence in all aspects of both linseed and soybean oil selling. If selling seed to Japan made more profit on paper, Cargill would jump that way and abandon crushing for the domestic market. Cargill took a similar approach for entering the safflower business in Australia. The Northwest Vegetable Oil plant was built under Boone’s direction and operated by

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Cargill, primarily to process cottonseed generated by a local co-op and by J.G. Boswell’s Australian farming operation. Boswell, in fact, took a partial interest in the plant. In order to use the plant’s entire capacity, Cargill encouraged local farmers to grow soybeans and safflower seed. Talbot brought in Cargill seed lines and began a seed-breeding program parallel to the one conducted by PVO’s Pacific Seeds. During the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Cargill expanded its Australian operations by building an oil mill in Melbourne, and subsequently acquired the Queensland Grain Grower plant in Brisbane and the Meggitt plant near Sydney. After the decline of Agricom, Cargill was able to forge a stronger relationship with Mitsubishi International Corporation for the exportation of safflower seed. This resulted in almost all of the safflower seed exported from California since 1981 going through the Port of Sacramento (usually through Cargill’s own elevators). Cargill has operated the elevator as a public facility and has made it available to other U.S. dealers or Japanese trading companies on a space-available basis per a published tariff of rates and conditions. Barney Hill spent many years operating Cargill’s safflower planting seed breeding program. During this time he released three varieties and did extensive research trying to develop a practical safflower hybrid. Often announced as being just around the corner, this has not happened yet. Hybrids were developed that produced 25% more seed per hectare than normal seeds, but the oil content suffered a similar reduction in percentage. Barney Hill’s program produced planting seed for Cargill’s California growers and sometimes sold planting seed to foreign buyers. These later efforts led to rather extensive sales of the hybrid to Pakistan and India. Cargill producing the hybrid in Pakistan. The seed enjoyed limited success in Pakistan, since buyers there were concerned primarily with yield and paid little attention to oil content. Eventually, Cargill’s Pakistan office felt that further production did not warrant the effort. In 1980 Cargill purchased the three oil mills in Spain operated by Eximtrade, PVO’s former partner. This purchase gave Cargill a majority in the Spanish sunflower crushing business. Cargill also acquired Semillas Pacificos, the Spanish counterpart of PVO’s SeedTec. This gave them control of Spanish safflower processing, but Cargill had no interest in Spanish safflower and downgraded this portion of the operation to almost nothing. It recently sold some planting seeds to Argentina. A competitor for the purchase of Semillas Pacificos was Lubrizol’s Agrigenetics. While it failed in this endeavor, Agrigenetics did succeed in another sense, purchasing Cargill’s U.S. hybrid safflower-breeding program, including the full-time services of Barney Hill. Mitsubishi’s acquisition of California Oils Corporation through its Premier Edible Oils Corporation subsidiary resulted in a decline of Cargill safflower exports to that company. Cargill compensated by increasing sales to Sumitomo Corporation and Toshoku, Ltd. After Talbot’s move to Cargill’s main office in Minneapolis, Boone’s retirement, and the closing of the Army Street plant, Cargill’s safflower operations were assigned to the company’s Sacramento office. Every 3–4 years, a new manager from another part of the country has been assigned to that station and has been forced to

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learn the rudiments of the unfamiliar safflower business. A couple of small disasters have happened, but overall it has continued to make money for the elevator and provide additional access to farmers. Presently, Cargill has been restructuring its entire grain and oilseeds operations. How safflower will be affected in this several-year evolution is unknown, but it will probably survive as long as it continues to generate a profit.

Diamond Walnut Growers, Inc. Diamond Walnut, the largest marketer of shelled walnut products, for some years offered a market for safflower seed produced by members of its cooperative and others. Diamond had built a small expeller mill to allow it to produce oil from both walnut scraps and from prime walnuts that were declared surplus according to its marketing order. The marketing order was designed to maintain a supply of shelled walnuts in line with demand; if too many walnuts were produced to allow a reasonable price to be maintained, a percentage of all walnuts produced were required to be placed in a pool that could not be sold for normal purposes. Al Gotelli, Diamond’s aggressive manager, had gained knowledge of oil marketing in dealing with the approximately 3,000 tons of walnut oil produced each year that was primarily sold industrially (much of it through PVO). When the polyunsaturated boom brought safflower into prominence, Gotelli chose to try contracting and processing safflower seed as well. From 1961 to the early 1970s, Diamond offered contracts to its safflower farmers as a service. Members of Diamond’s safflower pool were required to join for at least 3 years, but nonmembers could also sell at a firm price. For a couple of years, Diamond also processed cooperatively for members of Caladino (Cal/West) but the association was shortlived. After Diamond merged with Sunsweet, interest waned and the co-op soon stopped processing safflower. Because Diamond processed its safflower seed with expellers, it periodically experienced production fires. Fortunately it never experienced a problem serious enough to destroy the facility.

Kingsburg Cotton Oil Company of California The approach the Kingsburg Cotton Oil Co. used in the safflower business is intertwined with the story of Russell Giffen and his view of agriculture. By 1951, Giffen and his partners, Jack Harris, Sam Hamburg, Steve Pilibus, Mel Wilson, and Lloyd Harnish, were farming 120,000 acres of San Joaquin Valley and Arizona irrigated farm land. Giffen decided he needed an agent with cotton-processing and marketing experience and hired J.L. (“Jack”) Woolf in 1946 from Anderson, Clayton Co. Giffen and some of his associates felt that Anderson, Clayton Co., the company with which they had ginned their cotton for a number of years, stifled their cotton activities. Giffen’s feelings were echoed by many other groups in the West and resulted in the formation of the Ranchers’ Cotton Oil cooperative in California and the

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Plains Cooperative Oil Mill in the Texas High Plains. Giffen asked Woolf to make a study of how he and his associates might gain a larger share of the margins available in the cotton business, and based on Woolf’s recommendation, in 1951 they erected nine cotton gins and purchased the Kingsburg Cotton Oil Co. at Kingsburg, California. William (“Bill”) Davis was employed to run the mill and became President and General Manager with Woolf as Chairman of the Board. It was a no-frills operation running undelinted cottonseed through eight Anderson Super Duo expellers. Claassen and his associates approached Giffen Inc. to produce safflower during the 1950s without success. Harris, Giffen’s associate, was one of the pioneer growers of safflower and Harnish had also grown some as well in the Mojave Desert east of Bakersfield. Harris’ production at Burrell, California, had been basically sound, although in his second year of production he experienced a total failure on a 40-acre field planted on land that had grown safflower the previous year. This was one of the few examples of a total failure in California due to seedling-borne rust. In 1961, Claassen tried again, and this time his discussion created a spark. Giffen Inc. was facing the same crisis that also drove J.G. Boswell Company into safflower production. Government policy at the time was forcing farmers like Giffen to idle more and more of their land, and it was becoming impossible to operate at a profit. The Giffen farm was only allocated a small wheat allotment, barley was not really profitable, and cottori production was facing more controls. Woolf and Giffen turned to safflower as a crop that could provide cash income from their otherwise idle land, and safflower had no government controls. In 1961, Giffen, Inc. tried a 3,000-plus acre experiment with safflower. The experiment yielded 2,358 lbs/acre. Employee Enterprises, Inc., a 30,000 acre ranch at Mendota, California, established by Giffen for the benefit of his management employees, made its first safflower planting in 1962 (6,503 acres) and produced a 2,590 lb/acre yield. Most years, Giffen tried to plant his safflower by December 15 or December 31 at the latest, a policy that most growers in the 1990s consider to be too early. From Giffen’s standpoint, this fitted his timing of land and water management, and he was better able to compete with weeds. It is hard to argue with the consistently fine yields he obtained on such a large acreage. In 1962, Giffen, Inc. increased the acreage planted tenfold and 7,000 tons of seed were assigned to Kingsburg for crushing. As happened too often with the combination of an expeller mill and safflower seed, a disastrous fire erupted. Fortunately, it was fully covered by insurance. Kingsburg never crushed safflower seed again. The Giffen operations produced in excess of 20,000 tons of safflower seed annually. Davis took over sales of safflower seed for the operation and Marwood, a San Francisco brokerage company, introduced him to Toshoku Ltd. as a buyer. Davis was able to manage his sales of safflower seed very effectively since Giffen’s actual plantings were kept secret, as was Kingsburg’s sales position. Once Agricom International was formed, Davis sold more of his seed through Agricom since he felt that selling through Marwood limited him to only Marwood’s exclusive buyer, Toshoku. By 1973, Kingsburg departed from the safflower seed market, never to return. Giffen had decided to sell his extensive holdings and retire. Woolf, his loyal assistant,

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was able to purchase a sizable portion of Giffen’s best cotton and safflower land. Whereas Giffen had definite ideas about growing safflower correctly, Woolf was very much against producing safflower on the same land. He felt that safflower was a deterrent to a cotton grower since safflower acts as a host to lygus insects that subsequently migrate to cotton. While the lygus cause no damage to safflower, they can be devastating to cotton. So Woolf ruled that no safflower would be produced on his land and has since devoted himself to producing cotton, alfalfa seed, and vegetables. Table 5.5 lists the acres, production, yield, and sales price for Giffen Inc. and Employees Enterprises, Inc. safflower marketed by Kingsburg during its short safflower history. Kingsburg Cotton Oil Company was on the safflower scene for only a decade, but it was a period of change in safflower marketing in which the company played an important part. Giffen’s expertise in producing good safflower yields on a consistent basis helped to convince others on California’s west side that they could do the same. Kingsburg Cotton Oil continues to this day, although it no longer operates its oil mill and acts primarily as a marketer of whole cottonseed for its owners. Kingsburg maintains a small relationship with safflower, occasionally storing crude safflower oil for others in its large storage tanks.

Liberty Vegetable Oil Company Liberty Vegetable Oil was started by Ike and Joe Sinaico at Santa Fe Springs near Los Angeles, in 1948. The Sinaico family had a history of soybean milling in Iowa prior to the Los Angeles move. Initially, the plant processed flaxseed grown in California and soybeans shipped in from the Midwest, but early on Liberty began experimenting with crushing small amounts of new or exotic oil-bearing materials. Employing an expeller mill with limited capacity, it specialized in timing its crushing run to coincide with demand for its by-product meal. This enabled Liberty to keep limited amounts of meal on hand and reduced costs by not having to build large meal storage. The company was an early sponsor of research to encourage production of oilseeds in California and Arizona, and for some time was active in the West Coast Committee (which later became the Council). From time to time, Liberty Purchased small amounts of safflower seed from California or Arizona farmers and sold the oil to industrial customers with which it otherwise dealt in linseed and soybean oils. Liberty’s policy in safflower was more to use it as an accommodation to fill gaps in its crushing and refining schedule; at times it crushed for other people. As Irwin Field, the Sinaico’s son-in-law, and Bill Adams, who was brought in to build and manage a new refinery, assumed more active roles, the company pursued crushing of safflower less frequently and became more active as a toll refiner of regular and later oleic safflower oils. By the 1980s Liberty had switched almost entirely to processing walnuts, almonds, corn germ (the latter for Corn Products Refining Corporation), and other specialties and intensified its refining and deodorizing operaction for a variety of oils.

128

TABLE 5.5 Safflower Seed Handled Through Kingsburg Cotton Oil Co. of California Crop Year

Giffen 3,339 22,996 22,068 15,966 18,454 21,870 21,364 17,644 18,910 11,530 4,921 7,217 6,611

6,503 6,975 17,725 4,154 289 5,618 3,053 2,184 – 751a

Total 3,339 29,459 29,043 33,691 22,608 22,159 26,982 20,697 21,094 11,530 5,672 7,217 6,611

aEmployee Enterprises Inc. was purchased by Giffen Inc. in 1971. Source: Woolf, J.L., unpublished data.

Yield (lbs/A) Giffen EEI 2,358 2,927 2,489 3,021 3,189 2,884 2,616 2,948 2,727 2,502 1,949 2,480 1,856

– 2,590 2,512 2,259 2,262 1,484 2,270 2,640 1,852 – 1,931 – –

Giffen 3,937 33,650 27,466 24,117 29,504 31,536 27,942 26,004 25,785 14,428 4,795 8,948 6,134

Production Average (ST) Price EEI Total ($/ST) – 8,423 8,761 20,020 4,673 214 6,376 4,030 2,013 – 725 – –

3,937 42,073 36,227 44,137 34,177 31,750 34,318 30,034 27,798 14,428 5,520 8,948 6,134

NA 98.56 80.52 81.46 90.30 104.00 NA 81.50 87.88 106.07 NA 130.28 252.94

Safflower

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973

Acres EEI

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Again, as experienced by almost everyone who handled safflower crushing or expellers, Liberty experienced a series of near fires in its safflower meal. Since it coordinated its processing with meal demand, it was able to avoid any serious problems because most of the meal produced left its property almost as soon as it was produced.

Marwood Company A perfect example of the pressures PVO was to face from 1962 on is revealed in the records of the Marwood Company (Table 5.6). Marwood was a noted San Francisco oils and fats brokerage company, specializing in worldwide trading of copra, coconut oil and cottonseed oil, that took the name of its owner, Marvin Wood. Donald McLeod left PVO in 1959 to join Marwood. Although his duties at PVO had been as an economist, he was soon put in charge of brokering soft oils at Marwood; this included safflower oil, seed, and meal. As can be seen from Table 5.6, as late as 1961, PVO had the field to itself. Suddenly in the following year, much of the trade had jumped into other people’s hands. Even though some of the transactions shown involved PVO as a buyer or seller, total control had been removed from PVO’s hands. Marwood was available when Toshoku was rebuffed by PVO and began looking for sources of U.S. safflower seed to import to Japan. Subsequently, Marwood also began to provide sources of safflower oil and meal. When Mexican safflower seed became available for the first time, Wood’s friendship with the Obregon family in Sonora opened the doors for Toshoku to participate in that business as well. August 1, 1977, McLeod and his associate, Wyn Massey, left Marwood to open their own firm, McLeod and Massey, specializing in safflower seed and oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, and sunflower seed and oil (Massey’s specialty). The special relationship with Toshoku went with them and continues to this day with the successor company, TABLE 5.6 Marwood Company Safflower Product Transactions

Year 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973

Safflower Oil (60,000 lb. Tank Cars) 1 254 294 344 177.5 198.5 405.5 107.67 47.5 255 210 360.67 29.2

Source: McLeod, D., unpublished data.

Safflower Seed (MT) 13,000 47,980 35,100 44,763 28,000 31,222 16,100 13,268 23,200 11,805 40,200 8,050

Safflower Meal Pellets (MT)

Mexican Safflower Seed (MT)

Oleic Seed (MT)

4,000 34,500

1,500

2,660

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McLeod and Co, which is operated by McLeod. Marwood and subsequently McLeod and Co. have also been very involved in the safflower business with Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina at times acting as back-to-back principals in order to accommodate the trade.

Oil Seed Products Company—Ranchers Cotton Oil Company Oil Seed Products Company showed more interest in safflower than any of the early participants in California. In 1950, safflower failed badly (much of it caused by phytophthora root rot) in most areas of the state and particularly in the San Joaquin and Imperial valleys. Because of this, the N-852 variety could not be planted confidently in Oil Seed Products’ Fresno, California, area of operation. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Company had captured Western Oilseeds so no newer varieties were to be made available. But most importantly, Oil Seed Products had no expertise in marketing industrial oils and was forced to sell the oil it did produce to PVO. The mill was converted to cottonseed processing. Oil Seed Products was not well financed, so in 1953 it was sold to a consortium of independent cotton gins and became Ranchers Cotton Oil. Ranchers’ General Manager, Earl J. Cecil, was interested in improving his production facilities, expanding the cooperative’s membership, and creating a powerful cotton oil presence in the market. Safflower took a back seat in his thinking as it did with Richard Rathbone, his successor, and with Bill Burns, Ranchers’ Marketing Vice president. Ranchers offered to process safflower seed on behalf of Cal/West, its sister cooperative, but did not venture into safflower contracting again until 1966. In 1966, William T. Wiswall, who had worked with Boswell since 1957 and had gained considerable exposure to safflower markets, joined Ranchers Cotton Oil as a TABLE 5.7 Oil Seed Products Company/Ranchers Cotton Oil Company California Safflower Acreage and Productiona Crop Year

Acreage

Production (ST)

1949 1950 1951 1952 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1977 1978

50 10,000 2,000 2,000

50 2,000 1,000 1,500 17,000 15,000 4,400 2,200 1,500 7,000 4,000 20,000 15,000

aYears not listed had negligible production. Source: Estimates by Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; and Agricom International, Ltd., unpublished data.

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Field Representative. He was responsible for getting Ranchers interested in safflower contracting again. This time, however, the seed was not destined to be processed in Ranchers’ plant, but was sold to dealers for export or processing by others. Interest in safflower marketing waned after 1972 until 1977, when Ranchers made an attempt to fill time in its Bakersfield plant. In 1977, 20,000 tons of seed were produced and one-half was processed into safflower salad oil for Ranchers’ “Challenge” brand. The balance was sold to seed exporters. The following year, most of the seed contracted was sold to seed exporters; safflower salad oil was just too expensive to gain wide acceptance (September 27, 1993 phone conversation with Bill Burns). Table 5.7 records the history of the two organizations’ safflower efforts.

Producers Cotton Oil Company Producers Cotton Oil Company (PCO) was founded in 1930 by a veteran cotton processor, Stanley Pratt, and a group of farmers and businessmen anxious to get a better return from the by-product of their ginned cotton. Producers Cotton Oil Company owed much of its early success to the steady management of Harry S. Baker, who was President from 1937 to 1967, when he was named Chairman, and to Carter Sanders, Production Manager. Producers Cotton Oil Company never suffered a loss in its operations for over 50 consecutive years. Its factory sprawled over an 85 acre piece of property on North Street, on the south side of Fresno, California, and reflected the fact that it grew without an integrated plan. The company’s Maple Street office building, adjacent to the factory, demonstrated the solid conservatism of the cottonseed oil business, and featured an executive wing with deep carpets in large, paneled, air conditioned offices that communicated an aura of quiet elegance and success. At the height of its operations, PCO operated over 70,000 acres of farmland in California and Arizona, plus 120 cotton gins, three oil mills, and cattle feed yards at Fresno and Calipatria, California, and Phoenix, Arizona. Although PCO owned and farmed extensive tracts of farmland, PCO’s reasons for being in the safflower business differed from those of J.G. Boswell Company or Kingsburg Cotton Oil Company. Producers Cotton Oil Company began growing safflower on its Cal Flax ranch near Five Points, California, in the mid-1950s, but safflower was never a particularly successful crop on much of the company’s land until management changes introduced improved cultural practices in the 1970s. The company’s management lived and breathed cotton, and safflower was long perceived as a fill-in, both on the farm and in the oil mill. Producers Cotton Oil Company’s first approach to safflower was to try it as an crop from time to time on its various ranches, and to provide financing for safflower production along with other crops being grown by some of its cotton-ginning customers. Eventually, some of PCO’s gin managers became quite expert at assessing who were good safflower producers. Producers Cotton Oil Company was never successful itself in growing good crops of safflower, whether on its Cal Flax, South Lake, or Devil’s Den ranches, until Frank Ayarza was put in charge of its Cal Flax operation. Much of PCO’s South Lake land was poor, sandy, and highly alkaline—

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safflower never had a chance under these circumstances. The Devil’s Den operation eventually learned how to produce a 2,000 lb/acre yield on a marginal farm with limited water. The Cal Flax ranch near Five Points, California, had the potential to produce good crops. In early safflower trials, the combination of flood irrigation, phytophthora, and scalding damage limited results. Eventually they learned to plant safflower on beds and to irrigate it five or six times during a season before it stressed. Under Ayarza’s management. PCO consistently produced large acreages yielding 3,400 or more lbs/acre. The company’s farm division initially sold the seed it produced to PVO, and sometimes chose to contract its acreage in the earlier periods; later it sold to brokers after planting. When the company engaged in processing of its own, the farm division would negotiate a price corresponding to the outside market. Producers Cotton Oil Company’s safflower-processing history went through three phases. Initially beginning in the 1960s, small amounts were crushed in the company’s expeller mill at Fresno, but a series of meal fires were discouraging, and this phase was dropped. Then PCO ventured twice into the safflower oil marketing game and curiously, both of these ventures started at outings involved with an NIOP Directors’ meeting. In 1971, Sam Evans, PCO’s Vice president in charge of Operations, was attending an NIOP outing at Lake Arrowhead when he received a call from McLeod of Marwood, saying that Lever Brothers was interested in obtaining a continuous supply of safflower oil for its domestic needs and for export to Europe. The call came at a fortuitous time for PCO, since the cotton market was depressed and safflower could fill an empty period for the plant (which by now had incorporated solvent extraction). After several phone discussions between Evans and Tom Doak. Purchasing Director of Lever and McLeod. Evans forwarded a letter proposing a formula in which PCO would supply oil based on its price of acquiring safflower. This scheme was accepted and over the next several years, as Evans remembers it, he would periodically call Doak to say that he had been able to acquire some additional safflower seed and that this was the price. Doak always said that it was okay to book it. However, other records show that Lever purchased safflower seed on its own from Cargill and reached toll-crushing agreements with both PVO and PCO in which it sold the seed and repurchased the oil based on a $20/ton toll-crushing fee. Probably both methods were used from time to time. Lever continued toll crushes periodically with PCO through 1979, at one time reaching a peak of 30,000,000 lbs of oil annually. Eventually, Lever dropped out, primarily because it phased out safflower oil from its margarine formula and found that it could buy sufficient safflower oil on the open market in Rotterdam to satisfy its annual needs. In 1968, Gerry Brewer, then PCO’s president, had agreed to toll crush safflower for the newly formed Agricom International. Under this agreement, PCO set a toll fee, bought seed supplies for Agricom (or later accepted seed that Agricom delivered), added the crushing fee and any storage costs, credited meal sales it made from the purchase, and sold the resultant oil back to Agricom on a car-by-car

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basis as it was needed. In 1971, Brewer warned Agricom that it would suspend toll crushing for the 1972 season because the ensuing cotton crop would require full employment of the mill for that primary product. This forced Agricom to toll crush first with PVO and eventually to build its own oil mill. Producers Cotton Oil Company began the third phase of its involvement with safflower in 1982. By then, it was becoming apparent that increasing amounts of whole cottonseed were going to be purchased and consumed by the local dairy industry and because dairy feeding could pay high prices for the feed value in cottonseed, it was probable that cottonseed mills would face periods of time when cottonseed would not be available at prices the oil mill could offer. Since safflower had been processed successfully before, it appeared to be a possible alternative for filling these gaps. Accordingly, Evans of PCO approached me, the President of Oilseeds International, Ltd., to see if we would be interested in this new venture. Evans came to Oilseeds because of our great experience in marketing safflower oil, whereas PCO’s prior experience as a toll processor had given them little exposure to consumers of safflower. A compromise agreement was worked out binding the two companies for 5 years, a compromise agreement between PCO’s Brewer, who felt that a 1-year agreement was long-term, and me, who preferred more permanent agreements. This agreement, which was later extended for an additional 5 years, and the attendant agreement to deodorize and store oil for PCO at Oilseeds’ Fresno refinery provided a strong support for Oilseeds during its infancy. In return for agreeing to market safflower exclusively for PCO, Oilseeds received a selling commission plus a 25% share of PCO’s safflower profits. Producers Cotton Oil Company’s plant had grown piecemeal over many years and always experienced difficulty processing safflower seed without first grinding the seed, contrary to the practice at most U.S. mills. This and the long conveyor runs between the company’s expeller mill and its solvent extractor produced the paradox of lower rates of extraction per expeller, a higher residual oil content, and slightly darker colors than Oilseeds’ experienced in its Grimes, California, mill crushing for PCO’s competitor, Adams Vegetable Oil. Some personnel changes were made by PCO in 1988–90 in an attempt to improve residual oil contents and extruders were added with inconclusive results. In 1989, in an effort to increase meal revenue, PCO also became the first mill in several years to produce highprotein safflower meal. Producers Cotton Oil Company was a naturally conservative company that was not given to major jumps in oil mill maintenance or equipment experimentation, but it converted to a miscella-refining system in 1988 in order to be able to eliminate a problem in disposing of refinery waste water. Oilseeds was able to slowly convert PCO’s conservatism in marketing only crude oil of mixed solvent and expeller oils, then to separated expeller and solvent oils (the former becoming the basis for salad oil produced in Oilseeds’ Fresno refinery), and to quickly became a marketer of oleic safflower oil. In some years when acreage was easy to come by, PCO agreed to become a marketer of safflower, seed to Japan as well. By using Oilseeds’ experience in ship chartering. PCO was able to offer Sumitomo Corporation C & F safflower seed as competition to

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Mitsubishi’s C & F business based on seed obtained from Cargill and Cal/West. In 1984 Oilseeds’ experience in seed exporting paid off for PCO, allowing them to sell 15,000 tons of seed to Portugal at a substantial profit, and escaping what could have been a serious carryover. Subsequently, PCO became a player through Oilseeds in the Rotterdam safflower oil market, first by shipping U.S. oil and subsequently Mexican oil. Oilseeds also introduced PCO into the purchasing of safflower seed from Idaho and from the Great Plains for processing at PCO’s Fresno mill. As a backdrop to all of the above operations, the bulk of PCO’s shares were sold to Bangor Punta Corporation in 1967, In 1975, Bangor purchased the remaining minority interest. The Bangor relationship was basically a happy one. Bangor appreciated Brewer’s talents and made him one of their directors. But Bangor Punta also treated PCO as a cash cow, draining away its earnings and selling off extensive assets. In 1984, Bangor Punta was acquired by Lear Siegler. The Lear Siegler executives did not understand PCO, and did not feel that it made a good fit with its other divisions. Forstman, Little Company, a specialist in primary corporate assets, took on the job of marketing PCO. Brewer’s failing health probably also contributed to the sale of PCO. Producers Cotton Oil Company was offered for sale to the industry, a prospect that made those of us at Oilseeds nervous. At one point, Cargill, Inc. signed a letter of understanding with Lear to purchase its PCO division. A disastrous meeting was held between Cargill and Oilseeds executives. Oilseeds’ people were concerned that such an arrangement would result in Oilseeds being pushed out, and the meeting only confirmed this feeling. At this particular time. Oilseeds had the opportunity to begin crushing in its own oil mill at Grimes, California, for Adams Grain Company. The Oilseeds agreement with Adams also made provision for Oilseeds to market for Adams if the Cargill deal went through. However, the Cargill arrangement was canceled and Oilseeds was only required to crush for Adams. The Cargill agreement broke down, ostensibly because PCO could not deliver a clean environmental impact statement in time, but actually because Cargil’s oil mill division was not interested in acquiring another mill, while the cotton-marketing division wanted PCO’s ginning operations. After the Cargill effort failed, J.R. Dunnavant worked out an agreement with PCO’s owners, and purchased PCO in 1987. For the first time since it was sold by the original shareholders, PCO was owned by people with an agricultural background. But the background did not translate into a happy relationship for long. Under pressure of a terrible cottonseed oil market, PCO quickly disintegrated, key people left, retired, or were terminated. Producers Cotton Oil Company’s ginning operations were merged into the Dunnavant Group. The Fresno plant was closed in March 1990, and subsequently has been completely dismantled. Oilseeds’ safflower relationship with PCO was marketed to C. Itoh in 1991. Table 5.8 recounts the amounts of safflower seed produced from PCO’s farms and purchases, together with the amount of seed sold by PCO (usually for export). The balance of seed that PCO handled each year was processed by PCO in its own mill, except for 1,787 ST toll crushed at Culbertson, Montana, in 1984.

TABLE 5.8 Producers Cotton Oil Company, Safflower Seed Production and Salesa Crop Year

6,000

5,600 7,500 14,000

9,000 15,000 11,135

8,000 13,500 7,250 5,500 13,000 4,000 3,000 3,500 8,500 18,620 15,000 9,000 3,000 6,500 4,000 7,000 1,700 1,800 1,750 400 7,532 20,472 8,414 13,900 11,583 12,739 14,302 3,707

California Oleic Acreage Prod. Contracted (ST)

900 300 655

560 300 700

300

200

Arizona (ST)

Utah/Idaho Wash. (ST)

Mont./ N.Dak. (ST)

753 1,881 2,023 144 1,104 2,535 1,730 3,240 7,008 750 245 1,100 1,500

Seed Sales (ST)

6,800 5,000 1,000

12,200 4,000 1,000

1,000

5,000 1,650

4,453 12,040 7,991 11,750 600 9,500 13,023

5,566 14,790 8,163 15,460 827 9,822 16,394

3,310 64 2,005

1,159

2,048 3,000 1,890 1,400 900 600 545

1,000 10,000 1,500 1,400

499 19,250 504 2,770 1,258 2 12,983

aYears not listed had negligible production. Source: Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; McLeod, D., Marwood Company unpublished data; Producers Cotton Oil, unpublished data; Smith J., unpublished data.

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3,000 7,000 6,900 20,000 20,000 10,000 3,000 5,000 4,000 6,000 1,700 2,000 1,500 400 9,825 21,819 10,429 16,650 11,700 11,200 16,013 2,902

Prod. (ST)

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1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990

Carlifornia Linoleic Acreage Purchased Contracted

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Serape Cotton Oil Company Scrape Cotton Oil Co. was formed as a cooperative alliance of independent Arizona and Blythe, California cotton ginners. It was modeled after Ranchers Cotton Oil Company of California and its Manager was Earl D. Cecil, son of Ranchers’ founder, Earl J. Cecil. Serape built an expeller mill in 1960 at Chandler, Arizona, and began contracting with safflower farmers in Arizona’s Mohawk Valley through Farmers’ Marketing Association (a cooperative) at $80/ST guaranteed price with hopes for final settlement at $100 (4). In 1961, Serape announced the addition of solvent extraction to increase daily safflower-processing capacity to 300 tons in time for the 1962 crop (5). Table 5.9 lists Serape’s short-lived safflower operations, that became impossible when safflower prices declined and production in Arizona was severely curtailed.

Southwest Flaxseed Association (Southern Marketing Corp.) Southwest Flaxseed Association (SWFA) for many years mirrored the dynamics of Fred Sterzing, its long-time manager. A grower cooperative, headquartered in Imperial California; it was a powerful force in the production and marketing of flaxseed locally and later in the processing of cotton planting seed, the marketing of alfalfa products and durum wheat, and the purchase and feeding of beef cattle. From time to time, SWFA engaged in safflower seed contracting on behalf of others, for its own account, or as a producer and supplier of planting seed. Sterzing was very active in trying to encourage state and federal research aimed at finding new crops for the irrigated southwest. After the dismal failure suffered by safflower in 1950 in the Imperial Valley, it is very doubtful that the crop would have been tried again in southern California or Arizona without the continual prodding and help from people like Sterzing seeking new and better ways for the farmers of the area. Southwest Flaxseed Association was responsible for the production and early increase of several new safflower varieties based on the agronomic research of the University of Arizona, USDA, and University of California. Sterzing and John Woolard, SWFA’s agronomist, helped to develop improved methods of culture for safflower on light and medium soils that required heavy amounts of irrigation. Table 5.10 lists SWFA’s safflower production. TABLE 5.9 Safflower Acreage and Production for the Serape Cotton Oil Companya Crop Year

Acreage

Production (ST)

1961 1962 1963 1965 1966

2,700 12,000

1 10,000 7,100 500 5,500

a

Years not listed had negligible production.

Source: Estimates by Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data.

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Southwest Flaxseed Association became a corporation in the 1970s. Eventually it was dismantled and sold.

Vegetable Oil Products Company, Inc. Vegetable Oil Products Company, Inc., of Wilmington, California, was for many years a competitor of PVO in the copra/coconut oil business. It was owned by Ralph J. Roesling and managed by William L. Dickinson. Vegetable Oil Products Company differed from PVO in that it was integrated vertically, operating a large refinery, and shortening- and margarine-manufacturing plant at Wilmington, California, producing both products of its own and also toll-packaging products for others in the grocery and food service fields. When the polyunsaturated revolution began, VOPCO was in position to react quickly, supplying salad oil to encapsulators and beginning in 1959 marketing its own safflower margarine. Golden Sweet, while obtaining oil supplies from PVO. To source its own safflower oil supplies, VOPCO called on the Arizona subsidiary, VOPCO of Arizona, which in 1961 was renamed Arizona Cottonseed Products Company to better describe its basic function (6). Arizona Cottonseed was managed by C.A. Piercy, Vice president and General Manager, who was assisted by Sonny Webb. It operated an expeller mill, managed by Herman Lambert. In 1961, Arizona Cottonseed announced, like almost every company involved with safflower processing with expellers, that it would be making an $800,000 investment to add a V.D. Anderson horizontal basket solvent-extraction system to increase capacity to 300 tons/day to avoid problems associated with expeller processing of safflower (7). In fact, Arizona Cottonseed suffered a fire in late 1961 that destroyed 1,400 tons of safflower expeller cake; fortunately the mill was spared. The following year it suffered a fire in 3,000 tons of improperly stored seed near Buckeye, Arizona. Arizona TABLE 5.10 Safflower Production for the Southwest Marketing Corporationa California

Arizona

Crop Year Acreage Production (ST) 1961 1963 1966 1967 1968 1969 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975

300 2,693 2,000 3,300 660

450 2,700 2,500 3,500 800

100 1,000

100 1,200

100

100

Acreage Production (ST)

300 700 710 2,000

3,000 440 900 885 2,200 200

500

600

aYears not listed had negligible production. Source: Estimates by Pacific Vegetable Corporation, unpublished data; and Agricom International, Ltd., unpublished data.

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TABLE 5.11 Safflower Production for the Vegetable Oil Products Company, Incorporated/Arizona Cottonseed Products Company Crop Year

Acreage

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967

4,000 22,000

Arizona Production (ST) 5,000 25,000 15,000 2,400 6,200 8,000 14,000

California Production (ST)

654

Source: Estimates by the Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data.

Cottonseed planned to offer a 40% protein safflower meal to be produced by frontend dehulling, but this never proved feasible, and they abandoned this effort. The crippling fall in safflower oil prices in 1963 and 1964 dealt a permanent blow to Arizona Cottonseed’s safflower program, and left the company with substantial down time as its cottonseed-crushing fortunes waned. In 1967, Producers Cotton Oil Company closed its Phoenix plant and leased the Arizona Cottonseed facility at Gilbert for 3 years. At the end of the 1970 season, Producers shifted its operations to Casa Grande, Arizona, and the Gilbert plant was idled permanently. Golden Sweet margarine was marketed in southern Arizona and California for several years, but it never achieved a very large market share. In the early 1970s faced with extremely high costs to meet increasingly tougher environmental standards at its Wilmington Harbor location, Roesling decided to close the plant and to suspend all operations. He continued to be active in ranching and real estate development in Arizona and California. W.D. (Billy Dick) Dickinson formed a successful brokerage firm for a number of years, that handled some safflower oil and seed, but primarily dealt with cottonseed oil. Table 5.11 portrays Arizona Cottonseeds’ brief history in the safflower world.

Other States As was pointed out in Chapter 1, outside of California, there are limited areas of the United States where safflower can be readily grown. As we have seen in Chapters 4 and 5, even in the areas where safflower appears to be adapted, a good result is not always forthcoming. Arizona has the highest degree of certainty of production next to California, In Arizona, safflower production has tended to be concentrated in the Yuma and Mohawk valleys, and in the Casa Grande area. It needs to be irrigated frequently, planted early (in order to achieve good oil content), and generally planted on beds to reduce the threat of scalding or root rot. Whether it is delivered to a local Arizona mill or the dealers and mills on the West Coast, Arizona is at a freight disadvantage to California. Arizona’s principal advantage is that it can begin harvesting in mid-July

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and in years when the California crop falters, Arizona producers often experience high prices for the first production of the following season. Since so much of Arizona’s irrigated acreage is devoted to high-priced vegetable or cotton production, safflower is generally attractive to farmers only in years of high prices, and it has therefore been impossible to plan on Arizona as an area offering a dependable year-in, year-out supply. Much of the history of safflower in the United States has taken place in the region we call the Great Plains. The best description of this area was done by Ian Frazier. (Excerpt from Great Plains by Ian Frazier, Copyright © 1989 by Ian Frazier. First appeared in The New Yorker, February 20, 1989, Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, Inc. and of Faber & Faber Ltd., publishers.) “Just where the Great Plains begin and end is not always certain. To the west, they sometimes continue past the Rocky Mountain front, through gentle foothills, and all the way to the Continental Divide. To the north, flatlands stretch past the Arctic Circle, but the open prairie has given way to boreal pine forests long before that. In the southwest, a change from semi-arid grassland to true desert is sudden in some places, slow in others. Of all the Great Plains boundaries, the eastern one is the hardest to fix. Many geographers and botanists have said that the Great Plains begin at the hundredth meridian, because that is the approximate limit of twentyinch annual rainfall. Before Europeans came, it was more or less where the tall grasses of the East stopped and the Western shortgrasses started. (The hundredth meridian is the eastern line of the Texas Panhandle; a map of the lower forty-eight states folds in half a little bit to the right of it.) Since the same amount of rain never falls two years in a row, this eastern boundary always changes. Sometimes it happens to coincide at certain points with the Missouri River: the east side of the river will be green and lush, and the west side will be a tan and dusty cowboy-movie set. Farmers can not grow corn or raise dairy cattle or do much European-style agriculture at all on sub-twenty-inch rainfall, and when they first moved out onto the Great Plains they sometimes had difficulty borrowing money. Many banks and insurance companies had a policy of not lending money for the purposes of agriculture west of the hundredth meridian. So, whether or not the rain stopped exactly at the hundredth meridian, at one time lots of Eastern loan officers did. If you were beyond their help, you knew you were on the Great Plains” (8).

This description of limitations caused by less than 20 inches of rain, timid bankers (and a 120-day minimum growing season) describes the area to which safflower may be adapted. The fact that moisture is not the same every year, nor is the 120-day frost-free period the same, nor is the bankers’ fear the same, has been the root cause of much labor and relatively little success with safflower production in the Great Plains. The area needs alternate crops, and safflower appears to fit the bill, but the region’s inborn violent changes have so far prevented safflower from attaining much success. Chapters 1 and 4 cover safflower’s early years in this area. The Plains offered seemingly limitless area for expansion in the 1960s when safflower production and consumption was on the rise, but until the advent of Treflan pre-emergence herbicide,

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safflower did not have a chance of success in most years. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation sold the Culbertson plant before Treflan became a factor. But even with Treflan, it is doubtful that the companies promoting safflower in the region since that time have enjoyed profitable years except in 1976–78, and growers producing safflower would at best have considered safflower profitable in less than one-half of the seasons in the past two decades. Safflower’s real enemy in the Plains is the government’s Farm Program. The Farm Program is much more relentless than even the threats of frost, drought, hail, grasshoppers, wind, disease, rain, and snow that the farmer must face each year in trying to grow safflower. The farmer has become a ward of the government’s wheat program. He can not afford to ignore it, and unless a very major break-through were to occur in safflower breeding, there is nothing on the horizon to make safflower buyers a viable competitor for the U.S. government. Particularly in the northern Great Plains, safflower must be planted between April 15 and May 15, experience two or three good showers during spring and early summer and avoid rain after flowering to produce a successful crop. Planting can be done on land summer fallowed after the previous crop or on a field planted directly following a previous crop (“recrop land”) but planting on recrop is normally successful only if the farm has experienced good rainfall prior to planting. If he is lucky, a farmer in the region can produce a yield of 1,000–1,200 lbs, but 750 lbs/acre is closer to average. The oil content of seeds of a similar variety grown in the Plains or in California will generally be 2% lower in the Plains sample. It will exhibit oil 0.2–2.0% higher in FFA and be 1–5 Gardner color units higher, depending on the severity of disease and adverse weather elements in a given year. The Plains States do have some advantages. Labor, land, and production costs are lower than in California, and oil produced in a local mill has a substantial freight advantage versus West Coast oil when shipping to buyers in the Central States or Eastern Seaboard. The lower prices commanded by Great Plains safflower make it a favorite area for birdseed buyers. Major birdseed markets do not care about oil contents and are closer to the Plains than to California. As long as appearance of the seed is bright and white, birdseed packagers are content. Safflower is handled in the Plains by contracts written on a dealer’s behalf by a local country elevator manager. In many instances, the country elevators have limited storage space and are geared to shipping rail cars on a regular basis in order to maintain space during the harvest season. A forceful manager can greatly influence a given area to plant or not to plant safflower. Drying and cleaning capacity is limited. Scheduling and coordinating of shipments, particularly during winter months, becomes a very important task. Very little Plains production is irrigated, so it is impossible to plan on production from the region. In other words, to sell oil and meal in anticipation of production from a given contracted acreage is very dangerous, unless the dealer involved has production from other areas to count on in case of a crop problem. The western Great Plains faces problems in the U.S. Congress when the next Farm Bill is debated. It is very likely that major changes in our government’s

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approach toward farming will occur, and the impact may be most severe in the northern Great Plains. Perhaps as some have advocated (9), the region will be returned to range grass and an area where buffalo roam freely. Safflower in Washington and Oregon has not been able to compete with wheat, whether on dry land or irrigated circles. Since there are no local oil mills, safflower must move to other states for processing, sell to bird seed buyers, or seek export markets through Portland or Seattle. Again, because the area can experience rains at time of harvest, export seed buyers are not willing to risk handling Northwest seed for their markets. Even if a local mill were available, the Pacific Northwest still would have built-in freight disadvantages since most markets for oil and meal are elsewhere. The Utah/Idaho region has similar problems to those of the Pacific Northwest, but wheat yields relative to safflower are not quite as high, so safflower has been able to establish a niche in this area and maintain itself. Failures have been much less frequent than in the Great Plains and oil content, FFA, and color differences from California seeds are slight. Table A.12 tabulates the history of production in the areas outside of California. References 1. The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, January 16, 1966. 2. King R., Jr., Forbes, pp. 98–102, April 17, 1989. 3. Broehl, W.G., Jr., Cargill, Trading the World’s Grain, University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1992. 4. Arizona Farmer Ranchman, Phoenix, Arizona, December 16, 1961. 5. Arizona Farmer Ranchman, Phoenix, Arizona, December 30, 1961. 6. Arizona Farmer Ranchman, Phoenix, Arizona, July 29, 1961. 7. Phoenix Gazette, Phoenix, Arizona, July 16, 1962. 8. Frazier, I., The New Yorker, pp. 49–88, February 20, 1989. Subsequently in Great Plains, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York and Faber & Faber Ltd., London, 1989. 9. Mathews, A., Where the Buffalo Roam, Grove Weidenfeld, New York, 1992.

Chapter 6

Developmental Research The Researchers Safflower is a crop that has generated a large amount of research in all aspects since the crop was introduced into the United States. This chapter will review the research work itself, as well as the methods used to finance and encourage it, which was a very large part of the PVO strategy. When safflower began to be produced in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, every state in the western one-third of the country performed at least some degree of yield testing, cultural work involving date of planting, row-spacing trials, fertilizer studies, irrigation practices, and so on. The West was desperate to find alternate cash crops, and researchers at most land grant colleges included safflower in their programs. In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted extensive research work in safflower through the Production Branch and Utilization Branch, and to a much lesser extent, the Home Economics Branch of the Agricultural Research Service, while market research was conducted through the Economic Research Service. At times some of the agricultural attaches of the embassies in safflowerproducing or -consuming countries were quite helpful in gathering data on safflower production or in breaking down certain barriers to safflower trade. To assist the USDA in establishing priorities for the multitude of research projects with which it was engaged, the Department established a Research Program and Evaluation Staff that administered meetings with a number of Research Advisory Committees, each of which was established to provide insight into a particular crop or group of crops. Safflower came under the purview of the Oilseed and Peanut Research Advisory Committee. Later it was expanded and called the Oilseed, Peanut, and Sugar Crops Research Advisory Committee. Overseeing the work of the commodity-oriented advisory committees was NARAC—the National Agricultural Research Advisory Committee. These committees were composed of 12 or 14 representatives of agribusinesses or prominent farmers, experienced in one or more of the crops assigned to each committee. An attempt was made to balance the committees on a regional basis as well. For several years during the late 1950s and early 1960s, I served on the Oil and Peanut Committee representing new crops and the Far West. I subsequently moved up to NARAC. The committees normally met two to four times annually, at least once in Washington and at least once in the field at some USDA research facility. Various research administrators and, in many cases the scientists themselves, would spend several days with the committee, reviewing the specific research they were carrying out, the dollars and man-hours involved in each program, and where they hoped the 142

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research would lead. Certain industry groups would also come to the meeting to lobby the committee for a particular set of programs. The committee would then meet to rank all of these efforts in order of priority and to prepare a report with the help of the committee staff, recommending where emphasis should be placed in the next Agriculture Budget. Because safflower had such a small market compared to other crops, such as soybeans, corn, or cotton, it did not have much political clout. Because it could not be produced in the South, safflower held little interest for the tight-knit group of Representatives and Senators from that region. The committee meetings were interesting, since they were a microcosm of what went on in the interaction of the budget process between the Department of Agriculture, House of Representatives, and the Senate. The Committee members worked very hard to present useful reports, but many of us felt that the committee’s primary purpose was to help the USDA justify its budget requests. All of us soon learned that the real head of the USDA was Representative Jamie Whitten of Mississippi, who had been the head of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Appropriations for years. I was successful in getting safflower more than its rightful share of research efforts primarily because many of the scientists, particularly in the Utilization side of ARS, enjoyed its unique structure and often included it in larger projects that were nominally aimed at investigating other crops. I was appointed Chairman of NARAC, succeeding Francis Scofield but the Kennedy administration swept into power and dispensed with NARAC before my first meeting. The Northern Regional Research Laboratory at Peoria, Illinois, performed a substantial amount of research under the direction of John Cowan into the many modifications of safflower oil, while the Western Lab at Albany, California, did research under George Kohler, Thomas Applewhite, and Gienn Fuller into composition, processing, meal utilization, and oil stability studies after the oil work was transferred from Peoria. The Southern and Eastern Laboratories concentrated on other crops, although Fleming, Vix, and others did some early work on safflower extraction at New Orleans. The USDA also contracted with researchers in other countries, with the dual purpose of providing foreign aid and also getting research done at bargain rates. The USDA’s big contribution to safflower productivity research was in the Beltsville, Maryland, pathology work of Thomas and the breeding work by Rubis, Urie, and others at various locations in the West. The University of California operated a similar Agronomy Advisory Committee to assist in guiding research in that field. I served on that committee as well, but the real guidance came from Paul Knowles and Milton Miller. The University of Arizona, Utah State University, the University of Idaho, Montana State University, and North Dakota State University maintained active programs in safflower production research for many years. Appropriations and emphasis for USDA agricultural research had gone through fundamental changes during the period that safflower was being developed as a crop. During the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the USDA and state research programs involved quite extensive plant-breeding programs aimed at developing new varieties.

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Then, under pressure from the seed industry and the public in general, the emphasis for USDA and the universities shifted to more basic research aimed at developing germ plasm that could be handed over to private industry to develop into inbred or hybrid varieties. In more recent years more of the USDA’s research emphasis has been directed toward the more politically correct area of environmental studies. These days, USDA has few funds available for safflower research. Agricultural research funding in the various states has been forced to rely more heavity on private industry or grower cooperative grants, as legislatures have reeled under increasingly arduous budget problems. An amazing amount of very fundamental research continues to pour from our universities, some of it resulting in the foundation of entirely new and wonderful businesses and programs. But the United States needs to devote a great deal of thought on how to control the ownership of intellectual property developed at public institutions that are funded by both public and private funds simultaneously. During the 1950s and 1960s, a considerable amount of research into the industrial uses of safflower oil was conducted by paint companies, chemical suppliers, and by PVO. Much of this work went unpublished. As the emphasis in safflower marketing shifted from the industrial field to the edible markets, private work began to be done by PVO, VOPCO; Anderson, Clayton and Co.; and the refining companies engaged in marketing safflower consumer products. Again, much of this work has remained unpublished. Most research on safflower today involves studies into factors affecting edible use, either from a medical aspect or in vectors, such as oxidation, rancidity, color changes, among others. In 1958, after much design work by Hill, Kopas, Ferguson, and Kneeland, PVO erected a new two-story building on its Richmond plant property (Figure 6.1). Most of the upper floor was devoted to laboratories for control chemistry and applied and basic research. Kneeland hired some capable new people to join Purdy, Grass, and Jacobsen from the old lab, and they turned out an increasing volume of research on safflower until prices escalated and began restricting certain markets. In January, 1967, I convinced Applewhite, then in charge of investigations with the USDA, Albany, California, Western Regional Research Laboratory, to join PVO as our Research Director. Kneeland moved to Planning Director, and Purdy, PVO’s Technical Service Director, also became head of Quality Control. The West Coast Oilseeds Development Committee (WCODC) should be mentioned. Alarmed at the effects of agricultural legislation on the production of oilseeds in the West, the West Coast Oilseeds Development Committee was started through the efforts of Fred Sterzing, Manager of the Southwest Flaxseed Association. The founding members were Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, California Central Fiber Corporation, California Cotton Oil Corporation, The Glidden Company, Liberty Vegetable Oil Company, PVO, Southwest Flaxseed Association, and Spencer Kellogg and Sons, Inc. The organization was modeled after the National Flax Development Committee. Almost from the first, it was decided to widen the scope of the group and to encompass other states as well. In 1957, it became necessary to change the name to the West Coast Oilseeds Development Committee to reflect the broader scope, and I was elected chairman (1).

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The purpose of the WCODC was to encourage production of oilseeds in the West, creating more raw material for the processor members and more crops to produce for the grower members. The organization raised funds to sponsor research, held meetings to bring federal and state researchers and administrators, growers, processors, bankers, and the media together to share information, and provided testimony for legislative hearings when necessary. Meetings were held three to four times annually with the April meeting usually held in Phoenix to coincide with the University of Arizona Oilseeds Field Day.

Figure 6.1. PVO Research Laboratory at its Richmond plant.

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In 1978, the Committee became a Council of the National Institute of Oilseed Products in order to increase its coverage. In 1980, the name was changed to the West Coast Crop Development Council to try to encourage wider participation. The Council sponsored safflower symposiums in Tucson. Arizona, and Fresno and Albany, California. In 1981 it helped to sponsor the First International Safflower Conference at Davis, California. At this point the council lost steam and members, and faded from the scene—defeated by the loss of flaxseed; failure for sesame, castor, soybean, and sunflower to become established; and the decline in safflower production in the West. The International Safflower Conferences have continued—in 1989 a second was held in Hyderabad, India, and in 1993 a third was in Beijing, China, resulting in the production of Abstracts on Safflower (2), a work that contains 2,500 abstracts on safflower research. A fourth is scheduled for Bari, Italy, in 1997. These meetings have provided a venue for researchers around the world showing that many countries, particularly India and China, are very serious about pursuing safflower research. In the United States, safflower research has declined to the point that only five seed companies devote part of their research to safflower and three universities maintain some safflower research efforts. The USDA continues to maintain the U.S. safflower germ plasm collection at the Western Regional Plant Introduction Station at Pullman. Washington, and sponsors seed-modification research at Sidney, Montana. The International Board of Plant Genetic Resources provides some support for international safflower research, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. maintains world safflower production statistics and sponsors publication of the Sesame and Safflower Newsletter.

Crop Research Chapter I outlined the efforts of the Chemurgy Department of the University of Nebraska in sponsoring Claassen’s classic work in the development of the first practical safflower varieties, and the POI/USDA cooperation that fostered Rubis’ release of the Gila planting seed. At this point we should recognize the continuing and important part that Knowles of the University of California at Davis played in safflower research. Knowles’ good results testing the Nebraska lines attracted Claassen’s attention to California (3–5). In the 1950s, Knowles cooperated with Federal and California Extension Service personnel to develop good safflower cultural data in every venue of the state (6). Knowles and Miller collaborated to produce several revisions of a comprehensive bulletin on safflower production and marketing (7–10). Miller and Knowles were constantly busy during this period, speaking at meetings of all types aimed at promoting general knowledge about safflower and publishing numerous articles in journals and the press (11–13). In 1958 it became apparent that safflower-breeding programs were becoming hampered by the narrow range of germ plasm available, since most of the selections stemmed from Claassen’s introductions. Knowles convinced the University and the USDA to jointly fund a collection trip to gather cultivated and wild species in 16 countries

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from March to October 1958. In 1964–65, he repeated this trip in a much more thorough way during a sabbatical leave; in 1975 he made a collection trip to Lebanon and western Iran; and in concluded his gathering work in China. Eventually, portions of all of the materials collected were incorporated as an important part of the World Safflower Collection which is maintained at the USDA Regional Introduction Station located at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. Knowles’ last written effort was sent to the University of California by Knowles shortly before his death (14). In it, Knowles provides an outline of places, times, and samples collected at each location during his explorations; a brief resume of the scientific journey he and his colleagues took through the safflower genus; and a bibliography of the papers he published on safflower. As Knowles’ work evolved to include research on sunflowers, brassicas, and fatty acid modification during the 1960s and 1970s, the Davis campus became the headquarters for a great team of oilseed scientists, including several from the USDA, and was probably the finest oilseed research program in the country. Eventually, lack of financial support, changing goals for the University, and transfers of some USDA and private programs to other locations curtailed the program. Sadly, when Knowles retired in 1983, the University was unable to justify replacing him, and the oilseed program was disbanded. But Knowles’ greatest contribution was through the many Master’s and Ph.D. candidates he fostered during his 36 years at UC Davis. Knowles’ disciples, many from other countries, were welcomed into the Knowles home and became members of an extended family. Dorothy Knowles was a very important part of Knowles’ research, at home by acting as a mentor for his associates, and overseas by assisting in all manner of his collecting activities. Amram Ashri, one of Knowles’ Ph.D. candidates, on his own and in collaboration with Knowles, produced a broad range of studies at Davis and later in Israel, on the morphology and cytology of the carthamus species (15–18). Ashri was just the first of a group of collaborators who worked singly and together with Knowles over a 25-year period turning out important research work on all aspects of safflower morphology and cytology—Estilai (19–21), Harvey (22), Hill (23), Imrie (24,25), Khidir (26–28), Ramanamurthy (29), and Schank (30), together with his own efforts (31–33). Other associates, Carapetian (34), Ebert (35), Heaton and Klisiewicz (36), Heaton (37), Urie (38), and Urie and Zimmer (39) did important work on inheritance factors in safflower that have affected the results obtained in safflower breeding. Other Knowles students, associates, and friends put together additional efforts that advanced knowledge concerning safflower diseases (40–48). Additionally Knowles’ prolific efforts fostered work in a number of unrelated areas: closed flower inheritance with Dille (49); appressed branching with Leon (50), and the relationship of appressed and depressed branching with FernandezMartinez (51); inheritance of corolla colors by Hartman (52); inheritance of brittle stems, decumbent branching, black foliage, crinkle leaves, and light green leaves with Temple (53); the effects of fungi on free fatty acids by Heaton, Mikklesen, and Ruckman (54,55), the effects of acid treatment of safflower by Yermanos (56); and finally Knowles a study on oil milling in Turkey, India, and Egypt (57).

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In the 1960s, Knowles began concentrating on the formation and modification of safflower fatty acids and subsequently in other oilseeds. Chapter 10 discusses the development of oleic safflower and other mutations. Knowles wrote extensively on this subject (58–63), and he generated other publications with associates (64–70). As we can see from the many facets of Knowles’ life’s work with safflower, research and development of commercial safflower seed requires an ever-increasing knowledge of the origins, cytogenetics, and morphology of the crop; the characteristics of the safflower seed and plant, and what factors will affect these characteristics; the environmental features, such as climate, photoperiod, soil, and fertility, and the cultural methods that allow safflower to cope; the physiological characteristics, such as salt tolerance and dormancy; the breeding techniques; and the factors affecting or modifying inheritance. Finally, his work has demonstrated that collection and preservation of safflower germ plasm from all parts of the world must occur before genetic erosion has gone too far.

Seed Breeding Research Initially, Claassen and then Knowles described practical methods for safflower breeding (71,72). In general, safflower hybridization proceeds best in the greenhouse if temperatures do not exceed 38°C and humidities are kept below 40%. Safflower is highly self-pollinated with outcrossing under 10% (31), but crossing for breeding purposes can be controlled by using crossing bags. Wiedeman and Leininger wrote a useful report in 1963 on the optimum size and shape of safflower yield-trial plots (73). Knowles described a satisfactory planting medium for breeding work in the greenhouse or growth chamber (72), and Leroy Zimmerman pointed out practical ways to keep greenhouse production going well (74). The planting medium Knowles described was sand, 0.38 m3;peat mix, 0.38 m3; and 6.6 kg out of a mixture of 681 g 38–0–0 (NPK), 113 g 10–10–5, 170 g K2SO4, 1,135 g single super phosphate, 3,405 g dolomitic limestone, and 1.135 g of hydrated lime. Zimmerman, along with Horowitz and Beech (75), demonstrated how raising photoperiod and temperature could reduce the rosette period and increase growth chamber efficiency (74,76). Whether in a greenhouse or as bagged heads in a crossing block, safflower should not be crowded or molds will develop. Crossing is done by taking advantage of the natural development of the floret. Knowles described the procedure for Artificial Hybridization and Self-Pollination which was published in 1980 in Hybridization of Crop Plants, edited by Fehr and Harllen, and is included here through the courtesy of the publishers, the American Society of Agronomy: “A. Equipment Emasculation requires a pair of high quality, sharp-pointed scissors, tweezers with narrow points and flat surfaces, labeling tags, and 0.5 kg paper bags that will allow moisture loss, but exclude insects. Emasculations of some wild species will require a sharp dissecting needle and both a 57% ethyl alcohol solution and water rinse. B. Preparation of the Female Emasculation of the female parent generally is done in the afternoon, Heads are selected after the first whorl of flowers appear above the bracts. Many, and perhaps all, of

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these will have rudimentary ovaries. The first heads produced on a plant are preferred because they produce both more flowers and flowers that are easier to manipulate. The bracts are removed by cutting them with scissors at the base, just at the level of the tops of the ovaries. The elongated outer rings of flowers are removed with their ovaries because they have been pollinated. The inner rings of flowers have not elongated and have not shed any pollen. Each individual flower bud is emasculated. With the point of the tweezers, the corolla tube is gently squeezed just below the attachment of the filaments of the anther tube. The tissues of the corolla tube should be crushed, but not the style. The corolla tube is bent at the point where it was crushed until it breaks. With practice, this can be done without breaking the style. The tip of the closed corolla lobe is grasped with the tweezers, taking care to avoid the tip of the stigma. The top of the corolla and anther tube are pulled from the flower, leaving the base of the corolla and the projecting style and stigma. This technique completely removes the anthers without loss of pollen. If the style breaks, it is not necessary to remove the style and ovary below the break because the ovary will not develop further. In some cases, all the unelongated buds of the head are emasculated. More often, 10 to 15 are done around the periphery of the head, and the buds in the center of the head are removed by cutting them with the tweezers. Immature buds should not be pulled off because that will damage the receptacle. Heads are covered with a paper bag in the field, but not in a greenhouse free of insects. The head is labeled with the cross number and other appropriate information. Experience has shown that seed set will be higher if removal of plant parts is kept to a minimum, and if removed parts are cut off, not pulled off. Seed set is reduced even when hairs are pulled off the receptacle. Before the above method was developed, Claassen used a technique that is still preferred by some researchers (69). Sharp-pointed tweezers or a dissecting needle are used to split the corolla and anther tube, and both are removed. After all flower buds are emasculated, the head is soaked for 10 seconds in 57% ethyl alcohol, and rinsed in water to destroy any pollen released when the anther tube is split. All other procedures are the same as described earlier. This technique must be used for wild species having a corolla tube so narrow that it will not pull over the stigma without breaking the style. The styles will elongate during the night, and will have reached their full length by morning. Under field conditions stigmas are receptive early in the morning before pollen is available. They remain receptive at least for that day, and if temperatures are not too high they may be receptive on a second day. When they begin to wither they are no longer functional. C. Pollination In both field and greenhouse, heads of the made parent are identified the night before they are used as a source of pollen. All elongated flowers are cut from the head to remove any danger that foreign pollen will be present the next day. In the field, all heads are bagged to exclude insects, and identified. The next morning, all flowers that project above the bracts will serve as a source of pollen, as soon as the pollen is brushed out of the anther tube by the emerging stigma. The first heads on the plant are usually a better source of pollen than heads produced at the end of the flowering period. Pollinations begin as soon as pollen appears and continue as long as pollen is available, even to the end of the day. To permit an early start, heads of the male parent may be removed the night before, kept at room temperature, and exposed to light at an early hour.

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Pollen can be transferred by brushing one or all flowers of a head on the stigmas of the female parent. That is usually done the day after emasculation but can be done 2 days after emasculation, or on both days. Pollinated heads are bagged in the field, but not in a greenhouse free of insects. Self-pollinated seed for genetic studies and breeding programs is obtained in the field by bagging heads to exclude insects. Bagging is not required in a greenhouse where insects are excluded. Selfing bags should be porous enough to prevent moisture accumulation within the bag. Various sizes of bags are used, most researchers preferring small bags enclosing one to three heads, but others choosing larger bags covering 10 or more heads. Heads and branches should not be squeezed together in a bag because the increasing humidity will lead to head rot and reduced seed set. Genotypes seem to vary in seed set when bagged” (72).

Planting seed companies’ breeding programs can involve thousands of bagged plants growing on multiple acres (Figure 6.2), Claassen’s research program in Pacific Oilseeds Inc was organized to a high level under Donald Smith and his successors. In 1963, Smith proposed a method for the development and performance of Fl hybrid safflower that eventually came to fruition in the release of the S161 variety (77), This partial or thin-hull hybrid displayed a much higher oil content than the state-of-the-art varieties available at the time, but produced inferior yields. Although PVO provided the hybrid to growers along with a contract offering a price that resulted in a higher dollar yield/acre than conventional varieties, PVO was not successful in promoting the seed or its contract. Since it had a very thin seed coat, farmers were not able to handle this hybrid in the harvesters available at the time, and PVO also had difficulty in processing the seed. Smith has proposed other methods for economic hybrid production (Smith. D., personal communication), but unfortunately these have not been implemented because of financial constraints. Rubis proposed using production of hybrids at the Albany Safflower Utilization Conference employing the failure of anther sacs to open completely on certain lines (77), leading to a form of male sterility since styles and stigmas could emerge free of pollen. He also showed that the female parent can be grown in cages in the presence of bees (78), and sufficient pollen would be produced to generate some of the male-sterile parent. He subsequently used this technique in combination with a program combining genes from wild species to select for high resistance to phytophthora root rot and reported obtaining high levels of hybridization (79). However, Urie and Zimmer found that problems occurred in a crossing block employing this technique since a high proportion of selfed seed would result on female parents and would produce low-yielding plants in the hybrid (80). In 1979 while working as a graduate student with Knowles, Tom Heaton, who later became Research Director for SeedTec and then for Pioneer Hi-Bred oilseed program, proposed the use of genetic male sterility (81,82). This factor was induced by colchicine treatment of an introduction from Afghanistan, that showed male sterility controlled by a single recessive gene, MS, Subsequently, UC Davis released male-sterile germ plasm (UC-148 and UC-149) for the use of researchers interested in hybrid production (37). Nerkar and various associates have published parallel studies on development of male-sterile plants which resulted from g-ray treatments of certain lines (83–85).

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Unfortunately the Heaton and Nerkar systems involve tremendous amounts of hand labor in recovering male-fertile types in commercial crossing blocks. Cargill used them for awhile in India for the production of high-yielding hybrids, but this program stopped after oil mills became dissatisfied with the low oil content of the hybrids.

Figure 6.2. Bagged plants on the Pacific Oilseeds, Inc. Breeding Nursery, Photograph taken for POI by Austin Armor.

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On February 27, 1986, at the Oil and New Crops Workshop at the University of California, Davis, Barney Hill announced that cytoplasmic male-sterile types were available. Hill worked for years, first at Cargill and then for Mycogen after Cargill’s hybrid program was purchased, to produce a commercially viable hybrid, and SeedTec International has done the same, receiving a patent in 1995 wherein a malesterile gene is combined with dwarfism to allow economic production of a hybrid. Both feel they are close to having a practical seed type available for use under California conditions. In Appendix B, I have listed a number of the significant varieties of safflower developed on the North American continent in the last 50 years. Most of them have been developed by the pedigree process of selection, crossing and backcrossing under bags or in growth cages, selecting superior F2 plants for evaluation as F3 lines that are then yield tested in the F4 stage and selfed for further increase. Although Knowles maintained that the pedigree method was the only system employed in commercial production of safflower varieties (86), Rubis employed near-bulking methods in his haste to develop his program at the University of Arizona in the 1960s (87,88). To date, all of the advances in the breeding of improved safflower varieties have come as the result of conventional plant-breeding techniques or from induced or natural (found) mutations. Genetic engineering is taking longer to produce a marketable product, just as it has with practically every other crop. Surely these advances will come, but to date genetic engineering has been very good at selling common stock, and very poor in bringing new agricultural products to market. The use of recombinant DNA techniques to confer resistance to alternaria in safflower, as was announced at the 1993 Third International Safflower Conference in Beijing, may be the first real step in this direction (89). Seed Breeding Objectives Safflower seed breeding has been focused on eight objectives. 1. Oil Content. From Claassen’s 1940s work in Nebraska to much of the present day work, the most important objective has been the search for higher oil content varieties combined with an underlying mandate to preserve existing per acre yields. As can be seen in the list of varieties in Appendix B, oil content has risen from 28% in Claassen’s early work to the 43–46% range achieved by farmers planting S-541 or CW 4440 varieties under most conditions in California. But in the last decade, no further improvements in oil content have been realized in the United States. Chinese researchers are hard at work trying to improve oil content in that country’s varieties, basing their work on AC-1 (90,91). Unfortunately, Mexico’s latest improvements in oil content, Quirego 88 and San Jose 89, were obtained at the expense of lowering linoleic fatly acid levels to unaceeptably low levels (92,93). In India, there has been much work done on improving oil contents of local varieties (94). During the past 15 years, Indian researchers have published numerous papers on every phase of safflower agronomic research, covering every conceivable subject in minute detail. I refer the reader to Abstracts on Safflower (2). The Abstracts lists most of the Indian work.

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The path to increased oil content is the reduction in the hull portion of the seed, since it contains very little oil while the kernel is high in oil and protein (95,96). A benefit to improving the oil content is that the protein yield also goes up. Van Elswyk discussed the inheritance of hull percentage in a 1967 dissertation (97). Researchers have identified various types of lessened hull structure: striped hull (stpstp) and “thin hull” (thth) genes were found to be recessive to normal hull and are inherited independently of one another (35,98,99); “reduced hulls” where a portion of the seeds display an outer layer of the pericarp that is very thin exposing the dark underlying areas on 30–50% of the seeds (98); partial hulls (par par) where over 60% display practically dark areas (97). The partial hull is recessive to normal hulls (Par Par) and reduced hulls but inherited independently from stpstp and thth genes (39,99–101). A brown-striped mutant was discovered by Rubis and Thomas in 1955 and reported in 1963 (99). It was found that the brown-striped character, while having a very high oil content, imparted an odor reminiscent of wet straw and a darker color to the extracted oil. Burkhardt (102) and Binder (103) suggested solutions to these problems at the 1967 Conference on the Utilization of Safflower. Burkhardt later expanded on his solution (104). In 1966 Rubis discovered a pigmentless mutant gene (105). In his report at the same Conference on Utilization, he listed the genes affecting hull types in order of dominance (106): Thin-hull locus Th: normal th: thin-hull Striped locus Stp: normal stpg: gray-striped stpp: purple-striped stp: brown-striped

Light seed-coat locus Lt: normal It: light seed-coat Pigmentless locus P: normal p: pigmentless

In 1968, the University of Arizona released Arizona Composite I and Arizona Composite III. Composite I was a composite cross of thin-hull safflower; Composite III was a pigmentless striped-hull safflower designed to replace the brown-striped experiment lines (A 101 and A12417) released by Arizona in 1964 (107). 2. Disease Resistance. Along with improvement in oil-content levels, disease resistance has been the major breeding objective in most programs around the world. The near failure of the 1950 safflowor crop in California’s Imperial Valley and in Arizona first focused attention on phytophthora as a serious problem to be overcome if safflower was to be grown successfully in California’s irrigated valleys. In his talk at the Fourth Safflower and Other Oilseeds Research Conference held in Fresno, California, in 1974. Thomas outlined the steps taken to deal with phypohthora (108). With no resistant types available. California growers were reduced to avoiding safflower production under irrigation until better cultural methods were developed to deal with the root rot that phytoptethora brought on. Thomas had noticed in a field near Yuma, Arizona, that a mixture of Nebraska 4 (spineless) had

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been planted with N-852 (a spiny type). The N-4 survived; the N-852 died. This gave Thomas the hope of developing resistant varieties. Working under the cooperative program between POI and the USDA. Thomas crossed W.O.-14, a resistant strain, with N-10, a susceptible but otherwise desirable strain. Lines developed from the first backcross were used by Rubis to select the partially resistant variety, Gila, which at the time was a big breakthrough (109). The more resistant variety, US-10, was selected by Thomas after the sixth backcross and was released jointly by the California Agricultural Experiment Station and the USDA (110). The U.S. safflower industry was very lucky to have dedicated scientists, such as Thomas, John Klisiewicz at UC Davis, and Dave Zimmer at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, all identifying and helping to attack new disease problems as the crop expanded. As Thomas explained, “Phytophthora is one of a genera of fungi called ‘water molds’. In subsequent years, we came to know that Phytophthora dreschsleri is the principal form of the disease which causes root rot, but Phytophthora parasitica and Phytopluhora cryptogea also are involved,” Thomas implicated Phytophthora cactorum as well from isolations in his Beltsville laboratory (108), and Klisiewicz also found Phytophthora nicotianae involved (111). In addition to the many papers Thomas published on early safflower disease problems, he published others as well, dealing with phytophthora. He published with Rubis and Black concerning the background on the development of Gila and other resistant types (112), with Klisiewicz on the selective pathogenesis for Phytophthora drechsleri (113), and with Zimmer to register USB (Biggs) safflower germ plasm (114). The resistance developed with N-10 was not very strong, and safflower had to be grown on beds or furrow irrigated to survive; production on heavy soils or under flood-irrigation was impossible. Thomas had developed the reasoning that resistance was due to a single dominant gene. During the 1950s, he had injected the fungus into the hypocotyls of many safflower lines without finding true resistance. Knowles sent him some introductions that had survived on heavy rice soil at the University of California substation at Biggs, California. Thomas selected lines that were homozygous for resistance, composited them, and called them USB (Biggs). Working with Zimmer in field tests, USB was found to be resistant to all races of P. drechsleri when wound-inoculated, and to be conditioned by a single recessive gene (114–116). Subsequently, he was to learn that the resistance was more complex, that different recessive genes conditioned resistance in the hypocotyl and the epicotyl (108). While Biggs had neither good yield nor good oil-content characteristics, it has been an important line in the pedigree of new varieties released since then. The USDA released Thomas’s VFR-1 safflower germ plasm as a cultivar resistant to Verticillium albo-atrum Reinke Berth; to all then known races of Fusarium oxysporum Schlect f. sp. carthami Klis and Hous, and to rhizoctonia blight which is incited by Thanateporus cucumeris (Frank) Donk (= Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn, Pellicularia filamentosa Pat. Rogers). It was entitled VFR for the three diseases to which it was resistant (117). As it turned out, VFR-1 had a higher root rot resistance than Gila or US-10, but it did not display the wound-inoculation resistance of Biggs in the hypocotyl or epicotyl. Its cotyledons were resistant to P. drechsleri at temperatures up to 28–29°C. At over 30°C, it became susceptible. This appeared to be due to a single

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recessive gene, and not the same two recessive genes in Biggs. To make things even more confusing, N-10 cotyledons were susceptible at 21.5°C, while VFR-1 had both a single dominant gene resistance (although a different dominant gene than found in US-10 or Gila) and a single high-temperature effective recessive gene (108). In 1976. Thomas published a study of VFR-1’s root rot resistance. He found that hypocotyl resistance to wound-inoculated phytophthora is conditioned by a single dominant gene (118). In 1981, Da Via, Knowles, and Klisiewicz published an evaluation of 1,547 entries in the World Safflower Collection for resistance to phytophthora, Fifteen of the most resistant lines were released under the designations UC-150 to UC-164, respectively (119). While these 15 lines displayed no more resistance than VFR-1, they came from a much broader genetic base, which is always useful in breeding. The prior year, DaVia, along with others, had released 14–5 safflower germ plasm that exhibited resistance to Phytophthora cryptogea (120). Harrigan, McRae, and others in Australia published a series of reports resulting from 1,424 accessions for resistance to P. cryptogea and Alternaria leaf blight using a simplified inoculation technique (121,122). Klisiewicz reported on P. cryptogea, P. dreschleri, and P. nicotianae isolates from samples of root and stem rot (123). In his report at the First International Safflower Conference, Thomas concluded that the two genes that determine cotyledon and hypocotyl resistance do not determine stem resistance, further complicating the task of finding an ideal cultivar (124). Earlier, Kockman and Evans had reported on P. ultimum and P. debaryanum, as being the principle strains of this disease in Australia (125). Another organism causing root rot in safflower fields is Pythium splendens. It has had little effect on the crop around the world, so little breeding work has taken place. I will discuss it under cultural research. While in Nebraska, Claassen had focused on rust as a serious disease problem for safflower, and it continues to be if it is not controlled. Puccinia carthami (CDA) is a disease that is more of a nuisance in the later foliar stage, but can be devastating in the seedling stage. In the early days of safflower production in California and Nebraska, entire fields were lost when planted following a previous crop of safflower. Thomas played a leading role in assisting plant breeders to develop varieties resistant to, rust Unfortunately, new races of rust have continued to appear, and therefore a combination of cultural methods and fungicides offer the best means of control. In 1962, Zimmer discovered a method to increase the selection speed of rustresistant lines by observing sporulation on the hypocotyls of lines being tested. The disease induces hypocotyl elongation in susceptible lines and sporulation in the hypocotyl stage occurs only on susceptible lines. By looking at these two factors and seeding survival, determinations of resistance control could be made 10–14 days after inoculation of a test (126,127). In 1965, Zimmer and Leininger used this method and reported on screening 1,200 safflower introductions under field conditions at Logan, Utah. Eighteen widely diverse lines were selected that exhibited resistance in both the seedling and foliar stages (48). Zimmer followed up this work by screening 21 collections of wild Carthmus species and found one collection of Carthamus oxycantha to be resistant

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to rust, and that it could be readily crossed with cultivated safflower. He discovered that a Carthamus spp. collection was resistant as well, but it could not readily be hybridized with cultivated safflower (128). Zimmer and Urie crossed the wild collection of Carthamus oxycantha with the rust-susceptible variety Frio, and backcrossed selected progenies to Frio in successive generations. These later generations carried the OY OY dominant factor pair from the C. oxycantha selection and displayed a high level of resistance to rust (47). Finally, in 1970, Zimmer and Urie registered five rust-resistant breeding lines, including PCOy, that were the result of their backcross with Carthamua oxycantha (129). In the United States and Mexico, Alternaria carthami and Alternaria alternata are two forms of the disease that probably have the widest impact; this holds true for safflower the world over. Alternaria leaf spot is experienced regularly in the U.S. Plains States, in northeastern Mexico, and in the Culiacan area of Mexico. Much of Jerry Bergman’s work at the Sidney Experiment Station in Sidney, Montana, was involved in studying and describing alternaria’s mechanisms in relation to safflower and in trying to develop varieties that had resistance or displayed tolerance to the disease. In rapid order, Bergman et al., released several varieties, Sidwell in 1977 (130), Rehbein and Hartman in 1980 (131,132), Oker in 1984 (133), Finch and Girard in 1986 (134), and finally Centennial in 1989 (135). All of these varieties, with exception of Oker which was offered as an early maturing variety, were designed to introduce increasing levels of tolerance to Alternaria or higher oil content. None of these cultivars are truly resistant to alternaria, and in years of high incidence they also suffer reduced yields, but in general they are able to maintain a higher relative oil content than the more susceptible varieties. Australian researchers have reported on methods for inducing alternaria sporulation on artificial media (136). They have also found optimum temperatures and techniques for screening cultivars for alternaria (137,138). Perhaps the most interesting news about scientists’ efforts to defeat alternaria involves the search for the phytotoxins produced by Alternaria carthami Chowdbury which produces the symptoms of the disease when they touch safflower tissue. Indian researchers isolated zinniol as one phytotoxin from culture filtrates of Alternaria carthami (139). Tietjen, Matern, and others isolated three phytotoxins, brefeldin A (BFA), 7-oxobrefeldin A, and zinniol (140). They were able to show that BFA was the only toxin that could be isolated from infected leaves, which suggested that it was a causal factor in the development of leaf spots (141–143). Finally, in a paper presented at the Third International Safflower Conference, Matern reported that after trying to breed for resistance to BFA proved fruitless, they were able to protect safflower from leaf spot disease by isolating a strain of Bacillus subtilis, that was able to detoxify BFA through hydrolysis. The enzyme responsible was purified, and the corresponding gene was cloned. This provided a basis for producing safflower plants into which the resistance gene has been introduced, giving increased resistance (and perhaps immunity) to Alternaria cartharia (89). Two related papers from Montana State University reported the achievement of mediated transformation of Bergman’s Centennial variety and in vitro culture of transgenic shoot buds that carried an implanted gene (144,145).

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In this field of safflower study, Indian researchers are not lagging behind the rest of the world. George and Rao have demonstrated in vitro multiplication of safflower through tissue culture (146). Prasad and Anwar have demonstrated in vitro induction of androgenic haploids in safflower (147). Anwar has conducted in vitro induction of capitula from cotyledons of safflower (148). Ramaswamy has demonstrated callus induction from florets (149). A small amount of breeding research has been performed on vericillium. Zimmer’s report on the Response of Non-Cultivated Safflower Species covered verticillium wilt as well as rust. All of the wild species listed were highly susceptible to verticiltium wilt (128). Thomas’ work with the VFR-1 germ plasm produced seed resistant to verticillium (117). Bergman’s work to release a number of varieties resistant to alternaria contained parallel efforts to make the same lines resistant to Pseudomonas syringar or bacterial blight (130–135). Bergman and his associates had earlier developed a method for inoculating in the greenhouse that was replicated in field testing, which assisted in the development of the resistant lines (150). Pseudomonas was primarily responsible for removing Spain as an important safflower producer, but I am not aware of any published work from Spain to produce resistance, Sepasa did such work after the Spanish crop was initially damaged by the disease, Fernandez-Martinez, who studied with Knowles at the University of California at Davis in the late 1970s, is now with the Department of Oil Crops in Cordoba, Spain, and also acts as Editor for the Sesame and Safflower Newsletter. He has published several reports on the status of Spanish safflower-breeding research, which is based on use of a single seed descent method. In this method, crosses were made between a local cultivar and Oleic Leed, where the local cultivar was used as the recurrent parent. Production started in a small growth chamber. In each generation one plant was grown from a single plant of the previous generation without intervening selection. By the fourth generation, plants were transferred to the field for testing. Improvement in yield and oil content over the better parent resulted, and time was saved compared with conventional methods (151). EMS mutagenesis was subsequently added to this program (152). In recent times, Spanish safflower-breeding efforts have fallen on hard times. Safflower-breeding efforts in Spain have been greatly restricted because of earlier problems with disease, the predominance of sunflower in commanding most research funding, and the more recent occurrence of broomrape as a pest on safflower. Breeder objectives had concentrated on improving oil content and finding types capable of being planted during the winter, but the broom rape problem has limited efforts (153–155). The remaining disease on which extensive breeding work has been done is Fusarium oxyporum f. sp. carthami. Thomas’ VFR-1 line was resistant to the known races of fusarium wilt at the time (117), but new races have appeared since then, Fusarium has been a problem since it was discovered in 1962, primarily in California on the wetter soils in the Sacramento Valley and San Joaquin/Sacramento Delta. Both SeedTec and Cal/West have screened for fusarium resistance in every variety released in the past 20 years. Other than Smith’s report on breeding for resistance

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to fuscarium wilt at the First International Safflower Conference (151, 156), not a lot has been published on fusarium breeding other than the data contained in applications for Plant Variety Protection by SeedTec and Cal/West. The Canadian researchers, Mündel and Huang, have reported on the development of varieties resistant to head not caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (157,158) and Saffire, the variety released in 1985, displays good resistance (less than 10% of heads infected in severe cases) to Sclerotinia head rot (159). A.D. Karve conducted a study of 1,500 accessions in India under sponsorship of the USDA. He found clear-cut resistance to all local diseases except powdery mildews. Resistant types were incorporated into a breeding program that has produced new cultivars offering high yields and improved disease resistance compared to then-existing Indian varieties (160,161). 3. Yield. As reported elsewhere, safflower yields in the United States have varied little since safflower became an established crop. All seed breeders in the United States have followed the practice of constantly testing all new lines for yield, and cultivars, that do not yield as well as their predecessors are usually discarded. The latest varieties from the leading planting seed companies have been released with reports of 5–10% yield improvement, yet U.S. average yields do not seem to be going up. Extensive work on hybridization of safflower holds genuine promise for improvement of safflower yields, but to date, the only improvements have been at the expense of oil content so that little difference in the amount of oil generated/acre has resulted. In other countries, yield improvement has been a paramount factor in their seed programs and as improved cultivars are developed, yields have improved. However, I believe the bulk of these improvements reflect better cultural practices, including better handling of planting seed production. 4. Early Maturity. Trying to shorten safflower’s growing season has been an elusive target for safflower breeders. Obeso reported in 1975 on finding a new dwarf, early maturing line of safflower (162). Many researchers have incorporated this cultivar into their efforts to find an acceptable early line, thus far without success. The 1993 Abstracts on Safflower has many references to Indian and Chinese efforts to search for early maturity. The Chinese variety, FO-3 is an example of a type incorporating the Mexican dwarf (91). Oker, the variety released by Montana State University in 1984 (133), was selected for early maturity from bulked material out of the World Collection. Saffola 501, released by SeedTec International in 1993, was offered as a shorter, early maturing type. Neither Oker nor S-501 has performed up to expectations. Chinese analysis of germ plasm in the World Collection shows an accession from China with a time to maturity as low as 81 days (163). No one has been able to combine early maturity with a yield and oil content high enough to satisfy farmers. 5. Insect and Pest Resistance. Although there are numerous insects that prey on safflower in various parts of the world, with two exceptions little breeding work has been attempted. Most research has been aimed at control of the insect rather than breeding for resistance. However in India, aphids are a very serious pest on safflower

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and The Abstracts on Safflower lists numerous studies in a search for resistance to this problem. However, Naik reported in 1987 that to date no varieties resistant to aphids had been found in India (164). The safflower fly, Acanthiophilus helianthi (Rossi) is probably the most serious safflower pest. It decimated plantings of safflower in France and resulted in abandonment of production in that country (165). Ashri did an extensive study on 2,000 lines from the World Collection, screening for resistance to the safflower fly. Only three lines emerged with low infestation levels, but Ashri did not consider their escape a reliable test. He recommended breeding for early maturity as the only practical answer to minimize damage (166). 6. Spine or Flower Modification. Safflower is farmed by hand in many locations around the world, and even in areas where it is not, farmers would prefer to have good-yielding varieties without spines. Where safflower is harvested for its florets, a red flower color is preferred along with lack of spines. Unfortunately, as Claassen demonstrated in his 1952 Research Bulletin 171 (167), the red flower color and splinelessness are associated with low oil content and with lower yield, to a lesser degree. Still, efforts have continued to find improved cultivars. In 1984, Sawant reported the development of the spineless variety JSI-7, that yielded 1,600 kg/ha under Indian conditions, equal to the leading spiny variety, A-1 (168). The Chinese have released three spineless, red-flowered varieties, FO-3, FO-4, and FO-8, that are improvements over previous cultivars but which still require more improvement. 7. Salinity Resistance. In California, most people involved with safflower consider salty or alkali-laden land to be a problem for the crop. But in most parts of the world rafflower is considered to be relatively salt tolerant. India and China have established the development of salinity resistance as one of their important breeding objectives. China, with all of its land mass, has relatively little first-class land available and is looking for ways to utilize its large areas of brackish land. In some parts of India, sea water is used to irrigate safflower (169); good land is obviously at a premium. Indian and Chinese researchers have concluded that screening for salt tolerance can be done at the germination stage, saving a great deal of time (169–171). China has evaluated 2,229 accessions for salt tolerance and is now engaged in searching for ways to produce an economically and agronomically sound variety. 8. Oil and Meal Quality. Since Knowles reported on the discovery that resulted in the UC-1 oleic variety, oilseed-breeding research was irreparably changed. With the assistance of single or half-seed analyses by computer-driven NMRs, GLCs, and others, thousands of accessions have been analyzed for every conceivable variable. China has published an entire volume of variables concerning the World Safflower Callection (172). Bergman and Flynn at Montana State University have measured such diverse factors as oil color, bitter taste factors, amino acid distribution, lignin layers, and other exotic factors besides fatty acid distribution. The recommendations presented years ago by both Paul Stumpf and Knowles still define the objectives for quality improvement. Stumpf presented an address as

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winner of the Award in Lipid Chemistry at the 48th Annual Fall Meeting of the American Oil Chemists’ Society. In his talk, he recommended that, “Future research should be directed to a fuller understanding of how the maturing seed triggers these complicated series of reactions (Stumpf had earlier listed a series of reactions starting with CO2 and culminating in a complex triglycerol), how all these enzymes are coordinated to allow a smooth flow of substrates for the formation of oil droplets, and, finally, how biochemical engineering can further improve oil crops in the evergrowing demand for high yielding systems” (173). In turn, Knowles addressed the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 1982. His recommendation was that “Mutagenic agents should be used to obtain the following: resistance to foliar diseases where resistant germplasm is not available, increase levels of resistance to Phytophthora root rot, resistance to dodder and orobanche, resistance to insect pests, earlier maturity, and added modifications in the fatty acid composition of the oil” (174). This chapter cites a great deal of the immense body of work performed by Knowles and his associates, much of it defining the genetics, morphology, and characteristics of safflower. However, there are additional areas of genetic study that have been performed on safflower. For example, in addition to the inheritance work by Zimmer and Urie, Zimmer participated in two other research studies aimed at further defining the inheritance of rust resistance (175,176) and in an electron microscopy study of the structure of safflower rust and its relationship to the action of seedling rust resistance within safflower seeds (177). Other inheritance work not cited was a 1986 paper that summarized 20 years of effort by Urie (178). Heaton and Knowles carried on the work of 1980 when they released two sterile male breeding lines, and demonstrated how this new form of sterility works (82). In 1981, Singh, Pillai, and Kumar published two papers on induced translations in which they produced a number of homozygotes that could be used as possible improvements of the species (179,180). A series of inheritance studies by Kotecha have improved our knowledge of various loci controlling various seed factors: seed weight, pappus, and striped hulls (181,182); seed dormancy, in which he found that there may be four loci that control germination (183,184); time of flowering (185,186); yield/head, seeds/head, blotch and flower color, and yield components (187). Not to be outdone, Yermanos et al. determined that iodine value is determined by genotypes and not by the sporophytes on which the seed develops, nor is it induced by a maternal effect. He showed that the IV level had very high heritabilily and was controlled by a single locus with one recessive allele producing low IV and a partially dominant allele that produces high IV. Oil content, on the other hand, proved to be controlled by several genes, all without dominance (188).

Disease and Pest Research The Indian literature is full of references to disease and pest research on safflower. Only selected references have been cited, and readers interested in more depth are referred to the 1993 Abstracts on Safflower (2).

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Rust Rust was the first disease of safflower in the United States to receive attention, and can be the first disease that a safflower farmer encounters. If it is found immediately after the crop has emerged, there may be serious problems; if it is encountered only on the leaves and bracts of the plants in their late stages of maturity, there usually is little to worry about. The working relationship between POI and the USDA in the 1950s helped to create a good pool of information concerning rust, and allowed breeders to incorporate resistance as new races of rust became apparent. Thomas of the USDA confirmed the work of Prasada and Chothia (189) showing that safflower rust, Puccinia carthami (Hutz.) Corda, is unique among the rusts in being seed-borne, and can be controlled by seed treatment (190). He also confirmed that the rust is transmitted by the teliospore (winter-formed) from of rust rather than the summer-formed urediospores (191), and that germination of the spores occurred between 7–26°C, with the best production occurring between 12–18°C. By 1955, he had found a new race of rust and showed the reactions of various varieties of safflower to regional collections of rust he had assembled (192,193). Plants emerging in a field where safflower rust was present the previous season, or are produced from rust-laden seed, will be attacked in the seedling stage. If the planting seed is of a nonresistant variety and/or is not protected with an effective seed treatment, seedlings can die. In severe cases, the entire field can become a loss, More commonly, the young plants are girdled at or just below ground level. Some fail at this point; most continue growing. To the casual eye, they may seem all right. But as they grow taller and form buds and heads, a portion of the plants will begin to fall over in a gentle wind or if something brushes against them. The earlier girdling causes the stem to fail through structural weakness. These plants display a mature, tan color but contain no seed. At this point, the disease could be mistaken for root rot, but examination of the roots shows a different structure. Farmers attempting to produce “grown without pesticide” safflower, requiring the planting of untreated seed, are at risk from rust problem. Even if they are careful to grow their crop on ground that is free from rust spores, rust can be transmitted on the seed even if it, too, was produced in a rust-free environment. The spores come from the walls and equipment of the seed-cleaning company. Research is needed to deal with this problem. In the 1960s, Zimmer followed up on the quick resistance measurement work (126) with further efforts to study the life cycles of safflower rust (194). He also studied how safflower varieties would respond to the various stages (195), and how the cell walls within resistant safflower varieties would collapse when attacked by rust spores, isolating the adjacent cells from attack (196). In 1963, the USDA enlisted Thomas, Klisiewicz, and Zimmer to prepare a bulletin (197). It is out of print but the information it contained would still be useful today. In 1970, Zimmer demonstrated that newly developed resistant lines could resist seedling rust on a continuous cropping basis if added to agronomically satisfactory varieties (198). Subsequent events have shown that it is still a good idea to avoid planting safflower following safflower for many reasons. Seed treatment with cleaned materials continues to help. Deep plowing and pre-irrigation helps to destroy rust spores as well.

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Alternaria Leaf Spot Alternaria is a particularly insidious disease because it can quickly strike a field, and yet completely avoid an adjoining field or even parts of the same field. When it is in full force and multiplying rapidly, it can turn entire safflower fields black or dark brown, making identification of safflower fields at a great distance quite easy because of the unusual color. The USDA 1963 bulletin states that the disease is characterized by large, brown, somewhat irregular (often American football-shaped) spots on leaves and flower bracts (197). The fungus discolors the seed and sometimes causes root rot and damping off of seedlings. The bulletin further recommended treatment of seed with mercury-based fungicide to obtain good control against damping-off of seedlings. Use of mercury compounds is no longer possible, but subsequent work by Montana researchers showed that commercially available fungicides do not and cannot eradicate alternaria infestations in seed, indicating that the fungus is carried internally. Therefore, since the disease is seed borne (199–201), the best defense is to produce planting seed in areas when alternria is not present, such as California and Arizona (199). At the time they published the bulletin, Zimmer, Klisiewicz, and Thomas published a preliminary study of alternaria leaf spot (202), and Klisiewicz also collaborated with his predecessor at UC Davis, Byron Houston, on a separate study on alternaria (203). S. Chowdbury of India wrote one of the early papers on alternaria (204). In addition to Irwin’s earlier work (201), Irwin also collaborated with others on a study where reasonable success was obtained controlling alternaria seedling problems with mancozel (205). This could not be confirmed in Montana (202). Melero and Gil have written a couple of useful reports on the occurrence of alternaria in Spain where it is a problem only in rainy years (206,207). Since alternaria’s symptoms closely resemble drought, Continental Grain’s Montana management often blamed lack of rainfall for problems of low yields, test weight, and oil content, that were probably caused by alternaria. Altemaria usually results in higher oil FFA and darker oil colors, problems that are not associated with drought. Alternaria was the primary problem that forced PVO to abandon production in Nebraska during the late 1960s. When the Sidney plant was built, the southern Great Plains had been in the grip of a drought for several years, and this drought period continued into the early 1960s. With the return of normal and above-normal rainfall years, alternaria spores were activated, and poor yields resulted from fields that earlier in each season had appeared quite good. Alternaria can be devastating in Mexico, particularly since the disease is transmitted on seed, and many farmers in Mexico save their own seed, reinfecting their operations in the following years. In the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, safflower is being grown on the outer limits of its adaptation. In years of drought, the farmer suffers poor yields for lack of water. In years of normal or good rainfall, the rains fall during and after safflower flowering and alternaria normally strikes, creating yield and quality problems. In the Culiacan-Los Mochis area on Mexico’s West Coast, alternaria can be a major factor, particularly in years when safflower plantings are late and slip into the normal rainy period.

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In Argentina, attempts to produce safflower in the central and southern states of the country usually are rebuffed by the onset of alternaria combined at times with sprouting of seeds in the head. Spanish safflower also suffered from alternaria, but the death knell was sounded by pseudomonas head blight which is often indistinguishable in its final effects from alternaria. Alternaria spores are everywhere, and they normally act as a stern sentinel on the borders of the area to which safflower is adapted. California rarely experiences alternaria because its rain-free summers do not allow the disease to be triggered. However, in 1975, during my tenure at Agricom International, PVO friends informed several of us at Agricom that they were having trouble achieving normal FFA levels in oil from California safflower processed at their Richmond plant. We told them we were not having the same problems at our new Grimes plant. Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s management initially blamed their Richmond personnel for the problem. However, after some detective work, PVO found that the safflower seed they were receiving from the Sacramento Valley was close to 0.5% FFA, whereas the seed from the San Joaquin, where most of Agricom’s seed originated at that time, was in the normal range of 0.05–0.15% FFA. This caused PVO problems because they were marketing large quantities of so-called “select” grade safflower oil that called for delivery of expeller-produced oil with FFA’s described as normally being under 0.3% FFA. The higher FFA also drastically curtailed their deodorizing capacity. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation contracted with UC Davis to study the problem in the field to see if they could determine a solution. Heaton eventually wrote his Master’s Thesis on his solution to the problem (54), and subsequently published a review of his work in conjunction with Knowles and others who had assisted in the effort (55). Heaton found that a form of alternaria leaf blight, Alternaria alternata rather than the more usual Alternaria carthami form, was the culprit. Heavy dews and high humidity in the rice areas of the Sacramento Valley had provided a proper environment for the disease to multiply on safflower heads. Later, Heaton was to join PVO’s SeedTec subsidiary after graduating from Davis and subsequently became Research Director for that firm. The alternaria outbreak subsided after 2 years and has not been a problem since. Occasionally one can see a few blackened fields in California when we experience rare showers in August, but no damage his resulted. Bergman and his associates in Montana and North Dakota have released a number of varieties of safflower seed that display varying degrees of tolerance to alternaria. Unfortunately none are resistant. They have also collaborated on a series of reports on alternaria as they have learned more about this disease during the past 20 years (199,208–212). Bacterial Blight Bacterial blight or Pseudomonas syringae, is often associated with alternaria and is triggered by similar weather conditions. It can be identified by brownish, deadlooking spots and pale margins on leaves; lesions on the stems and leaf petioles; and in more severe cases, rotted heads. At times, the brownish spots have a small white

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dot in the center. Although there are many reports of pseudomonas being sighted in every country where safflower is grown, little appears in the literature about its control. High resistance to pseudomonas was observed by Heaton and Klisiewicz in a cross they made between a C. lanatus and an allopoid produced from colchicine mutation of a cross with domestic safflower (36). While Montana State has released a number of varieties tolerant to alternaria and to pseudomonas, I do not believe the lanatus cross has been employed in any serious breeding program. Phytophthora Root Rot Together with fusarium, Phytophthora dreschsleri is California’s most serious disease, particularly in areas of irrigation. It can be very serious on surface-irrigated safflower, particularly if the crop is under stress. The J.G. Boswell farm in California refrains from encouraging phytophthora by avoiding postemergence irrigation as much as possible, and when irrigation is necessary, doing so when soil temperatures are cool, and ensuring that irrigation and surface drainage are handled precisely (213). DaVia and Knowles demonstrated this in 1971 research (214,215). They planted Gila, a strain that exhibits some tolerance, in a heavy soil field inoculated with phytophthora along with the C2517 and VFSTP varieties, two strains that are more resistant. One set of plots was irrigated once at midflowering causing the plants to stress. The other plot was irrigated three times. They obtained the following results:

Irrigated before stress Irrigated after stress

Gila

Mortality C2517

VFSTPa

30 75

40 69

0 21

aEven though VF

STP reacted quite favorably, the researchers stressed that timing

of irrigations was critical on heavy soils, and stress must be avoided.

Phytophthora is encouraged to develop if the soil is wet immediately adjacent to the point when the safflower stalk emerges from the soil. It is common in California to see a sprinkling of plants that have been killed by phytophthora scattered across a field that has irregularities or small pot holes in its surface. Plants infected by the fungus turn a lighter shade of green, then turn tan and die where they stand. If the plant is pulled from the soil, the root and lower stem tissue will be discolored if they are cut into with a knife. In severe cases, the fungus will chisel through the root and the plant will fall over. Earlier work by Zimmer and Urie measured the influence of irrigation and soil infestation versus degree of varietal resistance (216). Dennis and Rubis commented on the necessity for care in dealing with the disease in their 1966 bulletin (217), and Joe Brauns gave similar comments on irrigated safflower in Australia (218). Verticillium Wilt Verticillium albo-atrum causes early death of a plant prior to normal maturity or formation of seed. Safflower should not be planted in fields where verticillium commonly

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attacks other crops, such as cotton. Verticillium will result in yellowing of lower leaves after affecting the leaves on only one side of a plant. Individual leaves will show darker colors in their vascular structure, indicating where the fungus has spread. As plants age, the effected areas spread and become paler Much like in phytophthora, individual plants will die early and fail to produce seed. While it is found in the field, it can be seed-borne as well (219). It generally shows up in irregular patches in a field. It is usually not a serious problem in any part of the world, but can cause extreme loss in an individual field if safflower or other susceptible crops are allowed to repeatedly rotate with each other. Resistance has been found, but good management is also a key in dealing with this problem. Klisiewicz gave a good summary of the varying reactions to this disease in his 1974 and 1981 publications (220,221). Fusarium Wilt Fusarium wilt, Fusarium oxysporum Schl. f. carthami, has become of more importance in California, as the disease has infested increasing areas of the state. Resistant varieties are available to currently known races, but undoubtedly new ones will emerge. Timing of planting in infested ground is critical. Early plantings generally can get up and started before the warmer temperatures increase activity of the disease. It can cause severe stand reductions in later plantings, even with socalled resistant seed. The key is to plant into moisture and get quick emergence; seedlings the must struggle to reach the surface have less chance against the disease. Partially resistant varieties are available and should be used if a field is suspected of having fusarium. The primary symptoms observed with the disease are a yellowing of one-half of some leaves longitudinally; yellowing of one side of a plant; and in advanced stages, plant wilting, discolored roots, and finally death before normal maturing time. In 1962, Houston and Klisiewicz first recognized the presence of fusarium wilt in California (222). Klisiewicz and Thomas listed the then-known races of fusarium and followed it up with further differentiation that identified three pathogenic races (223,224). By 1973, after fusarium wilt continued to build up, Klisiewicz identified a fourth race and then identified resistance to the race (225,226). It now appears that additional races may have emerged. Sclerotinia Rot Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (de Bary) is a widespread disease that hosts on many plants. It is often associated in the U.S. and Canadian plains with alternaria and pseudo-monas, because it is brought on by the same humid conditions that encourage those diseases. It attacks safflower plants in two ways. Small mushroom-like growths that shed spores emerge from the soil next to the young plants. In early stages these cause the plant to become yellow, wilt, turn brown, and die. At the same time, large, black pear-shaped sclerotia are formed from the spores at the base of the seed head and in the stems and stalks. As the disease reaches an advanced state, the fungi destroy the connective tissue at the base of the heads, many of which will fall off in a gentle

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breeze, leaving only the bracts and a black chunk of sclerotia sitting on top of the stalk. Heads that do not fall off have a bleached look and contain few seeds, most of which are empty. In India, the disease is widespread and cool, rainy conditions early in the season can cause complete crop failure (165). Vasudera has a good description of the disease (227). In 1982, Canadian researchers compared the local variety Lesaf 34C-00, that had been developed for high tolerance to sclerotinia, with Gila. They showed that Lesaf lost only 6% of its plants while Gila suffered 62% losses when both were planted in an infested field. Healthy plants showed 4.4% higher oil contents. These results were published in 1988 (157). In the same year, Huang reported in detail on the factors affecting germination of sclerotia (158). Mündel et al. regarded Sclerotinia head rot as the most serious disease of safflower in Western Canada (159). Saffire, a bird seed variety, has a high resistance to sclerotinia, and it should make the variety useful in other countries if the resistance continues, Mündel recommends good rotation, allowing at least 4 years between crops that are susceptible to sclerotinia, to minimize sclerotinia exposure. Canola, dry beans, dry peas, sunflowers, and lentils are all susceptible to sclerotinia, and should be avoided in a safflower rotation. Of course, planting of good quality seed derived from an area free of sclerotinia is a must. Luckily, California has not been affected by sclerotinia because of its rain-free climate between May and October. Botrytis Head Rot Botrytis head rot, Botrytis cinerea (Pers.), was an early problem when California first began growing safflower. In the early 1950s, PVO was processing substantial amounts of California-grown flaxseed, and consequently we had an entry with flax farmers who normally sold their produce to the company. George Tarke, whose pioneering safflower production in 1950 was instrumental in saving safflower production in California the following year, had been a steady supplier of flaxseed to PVO. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation contracted for flax acreage each year in the Half Moon Bay area on the coast south of San Francisco and, searching for new areas to produce safflower, encouraged growers in that area to try a little. The damp, foggy, coastal weather produced an ideal medium for botrytis to develop, rotting most of the heads before maturity. We quickly learned that safflower could not stand up to this disease and abandoned production efforts along the coast. Botrytis has rarely been a problem since, occasionally being observed in parts of some fields in the inland Coastal Hill valleys around Paso Robles, California. Like alternaria, botrytis is found on the edges of the areas of the world that are adapted to safflower, where higher levels of rainfall occur at flowering time. It is a common disease on many plants, is air-borne, and no resistance has been found (200). It can also occur in areas where sprinkler irrigation is employed if the operator is not careful to suspend irrigation at the onset of flowering. Pythium Pythium generally occurs on low-lying, poorly drained land and produces a dampingoff effect in safflower that results in a poor stand. Seed will either fail to emerge, or

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emerged seedlings will collapse and die. Gattani wrote on the use of antibiotics to control damping-off (228). Cormack and Harper described the problem in 1952 (229), and Zimmer and Thomas confronted it further in a 1969 review (230). Mündel et al. offered the soundest advice (159): 1. Avoid planting in fields that have had damping-off in the past. 2. Avoid seeding into cold, wet ground and avoid deep seeding. 3. Use good seed treatment. Mosaic Mosaic virus has not been a serious disease in California or elsewhere, and has been confined to isolated instances. Thomas described the inheritance of the lettuce mosaic in safflower. He showed that a dominant gene controls the mild activities of the disease, and a recessive gene controls the severe forms (231). In its severe form mosaic results in necrosis of terminals, stems, or parts of leaves. Klisewicz had identified cucumber mosaic on California safflower in 1962 (111). In 1966, Klisiewicz wrote on the identity of the viruses producing such necroses (232) and later that year described the reactions of lettuce mosaic virus on safflower (233). In 1967, he described the inheritance of reactions in safflower to the lettuce mosaic virus (234). Several years later, Klisiewicz identified severe mosaic symptoms in Sacramento Valley grown safflower that resulted from exposure to the turnip mosaic virus via aphid transmission from weed hosts to safflower (235). Sastry and others described the activity of mosaic in India; they feel that it is probably transmitted by five species of aphids from cucumbers infected with the mosaic virus, and that it is related to the mosaic that affects alfalfa, tobacco, lettuce, and turnips (236). Many others in India have written on mosaic virus, among them Majumdar et al. who described symptoms and control methods for most Indian diseases of safflower (237). The primary control method must start with good planting seed and avoid aphid infestation. Powdery Mildew Powdery mildew, Erysiphe cichoriacearum (DC), while common in sunflower, has not been found on U.S. safflower (238). It is common in northern India, Afghanistan, and adjacent parts of the CIS (239). A related form, Sphaerotheca fuliginea was found in the small area of Japan where safflower is grown (240). Charcoal Rot Charcoal rot is rarely observed. Singh has a report on it in the Indian literature (241). Insects and Pests When safflower began to be produced in California, no natural predators were on hand, and insect problems were minimal. As the acreage expanded, insects began to build up in safflower fields. The primary pest that first captured the attention of growers and researchers was the lygus bug, Lygus hesperus Knight. The lygus was a pest on cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, carrots, and beans. Lygus bugs would sting young buds of safflower as they formed. Very young buds could be deformed or blasted by a single

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bite; larger buds would carry several marks of stings, but would generally survive. Agricultural spray salesmen had a field day selling controls, but no one really knew what actual damage lygus bugs were causing. Scott reported on lygus-host plant interactions in Idaho (242), and, surprisingly, on lygus as a pollinator (243). Carlson, a specialist in Entomology at UC Davis, began to run a series of checks. Over a several-year period, he developed data as to the levels of infestation that would cause economic damage. Curiously, he found that Frankliniella occidentails (Pergande), the much smaller western flower thrip, was the primary cause of damage rather than lygus. He determined that economic damage occurred only when lygus levels surpassed 40 bugs/sweep of a bug net. Treatment was recommended at a level of 25–30 bugs/sweep (approximately 1 bug/8 buds). Thrip nymphs built up and fed under the bracts of developing buds. Significant damage occurred when levels of 75 nymphs/bud occurred (244–247). As we learned more about safflower, it became apparent that applications of insecticides were called for very rarely and then only on late-planted safflower, when buds were young and insect populations had a chance to build to high levels. In earlier months, the safflower plant can produce enough additional buds to compensate for the few damaged by lygus or thrips. Surprisingly, Carlson and Witt were still recommending aerial spraying in 1977, but the controls they recommended were not registered for use on safflower (248). In more recent times, the only controls being applied to lygus are by cotton farmers in the San Joaquin Valley to control lygus on adjacent safflower fields, so the lygus will not disperse to the cotton fields. Treatment when nymphs are in their 3rd to 5th stage is recommended (249). This usually means treating safflower a few days prior to bloom and again immediately following bloom (213). In a 1969 report, Carlson commented on other possible pests, sunflower moths, spider mites, and two spotted mites, but these pests have never become an economic factor in the United States (250). The green peach aphid, Myzus persicae (Sulzer) occasionally attacks safflower seedling terminals, developing buds, and young seed heads in the spring. Carlson reported that seed losses of up to 32% could occur in California if 20 or more aphids/head remained for an extended period. The bean aphid, Aphis fabae (Scopoli) primarily attacks leaves and stems. An infestation of 10/leaf can stunt the plant enough to result in a 69% seed loss. Infestations of 30 aphids/leaf can destroy plants. Chemical control is only recommended when about 20% of the plants in a given field are moderately infested (251). In India, aphids, Uroleum carthami (HRL), are the principal insect problem. No resistance has been discovered, and few growers can afford the two applications of endo-sulfan or dimelhoate necessary to obtain good control (252). Others recommend oxydemeton-methyl as a pesticide (253), but all agree that early sowing is the best control. Occasionally, grasshoppers have attacked isolated safflower fields planted in the foothills of the San Joaquin Valley, but damage has been rare. In the northern Great Plains states and in Canada, grasshoppers can do noticeable damage, particularly in years when temperatures remain high late in August and other crops are no longer green. Although total destruction of a field is extremely rare, grasshoppers can build up to levels where chemical control is warranted (159,254,255).

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Other insects are rarely a problem in the U.S. Plains or Mountain States. North Dakota State University did a 2-year study on seasonal distribution of thrips on safflower in 1984 and 1985, but thrips have not been a problem of any consequence in that region. Wire worms and cutworms will attack safflower. Good seed treatment is the best action against wire worms; timely baiting works best for cutworms. If a particular field is perennially afflicted with these pests, it is best to avoid planting safflower. On the whole, these pests are not a serious problem for safflower. The most serious safflower pest in the world is the safflower fly, Acanthiophilus helianthi (Rossi). No resistance is available. The fly wiped out French safflower production (165). Early planting appears to be the best control (166). In 1963, the Plant Quarantine Division of the USDA put out a special order to try to prevent importation of this and other safflower pests into the United States. All baggage in which safflower seed heads are encountered must be fumigated as a condition of entry and confiscated if fumigation proves impossible. Any seed importations from European Mediterranean and Indian Ocean areas are to be inspected thoroughly. Broomrape, Orobanche spp., is a parasite that is a severe problem for sunflower in the CIS and Spain. It has become a problem for safflower as well in Spain, but is not a factor in the United States. Dodder (Cuscuta spp.) is found occasionally in California safflower. There is no resistance for either of these plant parasites so, the best control is to avoid planting in fields where either has been observed. Some nematodes attack safflower (256). At times they appear to be associated with root rot diseases. Weiss lists a number of miscellaneous insects, diseases, pests, and parasites that can affect safflower around the world (165). Bees are attracted to safflower and produce high levels of honey when safflower is flowering. Bees can improve safflower yields by up to 10% and can be a very helpful factor in breeding work. Rubis and colleagues at the University of Arizona did extensive work studying safflower-bee interaction, and published some of the results (78,257). Indian researchers agree with Rubis that bees help to produce higher yields (258).

Cropping and Cultural Research Enormous amounts of research have been done in this field. Endless numbers of field trials have been performed in practically every country of the world, but most particularly in the United States and India. I will not try to list all of the yield trials; irrigation tests; date, depth, and manner of planting reports; row width and spacing within rows studies, and so on. These trials have been useful, particularly when safflower was first being introduced into new areas. The section on Recommended Cropping Practices in Appendix C covers the results of 40 years of research in North America concerning the farming of safflower. The various Bulletins released by the USDA, various State Agricultural Experiment Stations, Agriculture Canada, and the Research Facility at Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, are still pertinent and useful. Two reports prepared by Audy Bell, the Farming Manager of J.G. Boswell Company operations at Corcoran, California, are extremely worthwhile. Boswell was,

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and continues to be, the largest producer of safflower in the world, and most of the principles they have developed concerning safflower production apply to any grower, large or small. In his 1974 report, Bell expressed his philosophy of using safflower’s tremendous tap root system as a soil improvement tool in Boswell’s crop rotation (259). Late in 1981, Bell expanded on his first statement in a talk delivered to the First International Safflower Conference (213). Bell was an advocate of using every inch of farmland available, of never driving over the same piece of land twice with the same implement, and making his machinery turn on the public road in order to avoid unnecessary soil compaction. A few studies that helped to form today’s body of knowledge concerning safflower culture are worthy of mention. Zimmerman (76,260) found that the rosette stage in safflower may be prolonged by low temperatures and shorter day lengths. He gave us good insight into this crucial period of a safflower plant’s life and provided another valuable research tool. In 1960–62, Urie, Leininger, and Zimmer conducted a study at Logan, Utah, during which they partially or totally hand-defoliated some of the plants in replicated trials during seven stages of growth. Removal of all leaves over all the dates involved reduced yield by 23%, test weight by 2.6%, lowered hull percentage by 6%, and increased oil percentage by 6.9%—all versus a check plot. Removal of the leaves from the bottom half of the plants produced no effect, leading us to reason that damage from alternaria or rust on the lower leaves of a crop will produce little damage as well (96). Whitely of Australia did a series of studies in 1981–83 aimed at helping us to understand how safflower roots develop (261–264). As early as 1968, Robison and Fenster, showed that 3 years of minimum tilling with an undercutting sweep machine and a shoe opener type of drill in Nebraska produced 25% better yields than conventional plowing, discing, and harrowing. These practices left more crop residue, helped to prevent wind erosion, and conserve moisture (265,266). George Worker Jr. at the University of California Imperial Valley Agricultural Center, obtained similar results under the entirely different cropping system employed in California’s irrigated agriculture. In a 3-year study that he conducted with Knowles (267), Worker showed that safflower following cotton under minimum tilling conditions, could perform as well as maximum tilling practices. Erie and French did a fine study in Arizona where different levels of surface irrigation water were applied at various times during safflower’s growth cycles (268). They found that in Arizona’s hot, desert climate, maximum yield was achieved with seven irrigations, the last being applied at the time of last flowering. In total, the crop consumed 107 cm of water and produced a yield of 3,961 kg/ha. Good studies on sprinkler irrigation as it is practiced in the Pacific Northwest were made available by Hang and Evans (269,270). Two studies are available on the cultural practices necessary for growing safflower for dry cut flowers (271,272). Both were done in Germany, the latter demonstrating that production under large plastic tunnels would result in much better production in that climate—16–30 usable stems/m2 with tunnel production, versus 0–11 useful stems when grown outside.

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Goss, Edwards, and Jones produced an excellent paper on Safflower harvesting in 963 (273). Dennis and Macchado published similar work in 1966 (274,275). In 1978, Vassallo did a thorough study showing how the speed of a combine harvester cylinder can damage safflower seed (and materially lower germination) unless it is reduced to under 600 rpm (276).

Weed Control Research Until Treflan was released in 1963/64, weed control was a very serious matter. Safflower is not a good weed competitor. Over time, farmers have learned how to deal with this problem, and much hard work and research were done to achieve good results (10,159,277). Treflan changed all of this. It gave the farmer a chance to have a seed bed that would stay free of weeds while safflower was emerging and developing its tap root in the rosette stage. This was particularly important in the Plains States. Before Treflan, safflower production was strictly a lottery gamble. Now it is still a gamble because of the environmental changes that occur, but it is a gamble worth taking. In 1962, Lambast was tried successfully for control of weeds on safflower (278). Eptam was also used (279), but Treflan soon became the chemical of choice (280). Riveland, an agronomist at the Williston, North Dakota, Research Center, is the preeminent expert on the use of herbicides in controlling weeds in safflower. Eptam, Genep, Dual, and Carbyne have been cleared for use on safflower. The most effective material. Treflan, was given label clearance for use on safflower for the 1966 crop season after 3 years of testing in North Dakota (281). Since that time, Riveland has tested scores of other chemicals in search of pre-emergence and postemergence materials suitable for controlling weeds in safflower. He has found several, but economic/environmental forces have prevented label clearance for any postemergence herbicides for safflower to date, although several do a good job (281–284). Wichman, working in Montana and sometimes in conjunction with Riveland, has also shown promising results (285,286). On the other side of the border, Canadians have demonstrated good postemergence control of fox tail, wild oats, and mustard (287,288). I hope that ways can be found for the good work of Riveland and others to bear fruit. A postemergence material would be greatly appreciated by safflower producers in many parts of the world. A disturbing factor has arisen in the world fight against weeds. On August 19, 1990, an article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle (289). It told the story of the star thistle weed, a distant cousin of safflower, that had been causing lots of damage in California. The article blithely discussed attempts by scientists in the USDA to find a natural predator bug or disease that would attack star thistle, and their hopes to begin field trials in California. Concern was expressed about making sure that this project does not introduce a predator that would harm the safflower crop. We called the University of California at Davis. Nobody there was aware of this research. Calls to others in the industry revealed that no one with practical experience in safflower had even been approached. Dan Cohen of Macabe Seed Co., a former assistant to

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Knowles, contacted William L. Bruchart, a Research Plant Pathologist with the USDA at the Frederick, Maryland, Laboratory, and on September 6, 1991, he supplied considerable data on this project. The Chronicle article listed five insects that have been released in the West by Turner of the ARS at Albany, California, to attack star thistle, Bangerasternus orentalis weevil from Turkey, a gall fly, and a seed fly (Urophora) from Greece, a Eustenopus hairy weevil from Greece, and larinus curtus, another Greek weevil. Nothing was said in the newspaper about the effect of these insects on safflower. More recent publications by the ARS and the California Extension Service discuss these predators at greater length and report that they do not attack safflower (290,291). Bruchart’s studies concerned trying to control star thistle with the rusts, Puccinia jaceae and Puccinia centaureae. He referred us to three Canadian reports in which safflower had been inoculated with these rusts and showed relatively little harm (292–294). However, we noted that these tests all stated that rust does not appear to bother safflower leaves seriously, and we should not worry. None of the reports addressed the question of rust attacking safflower in the cotyledon stage which can lead to serious stem girdling problems. After discussion, ARS has decided to hold off planned testing of Puccinia jaceae in California until more thought is given to the matter. I am concerned because Puccinia jaceae has been found in British Columbia on native plants after some of the above testing was done. No one had observed it before, which may or may not be conclusive, but it is still a cause for worry.

Soils, Fertilizer, and Growth Regulators Early on, Claassen and his associates at the University of Nebraska found that safflower responded primarily to nitrogen, and addition of phosphorus or potassium was necessary only if soils showed a deficiency of these minerals (295). Bernstein showed that safflower is salt-tolerant and ranked it just below cotton in ability to produce profitable yields in saline soil (296,297). Knowles considered it similar to barley in its tolerance to alkaline dry land soils (12). Weiss has good data on soil and fertilizer practices concerning safflower in many exotic locations (273). Safflower prefers soils that are fertile, well-drained, and fairly deep so that its tap root is unrestricted. Sandy or clay loams are the best media for safflower. As soils became sandier, moisture retention becomes the limiting factor and even multiple irrigations can result in frustration. On heavy rice soils, retaining moisture surface at planting time is critical in years when working of the seed bed has been delayed by heavy spring rains. Safflower is more tolerant of salty conditions, particularly under dry land conditions, and therefore is of major interest in India and China as an alternative crop for areas with higher salinity. Safflower is less tolerant while under irrigation, and prefers being grown on beds or furrows to being irrigated flat. When planted on river soils with underlying, irregular shallow streaks of sand or gravel, safflower tends to “fire” late in its growth cycle in the areas of a field which are underladen. Very heavy

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clays or soils that tend to “crust” after driving rains can create problems in obtaining a stand; shallow soils or land underladen with a shallow hard pan usually limit yields even if irrigated often. Bell’s reports contain good practical information on fertilizer practices in California’s San Joaquin Valley (213,259). Appendix C contains my summary of general U.S. recommendations on fertilizer for safflower. Extensive work on establishing good fertilizer practices under Northern Plains conditions has been performed at the Experiment Stations at Sidney, Montana (297), and Williston, North Dakota (277,281,298,299). The long-time mystery of why many rice farmers suffered disappointing yields on safflower following a rice crop was solved in a study reported in 1971 by California Extension personnel. Safflower planted on rice land usually does well for its first month. Then it begins to turn yellow and show chlorosis on its first lower leaves and in more severe cases develops necrotic lesions on leaf margins. Sometimes the plant will grow out of this condition; other times it remains stunted and in any case, yields are disappointing. The researchers found that the safflower was suffering from a lack of phosphorus. Applying a band of phosphorus at the same level as or immediately below the seed produced spectacular improvements in yield compared with applying up to 200 lbs P2O5/acre over the entire field. Banded applications resulted in 30–100% increases in yield in California’s Central Valley rice areas (300). Singh confirmed this work in studies in India (301). Salt tolerance is an important consideration in India and China. A number of researchers have shown that safflower responds well to salts, particularly NaCl (302–304), and to irrigation with sea water (305). Yields actively increase until salt levels in the soil go above 40 mg/100 g of soil in the upper 20 cm of the soil and up to 10 mg/100 g in the next 20–50 cm of the soil (306). D.M. Yermanos contributed to our knowledge of how various soil additives and growth regulators might affect safflower production. He found that the growth regulator, gibberellic acid, induced earliness, chlorosis, and increased photosensitivity, but reduced oil and seed yields (56). In a later study, he found that salinity depressed oil content, protein, and seed weight, as well as yield, contrary to the Indian studies (307), whereas iron chelates contributed nothing and nitrogen, as many others have observed, increased yields but depressed iodine value and oil content (308). The contradictory results in the salinity studies may be tied to the types of salt actually involved.

Collection and Preservation of Germ Plasm The purpose of the collection of safflower germ plasm is to assemble as large a pool as possible of raw materials for breeding purposes from the widest possible genetic variations. This involves collecting not just the C. tinctorius L. species of safflower, but all of the species that can be found, together with all of the modifications and other materials from breeding programs and natural selection. Collectors need to identify the centers of diversity, and map out plans to explore and collect in each of them. There are primary gene pools of major wild species that cross readily with the cultivated species. Some are weed types. There

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are additional species that cannot be crossed with C. tinctorius L. or which do not produce fertile hybrids. These make up a secondary or tertiary set of gene pools. They are harder to work with, but today, with the increasing promise of bioengineering, these gene pools offer materials for possible improvement of future safflower varieties. Once collections are made, they need to be preserved and maintained carefully or they will eventually lose their value. Careful records need to be kept on the origin and status of each sample, so that future researchers can follow it up if needed. Record collecting in the field used to be a very laborious process in itself. Now with small hand-held computers, this end of the process has been simplified. Collections of breeding lines, fertile hybrid varieties, or F1 hybrids also should form a part of the collection. Maintaining the collections requires good storage facilities and a careful plan for periodically growing and replacing the stored seed stock so that germination is guaranteed. When new selections are added to the collections, collection priorities will shift to include new areas that have experienced little or no collection in the past. Collection is a never-ending race against world population growth, loss of farmland, and destruction of natural habitats. Knowles and his co-workers contributed significantly to the World Collection of Safflower—1,545 samples from 49 countries. Knowles made his first collection trip in 1958, funded by the University of California and the USDA. He first had to plan where to collect, and he visited existing collections as part of his trip. He gathered 420 specimens on the trip and covered parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, and Portugal. A second collection trip in 1964–65 covered 31,000 miles in many out-of-the-way places; 519 additional samplings were made in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Sudan, Egypt, and Spain. In 1975, he made a third trip that covered Lebanon and the parts of Western Iran that he had missed on earlier trips. In 1988, Knowles visited China to give a series of lectures and inspire further collection. Li Dajue had collected 300 local types, primarily from North China. Knowles sent 93 of these, plus 10 he collected personally to the U.S. collection. The U.S. collection is maintained at the Western Regional Plant Introduction Station at Pullman, Washington. Now, over 2,000 accessions collected from over 50 countries are included. The collection includes 139 accessions obtained upon Rubis’ retirement from the University of Arizona and 200 accessions from Knowles’ work. Richard Johnson described the work of the Pullman Station in a 1993 talk at the Third International Safflower Conference (309). Short-term collections are maintained at 4°C; long-term collections are maintained by the National Seed Storage Laboratory at Fort Collins, Colorado, at -20°C. India made strenuous efforts during the 1980s to modernize its collection; about 1,500 specimens are maintained after over 9,000 accessions were culled to remove duplicates. Iran maintains a collection of over 1,000, and the CIS has 400. China has made great efforts at collecting and studying its collection in recent years. The Beijing Botanical Garden has 2,051 accessions available. The International Board of Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) was established in 1974 by the U.N. to assist in the maintenance of genetic pools. In 1990, IBPGR sup-

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ported a collection mission in China that gathered 48 samples of C. tinctorius to add to the collection. At the Second International Safflower conference in Hyderabad, India, a Global Safflower Advisory Board was established to help guide future germ plasm collection and preservation. This group is now chaired by Jan M.M. Engles of IBPGR. New priorities for collection have been established as South and Northeast China, Nepal, Northwest India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Sudan for C. oxycantha (310). References 1. 2. 3. 4.

Smith, J.R., The Cotton Gin and Oil Mill Press 63: (1957). Li, D., Abstracts on Safflower, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, 784 pp. Knowles, P.F., Calif. Agric. 3: 1 (1949). Knowles, P.F., Safflower Production in California, mimeographed bulletin, University of California, Davis, California, Spring, 1949, 7 pp. 5. Knowles, P.F., Safflower, a New Crop, University of California Extension Service Bulletin, October 1949, 20 pp. 6. Knowles, P.F., and L.L. Davis, Safflower, an Oil Crop, University of California Extension Service Bulletin, November 1951, 23 pp. 7. Knowles, P.F., and M.D. Miller, Safflower in California, University of California Extension Service Bulletin, April, 1958, 22 pp. 8. Knowles, P.F., and M.D. Miller, Tips on Safflower Growing, University of California Extension Service Bulletin 126, April, 1960, 6 pp. 9. Knowles, P.F., and M.D. Miller, Safflower in California, University of California Extension Service Manual 27, August 1960, 23 pp. 10. Knowles, P.F., and M.D. Miller, Safflower, University of California Extension Service Circular 532, January 1965, 51 pp. 11. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 9: 273 (1955). 12. Knowles, P.F., Advances in Agronomy, Vol. X, 1958, pp. 289–323. 13. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 14: 263 (1960). 14. Knowles, P.F., Safflower in California: A Personal History of Plant Exploration and Research on Evolution, Genetics, and Breeding, Report No. 14, University of California, Genetic Resources Program, Davis, California, 1995. 15. Ashri, A., Cytogenetics and Morphology of Carthamus L. Species and Hybrids, Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1957. 16. Ashri, A., and P.F. Knowles, Agron. J. 52: 11 (1960). 17. Ashri, A., and Y. Effron, Crop Sci. 4: 510 (1964). 18. Ashri, A., and J. Rudich, Crop Sci. 5: 190 (1965). 19. Estilai, A., Crop Sci. 17: 800 (1977). 20. Estilai, A., and P.F. Knowles, Can. J. Genet. Cytol. 20: 221 (1978). 21. Estilai, A., and P.F. Knowles, Amer. J. Bot. 63: 771 (1976). 22. Harvey, B.L., and P.F. Knowles, Can. J. Genet. Cytol. 7: 126 (1965). 23. Hill, A.B., Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, edited by P.F. Knowles, University of California, Davis, California, July 12–16, 1981, pp. 82–83. 24. Imrie, B.C., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 10: 349 (1970).

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25. Imrie, B.C., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 11: 6 (1971). 26. Khidir, M.O., Genetics 40: 84 (1969). 27. Khidir, M.O., and P.F. Knowles, Amer. J. Bot. 57: 123 (1970). 28. Khidir, M.O., and P.F. Knowles, Can. J. Genet. Cytol. 12: 90 (1970). 29. Ramanamurthy, C.V., Relationships of Cultivates Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius, L.) to the Wild Species C. oxycantha M.B., Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1963. 30. Schank, S.C., and P.F. Knowles, Amer. J. Bot. 51: 1093 (1964). 31. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 23: 324 (1969). 32. Knowles, P.F., Evolution of Crop Plants, edited by N.W. Simmonds, Longman, New York, 1976, pp. 31–32. 33. Knowles, P.F., and S.C. Schank, Crop Sci. 4: 596 (1964). 34. Carapetian, J., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 16: 395 (1976). 35. Ebert, W.W., and P.F. Knowles, Amer. J. Bot. 55: 421 (1968). 36. Heaton, T.C., and J.M. Klisiewicz, Can J. Plant Sci. 61: 219 (1981). 37. Heaton, T.C., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 20: 554 (1982). 38. Urie, A.L., Crop Sci. 26: 493 (1986). 39. Urie, A.L., and D.E. Zimmer, Crop Sci. 10: 371 (1970). 40. Bockleman, H.E., The Inheritance of Resistance to Fusarium Wilt in Cultivated Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius, L., Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1974, 90 pp. 41. DaVia, D.J., P.F. Knowles, and J.M. Klisewicz, Crop Sci. 21: 226 (1981). 42. Klisiewicz, J.M., and A.L. Urie, Crop Sci. 22: 165 (1982). 43. Knowles, P.F., J.M. Klisiewicz, and A.B. Hill, Crop Sci. 8: 636 (1968). 44. Ladd, L.S., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 10: 525 (1970). 45. Ladd, L.S., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 11: 681 (1971). 46. Urie, A.L., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 12: 545 (1972). 47. Zimmer, D.E., and A.L. Urie, Phytopathology 58: 1340 (1968). 48. Zimmer, D.E., and L.N. Leininger, Plant Dis. Rptr. 49: 440 (1965). 49. Dille, J.E., and P.F. Knowles, Amer. J. Bot. 62: 209 (1975). 50. Leon, R., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 4: 441 (1964). 51. Fernandez-Martinez, J., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 17: 516 (1978). 52. Hartman, A., Inheritance of Corolla Color in Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius, L., M.S. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1967, 76 pp. 53. Temple, S.R., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 5: 694 (1975). 54. Heaton, T.C., High Levels of Free Fatty Acids in Sacramento Valley Safflower Carthamus tinctorius, L., M.S. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1978, 80 pp. 55. Heaton, T.C., P.F. Knowles, D.S. Mikkelsen, and J.E. Ruckman, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 55: 465 (1978). 56. Yermanos, D.M., and P.F. Knowles, Agron. J. 52: 596 (1960). 57. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 21: 156 (1967). 58. Knowles, P.F., Crop Sci. 8: 641 (1968). 59. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 22: 195 (1968).

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60. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 19: 53 (1965). 61. Knowles, P.F., J. Amer. Oil Chem. Soc. 46: 130 (1969). 62. Knowles, P.F., J. Amer. Oil Chem. Soc. 49: 27 (1972). 63. Knowles, P.F., J. Amer. Oil Chem. Soc. 52: 374 (1975). 64. Bartholomew, S.B., Temperature Effects on Fatty Acid Composition of Developing Seeds, Carthamus tinctorius, L., M.S. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1971, 37 pp. 65. Futchally, S., Inheritance of Very High Levels of Linoleic Acid in the Seed Oil of Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius, L.), M.S. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1982, 47 pp. 66. Hill, A.B., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 8: 275 (1968). 67. Knowles, P.F., and A.B. Hill, Crop Sci. 4: 406 (1964). 68. Knowles, P.F., A.B. Hill, and J.E. Ruckman, Calif. Agric. 19: 15 (1965). 69. Knowles, P.F., and A. Mutwakil, Econ. Bot. 17: 139 (1963). 70. Ashri, A., P.F. Knowles, A.L. Urie, D.E. Zimmer, A. Cahaner, and A. Marani, Econ. Bot. 31: 38 (1977). 71. Claassen, C.E., Agron J. 42: 381 (1950). 72. Knowles, P.F., in Hybridization of Crop Plants, edited by W.R. Fehr and H.H. Hadley, American Society of Agronomists, Madison, Wisconsin, 1980, pp. 535–548. 73. Wiedeman, A.M., and L.N. Leininger, Agron. J. 55: 222 (1963). 74. Zimmerman, L.H., Crop Sci. 12: 637 (1972). 75. Horowitz, B., and D.F. Beech. J. Aust. Inst. Agric. Sci. 40: 154 (1974). 76. Zimmerman, L.H., Crop Sci. 13: 80 (1973). 77. Rubis, D.D., Proceedings of the Safflower Utilization Conference, USDA ARS Publication 74–93, Albany, California, 1967, pp. 23–28. 78. Rubis, D.D., M.D. Levin, and S.E. McGregor, Crop Sci. 6: 11 (1966). 79. Rubis, D.D., Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 205–209. 80. Urie, A.L., and D.E. Zimmer, Crop Sci. 10: 419 (1970). 81. Heaton, T.C., P.F. Knowles, and B.D. Webster, Agron. Abstracts, American Society of Agronomists, Madison, Wisconsin, 1979. 82. Heaton, T.C., and P.F. Knowles, Crop Sci. 22: 520 (1982). 83. Johsi, B.M., Y.S. Nerkar, and N.D. Jambhale, J. Maharashtra Agricul. Universities 8: 194 (1983). 84. Jambhale, N.D., and Y.S. Nerkar, Zeitschrift fur Pflanzenzüchtung 95: 185 (1985). 85. Nerkar, Y.S., and N.D. Jambhale, J. Maharashtra Agricul. Universities 10: 71 (1985). 86. Knowles, P.F. in Oil Crops of the World, edited by G., Röbbelen, R.D. Downey, and A. Ashri, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, 1989, pp. 363–374. 87. Rubis, D.D., Agron. Abst. 48: 71 (1956). 88. Rubis, D.D., Agron. Abst. 49: 59 (1957). 89. Matern, U., and R.E. Kneusel, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 807–815. 90. Zhang, Z., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing

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218. Brauns, P.J.C., Safflower Growers in the Callide Valley, Advisory Circular, Queensland Dept. Agric., Australia, 1962. 219. Schuster, M.L., and D.S. Nuland, Plant Dis. Rptr. 44: 901 (1960). 220. Klisiewicz, J.M., Plant Dis. Rptr. 58: 926 (1974). 221. Klisiewicz, J.M., Plant Dis. Rptr. 65: 237 (1981). 222. Klisiewicz, J.M., and B.R. Houston, Plant Dis. Rptr. 46: 748 (1962). 223. Klisiewicz, J.M., and C.A. Thomas, Phytopathology 60: 83 (1970). 224. Klisiewicz, J.M., and C.A. Thomas, Phytopathology 12: 1706 (1970). 225. Klisiewicz, J.M., Plant Dis. Rptr. 58: 712 (1975). 226. Klisiewicz, J.M., Plant Dis. Rptr. 64: 876 (1980). 227. Vasudera, R.S., in Niger and Safflower, edited by V.M. Chavan, Indian Oilseeds Commission, Hyderabad, India, 1961, pp. 128–135. 228. Gattani, M.L., Plant Dis. Rptr. 41: 160 (1957). 229. Cormack, M.W., and H.R. Harper, Phytopathology 42: 5 (1952). 230. Zimmer, D.E., and C.A. Thomas, Plant Dis. Rptr. 53: 433 (1969). 231. Thomas, C.A., Phytopathology 71: 817 (1981). 232. Klisiewicz, J.M., Plant Dis. Rptr. 49: 541 (1966). 233. Klisiewicz, J.M., Phytopathology 56: 1354 (1966). 234. Klisiewicz, J.M., Phytopathology 57: 789 (1967). 235. Klisiewicz, J.M., Plant Dis. Rptr. 67: 112 (1983). 236. Sastry, K.S., T. Ravinder, N. Govinda Rao, A. Sikander, and V. Ranga Rao, Abstracts of the Second International Safflower Conference, Directorate of Oilseed Research, A.P.A.U., Hyderabad, India, 1989, pp. 67–68. 237. Majumdar, A., S. Singh, and S. Bisht, Seeds, Farms 15: 3 (1989). 238. Zimmer, D.E., Plant Dis. Rptr. 45: 944 (1961). 239. Simonyan, G.A., Bull. Biol. Agric. Sci. Academy of Armenia S.S.R. II: 87 (1958). 240. Tanaka, T., H. Tohkairin, et al., Ann. Report Soc. Plant Protection N. Jap. 37: 108 (1986). 241. Singh, A., and T.P. Bhowmik, Ind. Phytopath. 32: 626 (1979). 242. “Lygus Bug: Host Plant Interactions,” in Proc. Workshop XV Int. Congress of Ent., edited by D.R. Scott and L.E. O’Keefe, University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho, August 19–28, 1976. 243. Scott, D.R., TOSA 3: 36 (1978). 244. Carlson, E.C., Calif, Agric. 16: 4 (1962). 245. Carlson, E.C., J. Econ. Ent. 59: 138 (1966). 246. Carlson, E.C., Calif. Agric. 20: 2 (1966). 247. Carlson, E.C., J. Econ. Ent. 57: 140 (1964). 248. Carlson, E.C., and R.L. Witt, J. Econ. Ent. 70: 460 (1977). 249. Mutiier, A.J., and V.M. Stern, J. Econ. Ent. 67: 77 (1974). 250. Carlson, E.C., California Agric. 23: 4 (1969). 251. Carlson, E.C., J. Econ. Ent. 65: 1055 (1972). 252. Singh, N.N., D.N. Rai, and P.C. Rai, J. Aphidol. 2: 22 (1958). 253. Rathore, V.S., Indian Farming 33: 32 (1983).

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254. Johnson, D.L., and H.-H. Mündel, Annals Appl. Bio. III: 43 (1957). 255. Mündel, H.-H., and D.L. Johnson, Annals Appl. Bio. III: 203 (1957). 256. Reynolds, H.W., and J.H. O’Bannon, Plant Dis. Rptr. 47: 864 (1963). 257. Rubis, D.D., Report of the Ninth Pollination Conference, University of Arkansas, Hot Springers, Arkansas, October 12–15, 1970, pp. 12–23. 258. Rao, C.M., M.C. Suryanarayana, and C.V. Thahav, Indian Farming 29: 25 (1980). 259. Bell, A.J., in Fourth Safflower and Other Oilseeds Research Conference, edited by W. Parkey and L.H. Zimmerman, Fresno, California, February 21–22, 1974, pp. 87–90. 260. Zimmerman, L.H., Crop Sci. 16: 431 (1976). 261. Whitely, G.M., and A.R. Dexter, Physiologia Plantarum 51: 407 (1951). 262. Whitely, G.M., and A.R. Dexter, Soil Tillage Res. 2: 379 (1982). 263. Whitely, G.M., J.S. Hewitt, and A.R. Dexter, Physiologia Plantarum 59: 333 (1982). 264. Whitely, G.M., Plant Soil (Netherlands) 74: 153 (1983). 265. Robison, L.R., and C.R. Fenster, Agron. J. 60: 53 (1968). 266. Fenster, C.R., and L.R. Robison, Weed Sci. 16: 326 (1968). 267. Worker, G.F., Jr., and P.F. Knowles, Calif. Agric. 26: 12 (1988). 268. Erie, L.J., and O.F. French, Agron. J. 61: 111 (1969). 269. Hang, A.N., and D.W. Evans, Agron. J. 77: 588 (1985). 270. Hang, A.N., Ses. Saff. Newslet. 1: 49 (1985). 271. Hegele, A., GB GW (in German) 85: 765 (1985). 272. Hartrath, H., GB GW (in German) 86: 1624 (1986). 273. Goss, J.R., R.T. Edwards, and L.G. Jones, Agronomy Notes, University of California AES, Davis, California, July 31, 1963, pp. 15–19. 274. Dennis, R.E., and M.M. Macchado, Progressive Agriculture, University of Arizona AES, Tucson, Arizoma, September–October 1966, p. 21. 275. Dennis, R.E., and M.M. Macchado, Arizona Farmer Ranchman, p. 9, June 25, 1966. 276. Vassallo, L.M., Seed Sci. Tech. 6: 1029 (1978). 277. Helm, J.L., N. Riveland, A. Schneiter, and F. Sobolik, Safflower Production, Circular A-870, North Dakota Cooperative Extension Service, Fargo, North Dakota, 1985, p. 3. 278. Smith, D.L., and J. Gross, California Agriculture, pp. 6–7, August, 1962. 279. Van Rijn, R.J., Aust. J. Exp. Agric. Animal Husb. 4: 309 (1964). 280. Robison, L.R., and C.R. Fenster, Weed Sci. 16: 415 (1968). 281. Hoag, B.K., E.W. French, G.N. Geiszler, and A.A. Schneiter, Safflower in North Dakota, Bulletin 477, North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, 1969, pp. 11–13. 282. Riveland, N., and G.T. Bradbury, NCWCC Res. Report 42: 125 (1985). 283. Riveland, N., and G.T. Bradbury, NCWCC Res. Report 43: 117 (1986). 284. Riveland, N., and G.T. Bradbury, NCWCC Res. Report No. 45: 121 (1988). 285. Wichman, D.M., G.R. Carlson, P.K. Fay, and E. Davis, Proc. West. Soc. Weed Sci. 40: 143 (1987). 286. Wichman, D.M., P.K. Fay, and N. Riveland, Proc. West. Soc. Weed Sci. 42: 129 (1988). 287. Blackshaw, R.E., D.A. Dirksen, and H.-H. Mündel, Weed Tech. 4: 97 (1990). 288. Anderson, R.L., Research Progress Report, Western Society of Weed Science, 1986, p. 182.

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289. Bashin, B.J., San Francisco Chronicle, This World Section, pp. 10–12, August 19, 1990. 290. Wood, M., Agric. Res., July 1993. 291. Kearney, T., Crop Notes, University of California Cooperative Extension, Woodland, California, July–August, 1993, p. 1. 292. Watson, A.K., and I. Alkmoury, in Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Biological Control of Weeds, Brisbane, Australia, 1980, pp. 301–305. 293. Mortensen, K., in Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Biological Control of Weeds, edited by E.S. Delfosse, Vancouver, Canada, 1985, pp. 447–452. 294. Mortensen, K., P. Harris, and R.M.D. Makowski, Can. J. Plant Path 11: 322 (1989). 295. Claassen, C.E., and T.A. Kiesselbach, Experiments with Safflower in Western Nebraska, Bull. 376, Nebraska AES, Lincoln, Nebraska, p. 195. 296. Bernstein, L., Salt Tolerance of Plants, Agric. Inform. Bul. No. 283, USDA, Washington D.C., 1964. 297. Haby, V.A., A.L. Black, J.W. Bergman, and R.A. Larson, Agron. J. 73: 331 (1982). 298. Helm, J.L., N. Riveland, A.A. Schreiter, and J. Bergman, Safflower Production, Circular A-870 revised, North Dakota Cooperative Extension Service, Fargo, North Dakota, 1991, 4 pp. 299. North Dakota State University, Fertilizing Safflower, Circular SF-727, 1982. 300. Martin, W.E., R.L. Sailsberry, M. Brandon, and R.T. Petersen, California Agriculture 25: 4 (1971). 301. Singh, S. and M.B. Kamath, Indian J. Plant Physiol. 33: 204 (1990). 302. Sarada Devi, C., C.G. Rao, and G.R. Rao, J. Nucl. Agric. Biol. 9: 1229 (1980). 303. Sarada Devi, C., and G.R. Rao, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 40–48. 304. Sarada Devi, C., and G.R. Rao, Proceedings of the Second International Safflower Conference, Directorate of Oilseeds Research, A.P.A.U., Hyderabad, India, 1989, pp. 9–13. 305. Rai, M., Annals Arid Zone 19: 231 (1980). 306. Tesu, C., E. Merlescu, and I. Avarunrei, Agronomic Horticultura: 49 (1975). 307. Yermanos, D.M., L.E. Francois, and L. Bernstein, Agron J. 56: 35 (1964). 308. Yermanos, D.M., B.J. Hall, and W. Burge, Agron. J. 56: 582 (1964). 309. Johnson, R.C., D.M. Stout, and V.L. Bradley, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Gardens, Beijing, 1993, pp. 202–208. 310. Mündel, H.-H., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Gardens, Beijing, 1993, pp. 8–13.

Chapter 7

Processing and Handling Research

This book will not attempt to describe extraction and refining equipment used by the vegetable oil industry in general. Swern edited a good review of extraction and refining techniques (1). The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how oil-processing equipment was adapted to safflower processing.

Extraction Weiss (2) and Knowles (3) described in detail the primitive types of crushing equipment used in India, Turkey, and Egypt. This equipment was used for much of the local extraction of safflower oil. In India, one ancient method for extracting safflower involved placing 5 kg of seed in an earthen pot with a perforated plate placed over the mouth. The pot was inverted and sealed with wet clay over the mouth of a smaller pot that was buried in the ground. The inverted pot was covered with cow dung that was kept burning overnight. The heat caused the oil in the seed to flow into the lower pot. About twothirds of the oil was recovered in an inedible polymerized form and used as an axle grease or as a waterproofing agent on leather buckets used to draw water. This method was rarely used by the time Knowles wrote his report in 1967. A more common method involves crushing the seed in a ghani, essentially a large mortar and pestle. The safflower seed is first cleaned by hand and then partially decorticated (dehulled) by passing the seed between two horizontal stone wheels (Figure 7.1). One of the wheels rotates and drives the broken seeds from the center to

Figure 7.1. Dehulling safflower in India with a chakki; picture taken by P.K. Knowles. 185

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Figure 7.2. Close-up of an Indian ghani; picture taken by P.K. Knowles. the outer edge. This device, called a chakki, is generally powered by a blindfolded bullock. The hulls are removed from the kernels (meats) by a winnowing and sieving procedure performed by hand. The meats are gathered, and about 30 lbs are put into the ghani. Some ghani are motor driven, but most are still animal powered. Ghani are now used primarily in smaller towns. The ghani is shaped like an inverted cone mortar box into which a heavy is inserted (Figure 7.2). The pole is held against the side of the mortar box by weights and dragged in circles by one or two heavy oxen (Figure 7.3). Oil drains out of a small hole drilled in the round bottom of the mortar. The hole is opened to allow a small amount of oil to escape. This oil is heated and added back into the mortar to mix with the meats after the opening has been plugged. Each 30 lb load is ground

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for about 45 min. The plug is removed and the oil is allowed to drain out. This process can handle about 360 lbs of seed/day. Extracted oil is either purified by first settling and decanting or by water washing, which helps to remove some impurities. Bullock-powered ghani attain 11–16% residual oil in the meats; motor-driven ghani produce a 10–12% residual oil content in the cake. In Egypt, Turkey, and very remote parts of India, safflower is also processed by first passing the seed between two steel rolls that are often hand powered. Normally, the seed is passed through several times to get a more uniform cake (Figure 7.4a). The ground seed is heated in a metal pan built into a stove with clay walls. It is heated until oil can be squeezed out of the seed by hand (Figure 7.4b). It is then put into a coarse gunny sack and placed in a slotted box in a hand-driven or motorized screw press (Figure 7.4c). This type of equipment has been used only since the turn of the century. Filtering of the oil is often accomplished by dipping a cloth in oil and then wringing it out by hand into a receptacle. Recently, the ancient ghanis or small hand presses have been replaced by expeller or solvent-extraction plants located in larger cities or by rotary mills consisting of cast iron mortars and pestles, both of which revolve and are motor driven (2). In the 1950s, safflower was processed in the United States by the expeller presses employed by most of the mills attempting to deal with this new crop. The only exceptions were Oil Seed Products Co. in Fresno, and the Glidden Company in Buena Park, both of which had solvent extraction. Probably the only research performed at that time was by the Chemurgic Project at Lincoln, Nebraska, using an Anderson Red Lion Expeller. The project’s recommendation was to employ watercooled shafts and to partially decorticate the seed with a Bauer disc huller prior to

Figure 7.3. A ghani in operation in India; picture taken by P.K. Knowles.

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Figure 7.4a. Hand-driven steel rolls; picture taken in Eskisehir, Turkey by P.K. Knowles.

Figure 7.4b. Mush from the grinding rolls in a pan and cooked; picture taken in Turkey by P.K. Knowles.

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Figure 7.4c. Cooked seed is squeezed in hand-powered press; picture taken in Turkey by P.K. Knowles. processing (4). After a month of experimentation in 1950, PVO had adopted a configuration for its San Francisco oil mill that employed water-cooled shafts, but ignored decortication. The configuration used was as follows: Seed Cleaner Top screen 1/4” slotted Center screen 3/16” slotted Bottom screen 5/64” slotted Notes: Seed cleaner is preceded by a Scalper with 1/2” or 7/16” perforated screen. Whole seed is fed to the expellers. No cookers are involved. Anderson Horizontal steam tube dryers employ 65–80 lbs of steam. Anderson Super Duo Expellers with water-coled YNV main shaft, 5 1/4” short, all worm vertical shaft, Feed set at 5–7 notches. Feed water at 2–3 notches. 45–50 lbs of steam on Expellers. 110°F temperature on shaft cooling water, 60 amperes on horizontal motor load and 25–50 amperes on vertical motor load.

Barrel Spacings Vertical barrel .020 .020 .020 Horizontal barrel .0075 .010 .010 Drainage hopper blank to .010 Cake Grinder 1/4” gap on all hammers

This achieved 6.25–7.00% oil content at 3.6–4.0% moisture on the expeller cake. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation and others experimented on decorticating of safflower seed. Variations based on cottonseed-hulling equipment failed to work.

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The soft inner kennel, tightly enclosed by a very hard and fibrous hull presented a tough problem. In 1958 PVO put the young engineer, Don Noren, to work on finding other soltions. Noren found that safflower could be dehulled by hand much easier when it was dried to 3% or less moisture. He also found that the hull had a natural fault line and would split into two equal halves along that line. Anyone who has watched the work of rats or mice eating safflower seed samples would have observed the same. Rats were able to perform a perfect job of decortication except that they ate the meats, leaving perfect hulls behind. Noren next tried introducing safflower seeds into an opening between two spinning plates with short, cylindrical steel rods mounted at various points on the plates’ faces. The rods would impact the seeds falling between the plates and sheer the hulls, but too many meats were also hit and mashed by the rods and these attempts failed. Similar devices were later used by the Soviet Union to dehull less fibrous sunflower seeds. Then Noren began firing seeds through an air gun at a steel plate. By varying the velocity and the angle of the plate he was able to begin to get very high percentages of perfect breakage, two equally split hull pieces and an intact kemel. Eventually, a working model was build and tried at Sidney, Nebraska, and operated with modification over a 2-year period. While this method was relatively successful (when incorporating a rotary trommel for rough separation of meats and hulls, followed by classification over an Oliver gravity table), it proved to have too high an operating and maintenance cost to be continued. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, mills processing safflower began to shift from expeller pressing to prepress/countercurrent solvent extraction to escape the fire problems inherent in storing expeller-processed meal and to increase yield and processing capacity. Both Oilseed Products and The Glidden Company had used solvent extractors to process safflower and had employed vertical tower extractors—Oilseed’s was a homemad design, Glidden’s was a V.D. Anderson Tower. Neither was run long enough for others to learn from their experience, so several of the next attempts employing solvent extraction also used Anderson towers. In PVO’s case, it was a matter of economics. Ed Hill had a small budget and purchased General Mills’ surplus Wooster, Ohio, soybean mill which was based on a tower extractor; he was not even thinking of processing safflower seed when it was purchased. Anderson, Clayton Co.’s mills at Chowchilla and Phoenix used Anderson towers because the towers performed adequately for their prior experience with cottonseed. But in processing safflower seed, everyone experienced problems employing the towers. The safflower hulls tended to separate from the rest of the cake in the liquid’s long journey through the tower and floated lo the top, producing entrapped particles in the headspace vapor, excessive fines in the extracted oil, and serious wear problems in the towers’ rotary exit seals. In the United States, little research was publicly available concerning safllowerextraction problems, although all of the principal manufacturers (V.D. Anderson, Blawknox, and French Oil Mill) did private work on the problem, and employed hexane exclusively. Indian researchers published several papers on the problems associated with extraction of safflower oil using various alcohols (5–8); later one of them tearned with Arnold of Iowa State University for a further study of alcohol extraction (9). Arnold worked for several years with the Iowa State pilot plant using an early Crown Works extractor that employed trichloroethylene as a solvent. In 1951, one of his graduate students published the results of his thesis work on seven oilseeds, including safflower seed (10).

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Blawknox, with its pioneering Rotocel, offered a good solution and PVO quickly switched to that technique. Both V.D. Anderson and French offered alternative ways to rotate horizontal baskets to get around the Blawknox patent. As recounted elsewhere. PVO tried the first Anderson horizontal basket extractor at Culbertson, Montana, and an early French stationary basket model at Sidney, Nebraska. J.G. Boswell opted for an improved Anderson horizontal model and used it for many years. Cargill installed a DeSmet horizontal bed extractor at its San Francisco Army Street plant to process copra after its disastrous plant fire. This extractor worked well on safflower, but it was soon out of action when Cargill suspended all extraction operations at San Francisco because of declining copra volumes and the aflatoxin scare. Most safflower extractors went the Blawknox route during the 1960s and early 1970s. Prepressing safflower seed removed the problems that mills had experienced with conventional expelling operations. While a Super Duo Expeller would struggle to run 16 tons of seed/day and leave 6–9% fat in the cake with the danger of darkening the oil, prepressing to a cake containing 14–18% oil, allowed the same machine to handle up to 50 tons/day and produced a lighter, more bleachable oil with relatively little entrained sediment. Prepressing resulted in several other advantages. Perhaps the biggest was a reduction in maintenance. Safflower hulls are so abrasive that a conventional expeller mill of four or five expellers must be constantly relining one set of barrels or cages to replace the barrels lined first, which have almost worn out. In contrast, the barrels in a prepress operation can last for an entire crop year or longer. Prepressing results in less wear and tear on the moving parts of the expeller, less shaft breakage, better power factors, and lower kilowatt hours/ton processed. Bar spacing for expelling with Anderson Super Duo expellers involves 30-20-20 thousandths on the vertical barrel, a blank drainage hopper, and 10-10-10 thousandths on the horizontal barrel. Merton Boomer, PVO’s Engineer, devised a special shaft configuration to be used in PVO’s prepress expellers. While it did give slightly better tonnage at a given residual oil content, PVO eventually returned to using standard YNV main shafts because the extra cost of fabricating the special Boomer shafts exceeded the savings gained in tons/day processing costs. Our experience with prepressing California safflower seed, which is normally relatively clean, dry, and uniform in oil content and FFA, has led to the elimination of as many operations as possible between the point of receiving the seed from the farmer and putting oil and meal into storage. So, except for magnets to remove tramp iron and a very coarse scalper to remove sticks or large trash, we advocate conveying the seed a minimum distance in the most gentle way practical, with no cooking, cracking, or breaking of the seed prior to minimum temperature tempering going into the expeller. Every oil mill is slightly different and has its own unique problems dealing with conveying, cleanliness, or quality of the seed being processed, among other factors. Some people believe that safflower seed must be cracked before processing. Others believe in using larger 150 ton/day low pressure, prepress expellers. We continue to employ Anderson Super Duo expellers that run about 55 tons of seed/day since we feel that this gives us flexibility. In case one expeller breaks down, the mill can continue to operate on the remaining machines. We believe that cracking or cooking accomplishes nothing except causing some oil to flow before the seed reaches the

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expeller. Safflower oil, once it is exposed to air and heat and is mixed with dust, dockage, or other seed, becomes a very tough animal to clean. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s Richmond mill originally was built with an air-conveying system, since its original design was based on the handling of copra unloaded from ships by air. Japanese oil mills generally unload safflower seed from ships using suction systems, but they have learned, as we did at PVO Richmond, that air conveying is not the best method for moving safflower seed from point to point. The abrasive safflower hull causes very high maintenance costs in a conventional airconveying system, even stainless steel elbows fail rather quickly. Screw, redler, or belt conveyors are much more satisfactory. In the case of belt conveyors, one must be careful to ensure that the belt is of a material that is resistant to vegetable oil. Prepressing normally removes 60–65% of the oil in safflower seed while the solvent extractor captures the balance. Most prepress solvent-extraction mills processing safflower seed are able to achieve an extractor cake residual oil content level of 1.0–1.5% and, in many cases, down to 0.5%. When produced from typical California seed, the prepress oil is generally 0.15–0.3% FFA with the solvent-extracted portion having 0.3–0.6% FFA. The main danger involved in not cracking safflower seeds prior to feeding them into the prepress expeller is that a portion of the seeds will slide through the expeller without being fractured or masticated and will become imbedded in the center of the cake fed to the extractor. If the seed coat remains intact, hexane will have a much harder job reaching and extracting oil from the seed kernel. This will result in an unacceptable level of oil remaining in the cake after extraction is completed. The principal answer to this problem is for the mill’s control laboratory to check the cake produced in both a ground and unground condition. If whole seeds are escaping through the system, they will be detected since the ground sample will have a much higher oil content than the unground sample. Steps can be taken to correct this by modifying the flow through the expeller. By far the best method of decorticating was devised by George Kopas. In 1963, he and John Kneeland of PVO filed a patent which was granted in 1966 (11). Kopas developed the idea of separating safflower seeds from the hulls after extraction rather than prior to milling. This idea had become practical only after PVO and others adopted prepress countercurrent extraction of safflower seed. J.G. Boswell and Producers Cotton Oil also installed similar tail-end decorticating operations. In the 1970s, the Agricom plant at Grimes also installed tail-end decortication, but by the end of the decade most decortication had stopped because increasing energy costs outweighed the dollar gain made from selling the 20%/42% mix of meal products. The key to making Kopas’ idea work lay with Boomer; Boomer had previous experience with Enterprise vertical-shaft hammer mills. He reasoned that passing an air stream containing safflower meal through the mills would result in an air classification of protein-rich versus protein-poor parts of safflower meal. As time went on, he and Kopas were able to simplify the initial decorticating installation, which was dependent on many screening operations, and were able to make air classification the primary classification/separation factor. For a typical safflower seed of 25% protein, such a unit would deliver an 18–20% yield of 42% protein seed and an 82% yield of 20% protein meal. If three fractions were desired, the approximate composition would

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be a 15% yield of 6% protein hulls, a 60% yield of 20% protein meal, and a 25% yield of 42% protein meal. The higher protein meal was used in most poultry and some turkey markets; the hulls were primarily exported to Japan. When hull markets declined, PVO operated primarily on a two-stage decortication. This system was also installed in PVO’s Culbertson, Montana, plant where the lower protein content of the seed allowed only a 12% recovery of 42% protein meal. In 1961 the USDA Southern Regional Research Laboratory published a paper advocating direct extraction (without prepressing) employing a hexane-washed rotary filter (12). This idea never caught on commercially. The Western Regional Research Laboratories also did some extraction experiments on safflower, but most of their work was behind the state-of-the-art and received little attention. In PVO’s case, prepress/solvent extraction was more desirable than trying direct extraction because of the desire to use prepress oil to produce “PVO Process” edible oil. Blawknox Rotocel type extractors were employed in PVO’s Boomer-designed mills in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Sydney, Australia. In Spain, PVO was forced to use moving bed extractors of local design because of problems with dollar/peseta exchange rates. Agricom International would have employed a Blawknox extractor at its new Grimes, California, safflower mill in 1974 because it was a Boomer design also, but Crown Iron Works’ Glenn Bruskie won the contract because his company could promise a much quicker delivery and a much faster erection time. The Crown extractor proved much easier to erect, since it was delivered in basically three preassem-bled units. It has performed well since being erected at Grimes. Blawknox units have continued to be employed in other mills built or modified since; the principal modifications have been the units’ change from a central to a peripheral drive. Various types of units have been employed in Mexico, but the vast majority rely on either the horizontal basket or moving bed principle. All of these units employ a principle that takes advantage of basic structure of the safflower seed. Safflower prepress expeller cake is relatively thick, but since it contains a high percentage of hulls it offers myriads of channels for hexane to percolate through the bed of safflower cake and acts as its own filter medium, reducing the fines problem encountered in vertical towers. The bed remains relatively undisturbed and is turned over only once in some designs; this means that hexane can easily wet the entire mass and leave the fine particles entrapped. Prepressing technology was the state-of-the-art method for preparing safflower seed for extraction from the late 1950s to the 1980s. But now it appears that extruders, particularly ones that contain a caged or slotted section that allows oil to discharge freely, offer a number of advantages over expellers in the preparation of safflower seed for extraction. An extruder is a device consisting of a long barrel through which a rotating worm-shaft moves the material to be extruded in the presence of added steam or moisture. The extruded material exits through a series of restricted orifices or dies. After World War II, research began on extruders, initially in an attempt to inactivate enzymes and trypsin inhibitors, particularly in rice bran and soybeans (13–15). In the 1970s, extruder-expander technology diversified, and these devices began to be used in many fields. In the vegetable oil field, expanders began to be used to replace or supplement flakers in

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soybean plants and subsequently to replace expellers in the prepressing of cottonseed (16,17). Expanders were initially used on safflower by J.G. Boswell in their Corcoran, California, mill (and tried for a short time by Producers Cotton Oil, Fresno) to supplement their prepress expeller operation. But the important breakthrough in extrusion technology regarding safflower seed was the development by V.D. Anderson of the caged expander-extruder for which they were granted a patent in 1990 (16–18). This development, which allowed oil to drain from the machine, enabled extruders to successfully handle high oil content seeds, such as safflower. J.G. Boswell pioneered the installation of this equipment and have now entirely replaced their prepress expellers with caged expander-extruders. These machines have also been successfully employed for safflower processing in the Aceites del Mayo plant at Navajoa, Sonora, Mexico. Anderson’s patent title sounds formidable (18), but its abstract contains a good description of the process: “An extruder for treating high-oil-content material such as certain oilseeds is used to prepare the material for later solvent extraction of oil from the material. The extruder has an elongate barrel and a rotating worm-shaft therein which advances the material from an inlet hopper to a discharge die plate having at least one restricted orifice. As the material advances through a series of compaction worms, it is worked and compressed. Steam may be injected to raise the temperature and moisture content of the material. The pressure on the material is increased and is maintained sufficiently high so as to prevent any water content from vaporizing even if its vapor pressure significantly exceeds atmospheric pressure. The barrel wall includes a perforate or slotted section down stream from a solid wall section, and preferably immediately before or close to the discharge die plate. This allows any oil which is liberated from the oil-bearing material being worked to drain out of the extruder, thus making it feasible to process high-oil-content materials in the extruder without the prior use of a screw press. The material exiting the die plate into atmospheric pressure expands because of vaporization of the moisture content, yielding a porous material very suitable for solvent extraction. The feed worm design provides for greatly increased throughput of material from the feed hopper to the compaction worm.”

The primary advantage offered by an expander-extruder versus an expeller is lower maintenance cost and much lower horsepower/ton processed. In addition, the caged extruder extracts approximately the same amount of oil at lower temperatures than a prepress expeller and produces collets of greater bulk density than expeller cake but with a certainty that all kernels have been broken prior to entering the extractor. This results in increased extractor capacity, improved residuals, lowered workload for the desolventizer-toaster, and lessened dust problems. The Navajoa plant processes 260 metric tons/day of 38–42% oil content safflower seed that is cooked, but not dehulled, before expanding and discharges collets to the extractor containing 22–25% oil content. This 8-inch Hivex Expander operates at a 70% motorload on a 100 hp motor (17). Williams and Crawford of V.D. Anderson presented an illustrated paper at the April 1993 American Oil Chemists’ Society Annual Meeting (17). At the same meeting, Watkins of Texas A & M University pointed out the advantages of enzyme inac-tivation of safflower and other oilseeds in improving final oil quality by reducing refining loss and liberating phosphatides (19).

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Refining, Bleaching, and Deodorizing There has been very little research published on safflower oil refining, bleaching, deodorization, or winterization. Safflower oil normally contains a very low level of free fatty acids (FFA) and gums, so relatively straightforward refining and bleaching techniques work well. Equipment primarily designed for other uses has been employed to process safflower oil. As safflower oil began to move into edible markets, Beal, Mosher, and Brekke published a pilot plant study in which they produced a safflower salad oil of good initial quality (20). Kulkarni of India was one of the few to publish publicly on safflower processing; in 1937, with Jatkar on bleaching with Fuller’s earth (21); in 1959, with Charni on alkali refining of safflower oil (22); and in 1975, on the processing of safflower in general (23). In 1992, Boki and associates compared the bleaching of alkali-refined safflower oil with bentonites, montmorillonites, and sepiolites. Sepiolites proved to be the most effective and did a better job of retaining tocopherols and reducing FFA after bleaching than the activated clays (24). When safflower was first introduced into the United States, refining was done by addition of caustic soda in cone-bottomed batch tanks followed by a water wash and filtering through plate and frame equipment. Batch-refining equipment was still being installed and employed in Montana during the 1970s. This progressed to continuous caustic-refining processes using De Laval, Sharples, or Westphalia centrifuges from the late 1950s to the present. Safflower oil that has been extracted from seed containing a high percentage of immature seeds will often display strong green color tones that usually are easily removed by deodorization. Seed that has partially sprouted or suffered severe weathering can produce oil that is very difficult to bleach by conventional methods, and more radical phos-phoric acid washes and/or activated carbon bleaching will not always solve this problem. The PVO Process, referred to elsewhere, embodied the idea of taking plateand frame-filtered prepress oil, handling it with minimal exposure to air, and storing it a minimum of 4–5 days in black iron tanks before refining. The storage time allows the very small amount of moisture and impurities to settle to the bottom of the tank. Air exposure can be minimized by having pipelines that discharge onto the bottom level of a tank rather than allowing the oil to splash in from the top. The PVO Process embodied taking prepress oil directly to a semicontinuous Girdler or Wurster Sanger deodorizer under vacuum and employing Dowtherm as the heating medium. Kopas originally conceived the idea of doing this, while Purdy and Applewhite demonstrated in internally circulated memoranda that salad oil produced from prepress oil would maintain a longer shelf life than salad oil that had been first caustic refined from either solvent-extracted oil or a blend of prepress and solvent-extracted oil. Kopas’ idea of keeping the prepress and solvent-extracted fractions separated met with resistance in some oil mills. It required the construction or designation of separate pipelines and storage tanks; some superintendents rejected this notion because of the particular configuration of their plant or just through inertia. Others reasoned that all oil should be refined, bleached, and filtered for safety or standardization reasons before a deodorizing step.

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Going directly to a deodorizer with unrefined oils met with objections in several refineries around the world. Kopas’ reasoning was that a deodorizer could easily strip free fatty acids from oil under 0.45 FFA. California prepress oil was almost always under 0.3 FFA, and many times as low as 0.15 FFA. This would save the cost of refining, water washing, and bleaching steps on two-thirds of the oil produced by PVO’s mill since safflower heat-bleaches by nature. Under PVO’s Technical Assistance Agreement with Tohama (later Rinoru) Oil Mill in Japan, Chung Youn, a PVO Engineer who was hired especially for the project because of his ability to speak Japanese, was sent to Nagoya. One of the proposals he made to his Japanese counterparts was that they try the Kopas method and segregate prepress oil produced from the safflower seed they were importing from PVO. After 2 years of discussion, Tohama continued to process and refine safflower the conventional way. Youn also had no luck trying to convince Tohama to try tailend decortication. In defense of the Japanese millers’ resistance, safflower seed FFA seems to rise by 0.25% when shipped from California to Japan, making direct deodorization more difficult, but the main reason of disapproval seemed to be a desire to maintain a consistent final product. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, Agricom Oilseeds Inc., and Oilseeds International, Ltd., have all offered prepress oil to buyers in various countries at a premium over conventional crude safflower oil, reasoning that the savings in refining costs to the buyer more than compensated for the premium charged. Some buyers eagerly agreed; others found the concept very difficult to understand. Safflower has had occasion to be processed in oil mills employing miscella refining. In this process, refining is done within the explosion-proof solventextractor area of the plant by passing miscella, instead of crude oil, and a caustic soda solution through a homogenizer-mixer to obtain intimate mixing and proper coagulation and then using a high-speed centrifuge to separate the refined miscella and soapstock. In the operations with which I have had contact (PVO’s AGYDSA joint venture in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Producers Cotton Oil Company at Fresno, California) cottonseed oil refining was the guiding reason for opting for miscella refining. In both instances, the technology developed by the brilliant George Cavanaugh was employed (25–27). In Guadalajara, the decision was made because miscella refining results in better refining losses and lighter-colored refined cottonseed oil. In the Fresno plant, the decision was guided by environmental reasons. Miscella refining’s other advantage is the elimination of a waterwashing step and hence elimination of the ever-increasing problem in today’s world of disposing of effluent from a refinery, no matter how well it is treated. The soapstock is added into the oil mill’s meal stream. In the case of safflower oil, none of the above advantages are critical. Safflower oil normally has such low refining losses and light refined oil colors that the miscella process offers little advantage. If the mill chooses to deodorize the nearly two-thirds of the oil produced in its prepressing step directly, the remaining one-third of the oil produced can usually be shipped to crude oil buyers, eliminating need for refining it at that stage. When it is necessary to reftine safflower oil in a miscella refinery, problems can sometimes be encountered, particularly if any prepress oil must be refined as well.

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Because safflower oil has such a low FFA (and prepress oil is lower than the solvent-extracted fraction) and very few gums or phosphatides, it can be difficult at times to produce a soap mixture going to the centrifuge that has enough “bite” to obtain a clean separation. This often necessitates a bleaching step before deodorization only to remove soap particles. Neumonz, in a paper on winterizing (28), commented that safflower does not require winterizing but does have wax (ca. 0.5%) that should be removed in the way corn oil is handled. Most U.S. refiners would not agree with this assessment and neither winterize nor dewax, finding that they usually can deliver a brilliant oil after passing deodorized oil through a micro- or polishing filter or both. A very small amount of wax (< 0.5%) can sometimes be observed in freshly deodorized safflower salad oil as a nearly invisible, very fine threadlike wisp. Japanese refiners insist on caustic refining to less than 1.0 R Lovibond color and then winterizing as well. They find an occasional problem with wax appearing in salad oil in Hokkaido during the winter months if they do not winterize. The PVO Process worked best if oil was deodorized into stainless steel holding tanks immediately prior to shipment to a customer. This would allow safflower oil of 0 peroxide value to be loaded, preferably through a microfilter, into a tank car or wagon through a bottom valve. Nitrogen blanketing would be employed if deodorized oil had to be held for any extended period. During the 1960s, when antioxidants were in vogue, either TBHQ. BHA, or BHT would be added in the presence of citric acid. Attempts were also made during this period to ship salad oil to Australia, loading with a nitrogen lance bubbling the gas into the vehicle being discharged, and nitrogen being introduced into the vessel’s tank. These trials were only moderately successful and can not be recommended. Loading safflower oil into bulk-liquid containers where nitrogen can be more carefully regulated, because of the size and configuration of the container, works quite well for overseas shipments.

Handling and Storage of Safflower Seed Safflower seed is inherently stable and safe to store for extended periods if it is harvested at maturity with a correct moisture level (below 8%), is free of green weed seeds or trash, and is allowed to reach room temperature gradually. Safflower seed stores equally well in upright steel or concrete silos or in flat storage buildings. Belt, screw conveyor, redler, or air-conveying systems perform similarly with some reservations. Rubberized conveyor belts can become badly pitted by safflower fatty acids in less than a year; belts made from artificial rubber resist this problem well. Air-conveying systems tend to cause some breakage of safflower seed if a number of elbows are involved in the system; the abrasive nature of safflower hulls tends to cause these same elbows to wear out rather quickly. Oil flowing from too many broken seeds combining with dirt, sterile hairs, and foreign material builds up quickly on screw conveyor flights or elevator buckets. If allowed to polymerize for long periods, this buildup will require major efforts to remove.

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In California, it is very rare for safflower to be harvested at moisture levels above 4–5%. Occasionally, a new grower might get anxious to begin his harvest and begin cutting a few days before moisture has dropped below 8%, but waiting 3 or 4 days can generally cure this problem. Growers who were forced to plant very late in a season, particularly in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta area or in the Coastal Valleys to the west of Highway 101 in the Paso Robles–Templeton area, might experience frustrating days in bringing their crop to maturity in the short days and cooler nights of late September and early October. Occasionally, it is necessary to harvest under these conditions at seed moistures of 10–12%. Such seed should be slabbed (spread out to dry in the sun on a concrete pad) for several days. It can also be dried successfully in vertical hot-air driers if the weather does not permit slabbing. The key to drying is not to use temperatures that are high enough to scorch the seed; patience and two passes at lower temperatures are the answer. Harvesting in California during late July to early September can result in seed temperatures of 115°F since the air temperature in the shade can reach this level on many days, and sunlit temperatures are much higher. Such seed should be brought to equilibrium either by pulling air through seed stored in bins or silos or by pulling air through aeration ducts or tunnels located under seed piled on the floors of flat warehouses. The ducts are connected to fans on the outside of the building. Most aerator systems work best if the air flows downward through the pile. This prevents condensation from occurring on the normally cooler upper surface of the pile and also prevents air tunneling in the seed mass (29). The warehouse must monitor the temperature levels at various depths in the bin or pile as air moves through it. As the seed begins to reach equilibrium, one can observe a layer of elevated temperatures moving upward until the entire column of seed maintains the same temperature. Several more days of forced air should be applied and then air treatment can be suspended. It is often wise at this point for warehouse personnel of binned material to “core” the bin, that is, to pull the center of the bin down through the bottom of the bin and redistribute it on the top of the binned seed. Warehouse personnel should continue to monitor stored seed. If air temperatures begin to vary substantially from the seed temperature, it is usually wise to start air flowing again to bring the seed close to ambient temperatures. Safflower seed harvested with a level of foreign matter over 5%, particularly if the foreign matter is green parts of weeds or their seeds, can be quite dangerous if not dealt with promptly. A truckload of such seed harvested in a 145°F sun, can easily begin heating, and charring will result in a few hours if it is left unattended. Unloading such seed and introducing it into the middle of a pile of otherwise dry, mature safflower can also cause problems. At 4–5% moisture, safflower seed is quite hygroscopic and will quickly leach moisture from the surrounding trash, raising the level of moisture in the center of the seed pile to over 20%, bringing on heating, smoke, and eventually fire. Again, the answer to such a situation is slabbing or rough cleaning, if the amount of foreign matter is too high or too wet. In Mexico, safflower is quite commonly slabbed by spreading seed over a large concrete pad or patio and then employing one or more people to rake the seed throughout the day to increase exposure to the sun’s rays. The only problem is that

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rain can come any day under these conditions, so it is necessary to keep a watchful eye open and to scrape the seed up and into a tarpaulin-covered pile if rain threatens. In California there is no danger of rain at slabbing time. Once safflower is in a flat storage pile or a bin, it is wise to take regular readings with thermocouple wires scattered throughout the pile and to take action if temperatures rise above 90°F, particularly if this occurs suddenly. Action can mean increasing air flow or, in more severe cases, emptying or turning a bin to redistribute the hot spot, or by digging into a pile to remove a hot spot if it is flat storage that is not easy to re-elevate or turn. Pouring water on a safflower seed hot spot in a bin is not the answer. This creates steam, more heat, and more damage. In areas that can produce summer rains shortly before harvest (U.S. Northern Plains States, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, or India) seed can sprout prior to harvest, be harvested in an immature state, or be subject to attack by various headrotting diseases. All of these problems can be dealt with by combinations of slabbing, cleaning, drying, blending, and aeration—plus in the case of the Plains States a sort of suspended animation brought on by extreme cold temperatures as fall sets in. Immature, sprouted, and disease-damaged seed can be safely stored, but the effects of these various traumas will increase FFA, darken or set colors and, in extreme cases, change the seed characteristics so much that extraction is made very difficult and finally impossible. Safflower seed normally loses very little weight in storage. Shrinkage over a season is usually less than 0.25%. Since safflower is normally low in moisture, the seed can actually gain weight in certain situations where humidity is higher during the storage season. If the seed goes into storage in good condition. FFA will increase only 0.25–0.4% during the ensuing 12 months. If a warehouse is storing both the linoleic and an oleic variety of safflower seed, extreme care must be taken to prevent mixing of the two. Several warehouse personnel have found to their chagrin and financial loss that it is quite impossible to keep normal and oleic safflower separated by visual inspection alone. Good warehousing practices begin with establishing proper identity of each load at the point of origin and making sure to stop a truck or car that does not have complete identification from moving forward to the elevator’s unloading facility. Use of a differently colored shipping tag for each type makes identification easier. Every load of seed identified as oleic safflower should be checked upon arrival. This can easily be done by looking at a drop or two of oil drawn from the sample through a hand refractometer (see Appendix D) to make sure its refractive index is safely in the range for oleic safflower. Since oleic safflower has now been introduced into Mexico, it may be necessary to check all seed being received, since in some cases individual growers or seed dealers are not aware of the difference between oleic and linoleic safflower. Once the seed is properly sampled and identified, the load should be given a positive identification on the document that is used within the plant for instructions for unloading. It is preferable to unload normal and oleic safflower in separate pits or dumping stations so that there is no danger of remainders from one load in the bottom of a pit or its following conveying system being mixed inadver-tently with the other type of seed. In some plants the supervisor goes to the length

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of putting locks on pits/elevation systems used to unload oleic safflower and requires the shift supervisor to unlock the pit personally before oleic seed is allowed to move into the plant’s storage system. Again, good practice dictates that one err on the side of caution when oleic safflower seed is transferred from a country elevator to the oil mill or terminal elevator. Each load should be checked again—it is much better to take 2–3 min doing this than to find that someone emptied the wrong bin, and you find yourself contaminating a warehouse containing 3,000 tons of seed. Safflower seed is normally not attacked by grain weevils or beetles, but they can build up in storage and survive on the weed seeds, foreign matter, and moisture in stored safflower. In California, safflower stored past December will usually begin to exhibit insects above the acceptable levels established by the FDA and trading rules. The insects were not brought in from the field with the safflower but are weevils or beetles that inhabit the cracks in walls of practically every grain storage unit in the country. Phostoxin or methyl bromide kills insects in safflower easily, and it usually is necessary to treat safflower prior to loading vessels for export in order to prevent issuance of a “weevily” grade certificate. Insect webbing on large piles of stored safflower seed can become quite unsightly if unattended. Most warehouses clean their bins or storage buildings thoroughly before storing safflower, and many spray around the perimeter of storage areas with EPAapproved insecticides (generally malathion-based materials). Safflower seed that is produced under a pesticide-free or organic regime must be stored in a similar manner, but obviously conventional methods of attacking insects, if present, cannot be used either prior to or during storage. Diatomaceous earth blended with the seed (the sharp edges on the diatoms cut insect bodies causing them to die of dehydration), pheromones, and bacterial controls have all been used with varying degrees of success. More research is needed in this field before positive recommendations can be given. Pigeons and sparrows particularly love safflower seed and can cause problems for those warehousing safflower if tight controls are not made over all openings. Mice and rats will do a perfect job of splitting safflower seed hulls along the natural division line of each seed, and devour the meats. Sacked safflower seed or retained samples at a warehouse need positive control measures to protect them from mice. In California, safflower can be stored in two ways—either in country warehouses which normally charge a seasonal rate (from harvest until 15 days before wheat harvest the following spring) or in terminal elevators that publish tariffs listing a daily rate for storage. The 1992 country storage rates generally ranged from $7.00–13.00/ST—the higher rates occurred in areas where rice or corn was the competing product and the lower rates were where wheat or barley was the competitor for space. Included in this rate will be the cost of sampling; determination of moisture, if necessary; storing and loading seed out; and weighing in and out. Some ware-houses have the capability to clean and/or slab seed at an additional charge. Rough cleaning charges can range from $3.50–7.00/ton. Drying charges generally are based on the amount of moisture in the seed, and allow for shrinking the weight to a 7.5% moisture level.

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In the Mountain and Great Plains States, safflower is typically handled by country elevators for $7.00/ST, which includes sampling, determination of moisture, loading in and out, and weighing charges. If seed is stored for an extended period, charges usually run $1.50/ST/mo. Terminal elevator storage charges are about $0.10/ST/day, sometimes with a certain amount of free time allowed if the seed is moving through a terminal quickly. As can be seen from the previously mentioned costs, if seed is delivered directly from the field to a California terminal elevator for export in the August–November period, this results in the cheapest storage cost. If the shipment of the seed to an export destination needs to be later in the crop season, it is cheaper to store the seed in a country elevator near the source of production, pay a seasonal storage rate, and then move the seed to the export terminal (at an offpeak season freight rate) immediately before the ship is expected to arrive. Continuous flow seed dryers are the most satisfactory way to dry safflower seed. They usually receive wet seed at the top and discharge cool, dried seed at the bottom. In most types, the air moves through the seed perpendicular to the direction the seed is moving. They usually are divided into two sections, with heated air moving through the upper section and cooling air through the bottom. It is important to tend the dryer to prevent bin fires which can be started by sterile hairs or trash. It is better to keep drying air temperatures between 71 and 82°C and the seed flowing smoothly in order to prevent scorching the oil in the safflower seed. If necessary, put the seed through in two passes rather than raising air temperature over 100°C. If one is drying planting seed, temperatures should be under 45°C, if possible, to prevent germination damage (30). Meal Safflower meal must be dealt with carefully if it is going to be stored for a considerable period. Solvent-extracted safflower meal with residual oil contents of 0.5–1.5% and moisture under 5% will store quite safely in either vertical bins, silos, or in flat storage. As the moisture rises, danger of heating in storage increases. When moisture in stored meal goes above 7%, the danger of caking, buildup on the interior walls of storage bins, and of bridging increases with time. At the 10% level and above, it is quite possible for the moisture in a mass of stored safflower meal to migrate within the mass and create hot spots. While safflower meal is normally sold at a 10% moisture level, if the meal is going to be stored for more than a few days, it is better to hold the stored meal at as low a level as possible and to carefully add moisture, with proper mixing and blending, just prior to shipment to a customer. However, the addition of moisture, no matter how carefully handled, is forbidden in some states. Storage for protracted periods in small bins should be avoided because of the danger of buildup of bridging and solid layers within a bin. Once this starts, quick action is the only answer. If the meal sets up, the temperature rises, and much of the meal attains a color similar to coffee grounds and exhibits a strong, unpleasant odor. The best answer to breaking up such a solid mass is to attack it with the huge

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machines used in breaking huge areas of reinforced concrete. Bridged meal can be dangerous for people working in the bin. A clump of solidified meal can wedge in the mouth of a bin’s unloading conveyor port and block the flow. A worker’s first inclination is to go on top and break up the bridge. Workers standing on top of bridged meal can cause the surface to break through into a cavity underneath and suffer a nasty fall. The best thing to do is to shut off all powered equipment, making certain that it can not be turned on while the bin is checked. Pneumat Systems, Inc., of Mankato, Minnesota, manufactures a “bin whip” that acts as a “giant weed eater” that hangs from an air hose. The air hose spins a rope loaded with plastic knuckles that knock apart soft-bridged material. For hard-bridged meal or for a bin that is completely bridged, Pneumat offers a bin drill that creates flow channels through hard-bridged material (31). Expeller safflower meal or cake is a fire waiting to happen. Evidently the highly reactive fatty acids in the 6–8% safflower oil contained in expeller meal combined with moisture and a high level of fiber makes for an almost explosive mixture. Every expeller safflower mill in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s burned to the ground or had a serious fire; the fires usually started in the meal storage area. Prepress cake, which generally contains 12–14% oil, would probably be just as volatile. Since it flows immediately to the solvent extractor and residual oil is reduced to a level under 2%, the resultant meal is quite stable if its moisture level remains low and it is cooled carefully before entering storage. Safflower meal is quite dusty. It is advisable when loading trucks or cars from an overhead spouting system to do the loading in a protected area, or a plant could receive complaints from people who are downwind during the loading period. Oil As mentioned previously, the key to storing safflower oil is eliminating as much exposure to air as possible. Crude oil can be safely stored in black iron (mild steel) tanks, but it is helpful to introduce the oil into the tank by having the entry line dump oil at or near the bottom of the tank and to remove oil near the same place. Safflower oil very seldom requires heating to allow it to be pumped, except in truly Arctic conditions experienced at times in Montana. Rotterdam oil storage terminals normally ask for a heating charge in winter months, but I doubt it is really necessary. Solvent-extracted safflower oil, that has remained in a tank for a short period of time, will drop most of its included moisture and impurities in the form of sludge on the tank bottom. Well-settled oil drawn off the top of such a tank can often exhibit qualities practically identical to prepress oil. If stored oil and the accumulated sludge are turned over regularly and incorporated in outgoing shipments, the sludge will go back into suspension for a short time and cause no problems. If allowed to sit for an extended period of time, the sludge will become hard, perhaps because some hydrolysis or polymerization takes places. If the sludge from separated quantities of oil is allowed to settle and accumulate, it can create problems by making tank gauging calibrations incorrect and can eventually create a costly cleaning and disposal problem for the tank owner.

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Kopas and Boomer patented a process for dealing with the gums found in solvent-extracted safflower (32). This process calls for reducing the vacuum and temperature in the solvent plant stripping-column, allowing the steam present to produce hydrated gums that can be centrifuged in a desludging-type centrifuge to recover the hydrated gums. The gums can be stored for a long period without spoiling. The hydrated gums, if mixed with 15% acidulated oil, become a pumpable liquid suitable for use as an additive for livestock feed. It is preferable to store salad grade safflower oil in stainless steel tanks immediately after deodorizing and to ship deodorized safflower oil in stainless steel equipment as soon after production as possible, with minimum exposure to air at every step of the loading/unloading process. These steps are necessary to keep peroxide buildup to a minimum. The most important factors involved in the handling of safflower salad oil (or any edible grade oil for that matter) is vigilance on the part of the operators storing and loading the oil to make sure the oil itself is clear and brilliant; to determine that the truck, railcar, or container vessel calling for shipment has been correctly and adequately cleaned; and that documents are available proving that it has been in the proper prior service to accept a food-grade product. The NIOP and FOSFA organizations have been working together to bring their lists of acceptable and unacceptable prior cargoes into conformity. The NIOP Approved Prior Cargo Listings (Rule 5.12, effective May 1, 1993) is included in Appendix D.

Transportation The handling of oilseeds changed on the West Coast at just about the time that safflower began to be produced in California. Prior to World War II, the Corn Belt and much of the Western Great Plains grain belt had converted to harvesting and handling grain, flax, and soybeans in bulk, and the many country elevators and terminals on the Great Lakes had been built to deal with bulk unloading and loading only. But California’s Central Valley had handled grain in bags since the turn of the century, and the oil business was built the same way. Handling bags meant flatbed trucks, railroad boxcars, flat storage warehouses where tens of thousands of bags could be piled 10 or 20 high by manual labor, and slings rigged from ships’ booms were swung into open holds to be stacked or unloaded by dockworkers. The Southern Pacific Railroad’s DePue warehouse company had flat storage warehouses about every 10 or 15 miles along their main lines through the heart of the Valley. At PVO, we had men like Howard Dietrick to unload the first truckloads of safflower seed that we received in bags. They would lift a jute gunny bag of seed with one hand, swing it across their body, and slash across it with a sharp, curved knife in the other hand, letting the contents spill into an unloading pit. At the other end of the production cycle, all of the meal produced was put into 100-lb used jute bags and seweed by sack sewers who could close the mouth of a bag with lightning swiftness using a huge needle threaded with twine. Frank Weinstock was our bag supplier. He would buy all of the bags we had not slit open unloading safflower and flax seed, together with 100-kg bags that had held

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sesame seed from China, or the sisal and hemp bags designed for copra; he would deliver new or almost new jute bags to us in which we would deliver meal. Within a few years, his cloth bag business was gone as the West Coast converted first to bulk grain combines, and the DePue flathouses were converted to handling bulk barley, wheat, or safflower piled on their floors and prevented from spilling out the sides by jack walls of reinforced plywood. Perhaps the biggest change in the California Valley was to get away from delivering grain to the country elevators that dominated the Midwest landscape. Wayne Hays of Woodland, California, probably led this change by being one of the first to build a lightweight, set of aluminum bottom-dumping grain trailers to be hauled behind a cab-over-engine truck tractor. With this equipment, capable of carrying a payload of 25 tons in and out of any field, he was able to lengthen the reach of grain dealers to every farmer’s ranch. Instead of having to deliver 5 tons of bagged, or later, bulk grain to a nearby elevator, the 25-ton payload enabled the seed to be moved all the way to a terminal or a mill, skipping the necessity of unloading and reloading at a local elevator. A set of trailers could be packed in a field for the farmer to harvest into directly, with no need for going through bins on his farm. It was efficient and was improved upon year by year as the revolution in communications allowed the trucking company’s headquarters to talk directly to the driver’s cab by radio or cellular telephone. Today very few California farmers operate grain trucks; most of the business is done by contract haulers. The rice industry led the way in bulk handling as it expanded after World War II, building entirely new bulk-handling driers and depending entirely on bulk movements, although much rice continued to be bagged for shipment to overseas customers. The oil meal business quickly changed to bulk delivery as well, employing either bottom-dumping grain trucks and trailers or specialty feed-mixing trucks modeled after bulk cement delivery trucks with a large rotary container capable of mixing feed en route to a customer. By 1960, all bag operations were gone, except for the handling of planting seed. Even in that instance, many larger farmers began to purchase planting seed in bulk rather than the 25-lb paper bag which had evolved. In the Great Plains and Mountain States a wider variety of trucks and trailers are encountered, and a higher percentage of the crop is handled by farmers in their own equipment. Since most of the seed in these regions goes first to the relatively small country elevators located close at hand, trucks with the capacities as small as 5 ST are sometimes employed. Because a portion of the crop in these regions moves later to California or other destinations, much of it is shipped in railroad hopper cars that have a capacity of 100,000–140,000 lbs when loaded with safflower seed. Some safflower seed is shipped in bulk in 40-ft truck trailer vans equipped with grain doors in the rear opening. Most of the seed shipped in this manner goes to birdseed processors since oil mills prefer bottom dumping trucks. Few bottom-dumping trucks are available for transcontinental movement. In Australia, safflower seed is sometimes hauled in truck–trailer combinations over 80 ft in length where three trailers are pulled in tandem. We might remember that California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers were important transportation arteries for almost a century, although today little moves

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on the rivers except pleasure boats and ocean vessels moving to Stockton or Sacramento in artificial ship channels. The River Lines of California was a pioneer in the water-transport business; they operated warehouses, steamboats, and later towed barges for many years. May 9, 1962 marked the first experimental delivery of safflower seed by barge to PVO’s Richmond plant (33). The River Line of California operated three selfunloading barges on the Sacramento River engaged in carrying grain from inland elevators to grain terminals in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. These barges had varying capacities of 900–1,200 tons of safflower seed and could be loaded at several elevators on the Sacramento River, each of which had a conveyor that extended out over the river’s edge and bullards for securing a barge while loading. Each barge had its own vertical bucket elevator and internal conveyor so that upon arrival at its destination it could unload itself in 2 hours. The elevator was hinged to allow the barges to pass under the lower bridges on the Sacramento River and Delta waterways. The barge freight rate was very competitive with truck rates and, of course, the paperwork in handling and sampling one barge was far less than that involved in loading 40 truckloads individually. After additional experimental runs, PVO installed a surge bin and a conveyor belt system to transfer the seed from the barges into what had formerly been the mill’s expeller building. On August 31, 1965, the barge, El Dorado, first load of safflower seed utilizing the new system (34). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation used barges to transfer part of its inventories for several years, but by the mid-1970s mounting labor problems caused the River Lines to suspend barge operations. The barges were hauled by tugboats and the demands of the tugboat workers became so great that there was no other choice. The barges were sold and moved to the Colombia River to haul grain in that venue. One interesting use of barges prior to suspension of service occurred during the time Agricon International was in existence. This involved loading a German vessel in San Francisco Bay with safflower seed conveyed directly out of River Line barges into the vessel’s hold. Figure 7.5 is a photograph taken during the loading of this ship. In this manner Agricom was able to meet a loading time deadline and avoid the approximately $10/MT loading cost involved in going through Stockton Elevators. When safflower seed was shipped to Northern Europe through the Port of Rotterdam during the 1970s, it was often discharged by unique vessels called “suckers”. These were barges upon which pneumatic suction devices and conveyors were mounted; this enabled the sucker to come alongside a ship moored in the harbor, pull seed from the vessel’s hold, and drop it into the hold of a motorized river barge alongside (Figure 7.6). Upon being filled, the motorized river barge would carry the seed to oil mills in Holland or Germany, all of which were located on canals or river banks. The would use its unloading equipment to receive the seed. On the other hand, safflower seed going to Spain or Portugal was normally discharged by a grain elevator specifically equipped to unload seed rapidly. In Japan, when safflower seed began to be imported, a form of barge called a lighter was used to carry safflower seed from alongside freighters moored in Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, or Mizoshima harbors (Figure 7.7). In the early days of these movements, most California safflower seed was loaded in bulk into the

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holds or deep tanks of general cargo freighters rather than larger grain carriers. Space at Japan’s grain elevators was usually reserved for speedier unloading grain carriers, so general cargo vessels were forced to tie up to a discharge buoy in an outer harbor and rig clamshell grabs (Figure 7.8) from the ships’ booms to transfer seed from the holds into lighters. The lighter then transferred the seed to the oil mills (Figure 7.9). As the volume of safflower seed business increased in the 1960s, more grain carriers became involved; often, they were unloaded by the specialized suction equipment at public or private oil-milling berths (Figure 7.10). Lighters continued to be used well into the 1970s, particularly when imports began to be reduced and shipments of seed for several different buyers on one vessel became quite common. In recent years, with only two Japanese oil mills engaged in processing safflower seed through their own elevator-discharging systems, lighters are no longer in use. Finally, one additional type of barge was tried for a short time during the 1970s. Pacific Far East Lines (PFEL), which had carried a majority of PVO’s safflower seed shipments to Japan in the 1960s, built a fleet of special so-called “Lash” vessels. These vessels were designed to carry a series of small, 300-MT capacity barges that could be transported on the vessel’s deck and discharged over its stern by a self-contained conveyor. The Lash vessel was supposed to arrive in a single Japanese port, discharge its Lash barges, pick up others, and immediately return home. The Lash barges would be towed to many different destinations. Japanese longshoremen did not like this idea at all and refused to handle the unloading of the Lash barges. A small amount of safflower seed was moved by this system but PFEL was soon forced to abandon this type of service.

Figure 7.5. A River Lines barge loading a vessel in San Francisco harbor.

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Figure 7.6. Rotterdam harbor sucker unloading a vessel in The Netherlands.

Figure 7.7. Lighters alongside a vessel in Japan.

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During the 1968 to 1981 period of Agricom International’s operations, safflower seed was carried for a number of different Japanese trading companies on the same vessel. Most of the safflower seed exported during this period was loaded through Stockton Elevators or Los Angeles Harbor Grain Terminal into both general cargo vessels and bulk carriers. Jim Easler developed a system of carrying alumina silica clinkers in the lower holds of vessels with either alfalfa pellets, safflower seed, or safflower meal loaded above a separation. The combination of the dense clinkers and the lighter agricultural product overload enabled us to employ both the dead weight and cubic capacities of the vessel, creating a reasonable shipping rate for the relatively small quantities of cargo provided by each customer. Safflower seed can be safely stowed above separations, preferably built across a natural horizontal division in a hold. The best separations are made from a layer or layers of heavy plastic topped by a layer of plywood. Burlap is stuffed into any openings along the edges. At discharge such a separation can support a small caterpillar tractor, if necessary, to help the stevedores sweep up the last remaining cargo before the separation is removed to reach the cargo stowed below. The Japanese buyers usually appoint a “champion” in each port of discharge. The “champion” is normally the buyer with the largest percentage of cargo discharging in a particular port, and it is his job to arrange the discharge and provide proper documents for the other consignees who, in many cases, may be competitors—the system works quite well. In more recent times, safflower seed has tended to be transported to Japan only in 20,000–40,000-ton grain carriers and in quantities that fill one or more entire holds. The cost of these shipments is rising annually (assuming no change in the general freight market) because fewer and fewer bulk cargoes of grain are moving to the

Figure 7.8. Clamshell grabs discharging safflower seed into a lighter.

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Orient from the lower U.S. West Coast. To divert a grain carrier normally scheduled to go to Vancouver to load one hold at Sacramento or Stockton takes an extra 4 days of that ship’s time. The vessel must come to California first, so that it can traverse the relatively shallow ship channels to California’s inland grain terminals. Bulk safflower seed is occasionally transported in ocean-going 20-ft containers. They will hold about 13–14 MT. In California, most safflower oil is transported in stainless steel tank trucks or trailers of 50,000-lb capacity, while jumbo (150,000–175,000-lb capacity) railroad cars are being employed for intrastate movements. Safflower oil can be shipped overseas in oceangoing, bulk-liquid containers that are configured to fit in the space normally occupied by a 20-ft container. Such bulk-liquid containers will hold about 15 MT of safflower oil. Most safflower oil exported to foreign countries is moved in ocean-going bulk carriers that are usually loaded and discharged at large bulk terminals. Today very few cargo vessels maintain bulk tanks capable of carrying oil, although these were in common use in the first three decades that safflower was exported from the United States. It is therefore unusual to see bulk oil moved in lots of less than 500 MT because of the extra cost involved in hiring a partially filled bulk carrier tank. The NIOP Rules provide a very complete listing of Weight Determination at Time of Discharge for Bulk Vegetable Oils; Sampling and Analysis; Quality Determination at Time of Discharge; Surveying of Inbound, Outbound Parcels of Vegetable Oils; Vessel Pumping System Standards; and Prior Cargo Listings that apply to these kinds of movements (35). Of course, not all safflower oil business is in bulk. Smaller domestic or overseas customers order oil packed in 55-gal steel drums that hold approximately 420 lbs of

Figure 7.9. A loaded lighter coming alongside a Japanese oil mill.

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Figure 7.10. Specialized suction equipment used by Japanese oil mills to unload oilseed from grain carriers.

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oil. A 20-ft oceangoing container can carry 82 fully loaded drums if properly stowed. It is particularly important in filling drums of refined safflower oil or oleic safflower oil to minimize introduction of oxygen into the headspace. An oil that was measured to be 40 AOM at the time of loading can quickly deteriorate to 20 AOM or less. Proper nitrogen sparging can solve the problem. References 1. Swern, D., Bailey’s Industrial Oil and Fat Products, Vol. 2, 4th edn., John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1982, pp. 175–314. 2. Weiss, E.A., Castor, Sesame, and Safflower, Barnes and Noble, Inc., New York, 1971, pp. 761–765. 3. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 21: 156 (1967). 4. Woodward, R.E., Industrial Survey of Safflower, Chemurgy Project, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1949, pp. 31–34. 5. Ramalingam, K., and K.S. Chari, Proc. Indian Sci. Congress 42: 152 (1955). 6. Karpathi, R., and K.S. Chari, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 36: 77 (1959). 7. Karpathi, R., and K.S. Chari, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 36: 81 (1959). 8. Mehta, T.N., B.Y. Rao, and M.P. Kulkarni, Indian Soap J. 20: 289 (1955). 9. Rao, R.K., and L.K. Arnold, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 34: 401 (1957). 10. Russell, R.F., Iowa State J. Sci. 25: 348 (1951). 11. Kopas, G.A., and J.A. Kneeland, U.S. Patent No. 3,271,160 (1966). 12. D’Aquin, E.L., Pominski, H.L.E. Vix, and E.A. Gastrock, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 38: 44 (1961). 13. Williams, M.A., and S. Baer, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 51 (1965). 14. Baer, S., M.A. Williams, and C.W. Zeiss, U.S. Patent 3,255,220 (1966). 15. Williams, M.A., in Vegetable Protein Utilization in Human Foods and Animal Feedstuffs, edited by T.H. Applewhite, American Oil Chemists’ Society, Champaign. Illinois, 1988, pp. 100–102. 16. Williams, M.A., Oil Mill Gazetteer 95: (1989). 17. Williams, M.A., and J.F. Crawford, American Oil Chemists’ Society Annual Convention, April 1993, Anaheim, California, in press. 18. Williams, M.A., U.S. Patent 4,901,635 (1990). 19. Watkins, L.R., American Oil Chemists’ Society Annual Meeting, April 1993, Anaheim, California, in press. 20. Beal, R.E., H.A. Mosher, and O.L. Brekke, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 35: 97 (1958). 21. Kulkarni, B.S., and S.K.K. Jatkar, J. Indian Inst. Sci. 20A: 119 (1937). 22. Charny, E.V.A., and B.S. Kulkarni, Oil Oilseeds J. India 11: 14 (1959). 23. Kulkarni, D.N., N.V. Joblekar, and M.S. Narasingarao, in Oilseeds—Constraints and Opportunities, ed. by H.C. Srivastava, Oxford IBM Publishing House, New Delhi, India, 1975. 24. Boki, K., M. Kubo, N. Kawasaki, and H. Mori, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 69: 232 (1992). 25. Cavanaugh, G.C., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 33: 528 (1956). 26. Cavanaugh, G.C., U.S. Patent 2,789,120 (1957). 27. Cavanaugh, G.C., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 53: 361 (1976). 28. Neumunz, G.M., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 55: 396A (1978). 29. Mayfield, W., M.H. Wilcutt, and T.C. Valco, Cotton Gin Oil Mill Press 94: 9 (1993). 30. Schuler, R.T., H.S. Hirning, et al., Sunflower Science and Technology, edited by J.F. Carter, Agronomy 19, American Society of Agronomy, Madison, Wisconsin, 1978, pp. 145–161.

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31. House, C., Feedstuffs 65: 25 (1993). 32. Kopas, G.A. and M.E. Boomer, U.S. Patent 4,275,089 (1981). 33. The Independent, Richmond, California, May 9, 1962. 34. Colusa Sun-Herald, Colusa, California, August 25, 1965. 35. National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules 1993–1994, Washington D.C., 1993, pp. 38–48, 58–75.

Chapter 8

Industrial Oil Research

As we have seen in Chapter 3, the composition of safflower oil makes for an ideal semidrying oil, and many paint chemists were attracted to it. When safflower oil became available in quantity in the United States during the early 1950s, it had many advantages. Every paint chemist who examined the oil practically salivated, thinking about applications where it might fit because of its light color, very low heat bleach color, and high level of linoleic acid combined with an absence of linolenic acid. This allowed it to dry faster than soybean oil and somewhat slower than linseed oil, but with better color properties than both. In addition, for western paint manufacturers it had the advantage of being nearly as inexpensive as soybean oil, less expensive than linseed oil, and when converted to the conjugated form, less expensive than dehydrated castor oil (DCO). This combination of excellent properties and low prices continued into the 1960s, when excessive demand for safflower oil as an edible product and competition of new, higher yielding wheat varieties began to force prices of safflower oil higher and eventually eliminated most of the industriawl markets for safflower oil during the 1970s and early 1980s (see Table 14.3 for a comparison of safflower and wheat yields and prices, and Table A.15 illustrating safflower and soybean oil prices since 1950). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was in a good position to market safflower since it had been marketing linseed, tung, castor, soy, hempseed, and oiticica oils to the paint industry and other industrial users for many years. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had mastered production of various industrial grades of these oils but had little paint research capability in-house. Luckily, California Flaxseed Co., a PVO subsidiary in Los Angeles, and a number of chemists in the paint and related industries were able to supply very practical data and formulation advice to PVO for dissemination to its broadening customer base. In late 1952, PVO was able to publish a 35-page bulletin on safflower oil, illustrating its general properties and applications in varnishes and alkyds (1). By November 1954, PVO published a comprehensive bulletin of 78 pages that did a more thorough job (2), and followed this over the next 20 years with over 20 additional bulletins on various applications. Table 8.1 contains data from some of these bulletins. Two important measurements of an oil are the acid value and the iodine value. For those not familiar with acid value, it is a measure used in the paint trade and is essentially double the free fatty acid value. Safflower dries better than one would expect from a comparison of its iodine value. Films made from it have excellent flexibility, with good initial color, and have little tendency to yellow with age because of the negligible presence of linolenic acid. 213

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Safflower

TABLE 8.1 General Properties of Industrial Oils Characteristic Iodine value (Wijs) Color (Gardner 1933) Acid value Viscosity Saponification number Unsaponifiable % Conjugation % Saturated acids % Oleic acid Iso-oleic acid Linoleic acid Conjugated linoleic acid Linolenic acid Hydroxy acids Dry Time: Initial setup Thorough dry

Soybean Oil

Linseed Oil

Safflower Conjugated Conjugated Dehydrated Oil Safflower 22G Safflower 22G Castor Oil

131–140 175–190 140–155 139–146a 8–11 8–11 8–10 6 0.83–3 0.7–4 0.3–3 0.7–2 AAAG–H 190–198 189–195 186–193 190–194 1.0–1.5 1.0–1.5 0.3–0.5 0.4 22–24 13.2 9.6 6.6 6.3 30.2 20.1 16.4 10.7 10.9 51.2 19.5 76.7 55.5 16.6 5.4 50.8 nil nil

139–146a 1–3 2–4 G–H 190–194 0.4 18–20 6.3 10.7 9.9–10.7 55.5 19.6–16.6 nil

140–150a 2–4 0.3–4 G–H 190–195 1–2 0.5–2.5 7.5–10.5 7.5–10.5 50.64 17–26 3–8

8 hr 8+ d

2.7 hr 3d

4.25 hr 5+ d

1.5 hr 10 hr

2.5 hr 15 hr

aModified Hanus method. Source: PVO, unpublished data.

Conjugated safflower oil (Safflower 22G) was produced initially by a PVO-licensed process employing anthraquinone as a catalyst (3). Within a short time, PVO developed its own method for conjugation (Safflower 122G) that used sulphur dioxide as a catalyst (4). Conjugation was employed to produce faster polymerization while retaining the good properties of ordinary safflower oil. Blends of nornal safflower oil and conjugated oil worked well to achieve intermediate results with lower cost. Others have described various methods for producing conjugation (5–7), but, to my knowledge, these methods have not been adopted commercially.

Heat Polymerization Safflower’s outstanding attribute under heat is its ability to heat bleach in a kettle from an original nonbreak oil color of 8–11 Gardner to a color under 3, and many cases to 1–2. The final color after heat bleaching depends on the manner in which the seed was grown and processed. Seed produced in Montana will usually contain a percentage of immature seeds that will impart a generally greenish cast to the initial oil and a slightly higher acid value. The initial color and the higher acid value make it difficult to heat bleach to less than 3 Gardner. When safflower seed is processed through expellers, the friction created by the hulls passing between the worm and the inside of the expeller barrel or cage produces excessive temperatures that can scorch the oil unless water cooling is employed in the expeller shaft. The high temperatures probably break down the contained phosphatides, producing “break” particles that drop out under heating. These cause the heat-bleach color to

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rise rather than fall, unless the oil is first refined and bleached to remove them. Sanflower oil produced in prepress expeller systems or from caged extruders does not each a high enough temperature to cause the color breakdown, a nonbreak grade oil results and good heat bleaching results as a matter of course.

Figure 8.1. Polymerized safflower oil changes in viscosity and acid number with time at 575°F.

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Safflower

Safflower bodies at 75% of the rate for linseed. In the early stages of heat polymerization, safflower oil bodies slower than linseed oil and at the same rate as soy. It increases its rate quickly versus soybean oil, and in the later stages of a cook its rate increases versus linseed oil (8,9). Figures 8.1 and 8.2 illustrate how safflower oil bodies

Figure 8.2. Log of viscosity versus time of heat-polymerized safflower oil at 575°F.

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slowly at first, then gains and finally increases rapidly after a T–U (5.5–6.3 stokes) viscosity is reached. Table 8.2 contains the data for a safflower cook at 575°F in an open kettle, and Figure 8.3 compares similar cooks for linseed and safflower oil. Figure 8.4 shows how the polymerizing rate for safflower oil increases dramatically with modest increase in cooking temperature. If bodying is done in a vacuum kettle, no real problem in acid value increases are involved, but in open kettles there are. Since safflower polymerizes faster at higher temperatures in the early stages, one could finish cooking at a lower temperature and manage to produce a final polymer rapidly with a lower color and acid number (1,2). Safflower oil responds to polymerization catalysts in much the same way that linseed oil does. Table 8.3 and Figures 8.5 and 8.6 illustrate how good colors and lower acid values can be achieved employing lower cooking times under catalysis. Table 8.4 gives the constants for several kettle-bodied grades of oil that PVO offered in its catalog. Most of PVO’s conjugation research was done at its Richmond laboratory. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation added Walter Rathjen and Lowell Cummings to its Richmond staff in the early 1950s to augment the kettling work done at Los Angeles. Conjugated safflower oils polymerized much faster than either nonbreak safflower oil or refined linseed oil and at practically the same rate as DCO. Tables 8.5–8.7 illustrate constants attained with conjugated 22G safflower oil at different cooking speeds. Safflower 122G achieved comparable speeds with better colors and acid numbers, since the carbon dioxide used to purge the processing system of sulphur dioxide bleached the already light oil. TABLE 8.2 Heat-Polymerized Safflower Oil at 575°F Viscosity Cooking Time (hr)

Color Gardner

Acid No.

Gardner Holdt

Log Viscosity Stokes (Stokes)

0 2 3.7 4.7 5.7 6.7 7.7 8.7 9.7 10.7 11.7 12.7 13.7 14.7 15.7 16.7

9822 1/2 33 1/2 444 4 1/2 5+ 5 1/2 6+ 77 1/2 8-

0.04 0.18 2.56 3.8

AAB3/4 C2/3 D1/2 G 1 2/3 O S2/3 V1/4 X2/3 Y1/3 Z1 1/2 Z2 4/5 Z4 2/3 Z5 2/3

0.41 0.44 0.80 0.95 1.1 1.6 2.4 3.7 5.3 9.3 16.1 19.3 31.6 44.2 86.8 131.0

7.2

10.3 12.2 12.9 14.4 15.2 16.7

1.612 1.643 1.903 1.978 0.041 0.204 0.380 0.568 0.724 0.968 1.207 1.286 1.500 1.646 1.938 2.117

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Safflower

It can be seen that vacuum equipment was not needed to achieve good lowacid safflower polymers. Figures 8.7 and 8.8 illustrate these results, and Table 8.8 lists the constants for some heat-bodied conjugated oils produced by PVO. It should be noted that conjugated safflower gave a neutral reaction on a standard zinc reactivity test while the Z3 grade showed a slight reactivity that leveled off after 72 hr. Conjugation decreased and dimer acid increased with higher viscosities. In addition to the conjugation, isomerization of the nonconjugated bonds produced a more reactive product with a higher melting point. Safflower 122G would cloud below 60°F because of its

Figure 8.3. Log of viscosity versus time of heat-polymerized safflower and linseed oils at 575°F.

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higher melting fractions, and become semisolid at 32°F. Alkyds or copolymers made from the 122G did not cloud at 32°F. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s 1953 bulletin on conjugated safflower oil showed that its rate of polymerization was slower than G-4 DCO (compare

Figure 8.4. Polymerizing rate of safflower oil at three temperatures, 575, 585, and 595°F.

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Safflower

TABLE 8.3 Heat-Polymerized Safflower Oil Catalyzed at 550°F Viscosity Time at Top Heat Hrs

Min

0 0 2 30 4 30 6 30 7 30 8 10 9 45 11 10 12 30 13 10 14 10 15 30 16 20 17 10 18 10 18 45 19 10 Final product

Color Gardner

Acid No.

Gardner Holdt

Stokes

4½ 4½ 4½ 55+ 5 5½ 6666666 6 6+ 6+

0.48

A½ C½ F J½ K 2/3 Q2/3 U2/3 X¼ X5/6 Z 1/3 Z1 ¾ Z3 Z3 ½ Z4 1/3 Z5 ¼ Z5 ¾ Z6 10.3

0.58 0.92 1.40 2.63 2.92 4.59 8.00 14.1 16.9 24.1 33.9 46.3 54.8 75.1 111.0 136.0 148.0 Z6 1/6

5.28

7.40

9.00 9.77 10.10 6+

Log Viscosity (Stokes) 1.763 1.964 0.146 0.420 0.466 0.662 0.903 1.149 1.229 1.382 1.530 1.665 1.739 1.876 2.045 2.134 2.170

Tables 8.6 and 8.9 [11]). However, its rate was fast enough to reach Z3–Z6 ranges while having acid numbers that were low enough to eliminate the need for vacuum equipment (Figure 8.9). In 1966, Frankel et al. from the USDA Peoria Laboratory suggested that conjugated safflower oil could be formed by treating safflower methyl esters with an excess of iron tricarbonyl (Fe(CO)5) to form iron tricarbonyl complexes that would be decomposed with ferric chloride (12). In 1970, Frankel offered further data achieving 73% conjugation (13). But I do not believe that this process was ever tried commercially, and the PVO 122 process seems much simpler. An interesting paper was published by Korus and Mousetis at the University of Idaho under a Department of Energy grant (14). Rather than looking at polymerization of safflower oil for use in a surface coating, their study tried to determine how and why safflower polymerized if it was used as a direct substitute for diesel fuels. Their study showed that thermal polymerization rates demonstrate a stronger depenTABLE 8.4

Constants for Kettle-Bodied Safflower Oils K.B.Q

Viscosity range P–R Iodine value (Wijs) 118–125 Acid number 4–6 Specific gravity (15.5°/15.5°C) 0.946 Color (Gardner 1933) 4–6 Saponification value 189–196

K.B.Z2

K.B.Z6

K.B.Z71/2

Z1–Z3 100–110 6–8

5+–Z6 93–103 8–10

Z71/4–Z273/4 93–103 20–25

0.957 4–6 189–196

0.958 4–6 189–196

0.960 5–7 189–196

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dence on the degree of unsaturation than the oxidative polymerization rates do. The bottom line of the study was to drop safflower oil from consideration—it polymerizes too fast to fit the formula developed in the study to measure possible fuel sources.

Solution Viscosities Safflower oil polymers are believed to have a more even molecular weight distribution because of their uniform fatty acid compositions (primarily linoleic with an absence of

Figure 8.5. Viscosity versus time and acid number versus time of a heat-polymerized safflower catalyzed at a temperature of 550°F.

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Safflower

linolenic fatty acids), than the equivalent linseed and soy polymers. Table 8.10 illustrates solution viscosities of safflower compared to linseed and soy polymers when all are diluted to 75% solids with mineral spirits of 39 Kauri Butanol value. The solution viscosities for safflower polymers are higher than solutions of the equivalent linseed or soy polymers. Prane discussed the effects of different solvent strengths at different concentrations (15). Z2 viscosity polymers made from nonbreak safflower oil and alkalirefined linseed oil showed similar solution viscosities with a 70 KB solvent at lower solids contents. At solids concentrations above 70%, safflower showed higher solu-

Figure 8.6. Log of viscosity versus time of a heat-polymerized safflower catalyzed at a temperature of 550°F.

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TABLE 8.5 Polymerization of Safflower 22 G at 535°F Viscosity Cooking Time (hr)

Temp. (°F)

Acid No.

Gardner Holdt Stokes

0 220 1 370 2 535 3 535 4 535 5 535 6 535 7 535 8.2 535 9 535 9.75 11 490 11.2

1.8 1.9 2.1 2.7 2.9 3.0 3.3 3.4 3.9 4.0 535 4.1 490

G7/8 H7/8 J1/5 P1/3 T1/2 U4/5 W1/4 X5/8 Z1/6 Z1 1/4 4.0 Z2 7/8 4.2

1.96 2.22 2.55 4.12 5.88 8.33 11.25 15.84 23.4 29.3 Z245.0 Z3

0.292 0.346 0.407 0.615 0.769 0.92 1.051 1.2 1.369 1.467 36.0 1,653 46.3

Log Viscosity (Stokes)

1.556 1.666

TABLE 8.6 Polymerization of Safflower 22 G at 550°F Viscosity Time at Top Heat (hr) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Acid No. 1.01 1.64 2.86 2.96 3.61 4.56 4.98 5.41 5.92 6.38

Color 6+ 7777+ 7+ 7+ 888-

Gardner Holdt H Q1/2 U W Y1/4 Z1 1/3 Z3 Z41/3 Z5 1/2 Z6 1/4

Stokes 2.00 4.92 6.27 10.70 16.4 25.6 46.3 57.7 123.2 244.0

Log Viscosity (Stokes) 0.301 0.691 0.797 1.029 1.215 1.408 1.666 1.761 2.090 2.387

tion viscosities. In 39 KB mineral spirits, safflower solutions were more viscous, especially at higher concentrations. In a 26 KB odorless solvent, safflower was more viscous than linseed in lower solids concentrations. This is useful in flat or sealed formulations where low vehicle nonvolatiles are employed but higher viscosity is desired to obtain good sealing qualities. In low-KB solvents at higher concentrations of oil, safflower demonstrates lower solution viscosities that are useful in odorless glass enamels where better gloss and breaking characteristics result.

Blown Oils Because safflower oil heat bleaches so easily, it makes an excellent medium for blown or oxidized oils, produced by bubbling oxygen through a heated oil, holding

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TABLE 8.7 Polymerization of Safflower 22 G at 575°F Viscosity Cooking Time (hr) 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.3 5.5

Temp. (°F)

Acid No.

Gardner Holdt

Stokes

Log Viscosity (Stokes)

150 250 325 395 485 530 575 575 575 575 575 575 568

1.7 1.7 1.7 1.7 1.8 2.1 2.4 3.5 4.0 4.7 5.3 5.7 5.9

H7/8 H7/8 H7/8 1 1/4 1 2/3 L1/5 P14/5 U5/8 X+ Y1/3 Z1 3/8 Z2 1/2 Z3-

2.22 2.22 2.22 2.31 2.42 3.04 4.28 7.86 13.19 19.30 30.45 41.3 45.7

0.346 0.346 0.346 0.364 0.384 0.483 0.631 0.895 1.120 1.286 1.484 1.616 1.66

its light color throughout most commercial blowing ranges. However, at viscosities over Z6 special care is needed or a soft gel can result unless the product is cooled very rapidly or immediately dissolved in solvent. Once the gel forms, it is insoluble in mineral spirits and an alcoholic or lacquer solvent is required to dissolve it. By careful regulation of air flow and temperature, blown safflower oil polymers highly tolerant of mineral spirits can be produced. Conjugated safflower can be blown in the same manner as an ordinary unbodied oil. The results are quite different however. Conjugated safflower oil that is blown has a slower increase in viscosity than either safflower oil or linseed the acid number increase is negligible, allowing the production of a light-colored Z3 blown oil with an acid number of 3. Such an oil is surprisingly soluble in mineral spirits up to 30:1 dilution rates. This far exceeds what is found with a Z3 blown oil starting either with nonbreak safflower oil or even a nonbreak safflower oil prebodied to G viscosity. Finally, conjugated safflower oil blown to Z3 dries well with the addition of proper driers. Tables 8.11 and 8.12 and Figures 8.10 and 8.11 illustrate these points (1).

Film Properties Table 8.13 shows the constants for some standard blown oils. We will compare the dry time, flexibility, and resistance of these oils. Drying Many of the drying studies on safflower oil were done in the 1950s, when lead and mineral spirits in paints were not the environmental issues they are today. As can be seen in Table 8.14, safflower oil dries more slowly than linseed oil, but it is close to

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linseed oil in final dry time. Restated, linseed oil appears to form an outer film faster, whereas safflower tends to dry throughout. The final result is a product that is dry on top and soft underneath for linseed oil, whereas the safflower film is uniform throughout. This is especially useful in cases where a second coat must be applied shortly after a first coat. Table 8.15 demonstrates the much faster drying rates of safflower 22G, where the bodied forms of safflower made from the conjugated oil have a similar drying

Figure 8.7. Changes in the viscosity and acid number with time of polymerized safflower 22 at 550°F.

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Safflower

speed to heat-bodied linseed oil or DCO. The term “Out of Dust” in Table 8.15 and subsequent tables refers to the time required for a film to reach a state of not only being dry to the touch, but also one that is unmarred by pressure when a finger is moved gently across the film. Most oil films dry to a relatively tack-free surface before they will resist marring. Tables 8.16 and 8.17 illustrate dry times with various drier combinations (1). Packer and Christensen did another study that utilized higher drier concentrations (Table 8.18 [16]). We can see that the higher levels of drier improved speed slightly. Once adequate driers are used, excessive amounts are not required or beneficial.

Figure 8.8. Polymerization of safflower 22 at 535, 550, and 575°F.

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227

Heat-Polymerized Conjugated Safflower 22 122G

22Q

122Z-3

G ± 1/2

P–R

Z3 ± ½ Z2+ -Z3+

Iodine value, avg. Acid value 2–4 Specific gravity (15.5°/15.5°C) Color (Gardner 1933) 1–3 Saponification value % Conjugated 18–20 % Dimer 14

130 2–3

Viscosity range

5–6

0.938 5–6 192

3–5

22 Z3

125 4–6 0.953 5–7 194

16–18 40

122Z-8

22–70

Z8 ± ½

Y–Z (70% NV) 129 8–10

5–7

4–6

0.9030 2–3 190

13–17 55

aModified Hanus.

Conjugated safflower responds to driers in a manner similar to the nonbreak with two exceptions. If used without driers, conjugated safflower 22G or 22Z3 air dries to a frosted, wrinkled film, very similar to the films that DCO, tung oil, or oiticica oil display. Secondly, lead-manganese combinations also show a slight tendency to wrinkle, which can be cured by the addition of cobalt. Lead-cobalt combinations display good, properties. Manganese appears to speed drying but at the expense of film color and color retention. Manganese may improve caustic resistance, especially in alkyds. Tables 8.19 and 8.20 illustrate some of the previously mentioned combinations in drying. Table 8.21 lists drying times for a number of commercial grades of safflower oil using a lead-cobalt drier regime. The times can be compared to the preceding tables for good approximations of drying times using other drier combinations. Flexibility The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation technicians reasoned that Kauri reductions of safflower oil polymers maintained a steady level because of their linear structure. Table 8.22 illustrates how safflower 22G compares favorably with DCO and increases flexibility with increases in viscosity in much the same way as DCO. A manganese drier structure was used (even though it is not normally used in safflower oil vehicles) in order to make the comparison with other oils more equitable. Since manganese has an embrittling effect on safflower, the results obtained are quite outstanding. TABLE 8.9 Polymerization of Deyhdrated Castor Oil at 550°F Time (hr) 1 1½ 2 2½ 3 3½

Viscosity Viscosity Gardner Holdt (Stokes) H S WYZ1 Z3+

2.0 5.0 10.0 17.0 27.0 48.0

Viscosity Log (Stokes)

Acid No.

0.00 0.70 1.00 1.23 1.43 1.68

6.0 7.0 7.5 7.5 7.5 7.5

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Resistance Table 8.23 illustrates a 1954 PVO test in which two groups of oils were rated on their ability to withstand a 2% NaOH solution. A drier structure of 0.24% lead, 0.03% cobalt, and 0.015% manganese of metal:oil content was used. The test panels were

Figure 8.9. Changes with time of polymerized safflower 22, and G–H DCO at 550°F (a) viscosity, and (b) acid number.

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TABLE 8.10 Comparison of Safflower, Soy, and Linseed Polymer Viscosities Viscosity, undiluted Acid No.

Gardner Holdt

5.06 6.45 7.08 7.58 10.1 4.41 6.75 5.47 7.42 9.91 13.5

Q + 2/3 X + 1/3 Z + 1/3 Z2 + 1/4 Z6 + 1/3 Q + 1/2 X + 1/2 Z2 + 1/3 Z6 X + 1/2 Z2 + 1/2

Material Safflower

Linseed

Soy

Stokes 4.57 14.5 24.1 38.7 220 4.5 15.3 39.6 148 15.3 38.2

Viscosity, 75% NV Gardner Holdt

Stokes

A + 2/3 E + 3/5 G + 4/5 K + 1/4 W A + 1/2 E + 1/5 1 + 3/5 U + 1/4 E + 1/2 1

0.60 1.34 1.93 2.81 10.7 0.58 1.28 2.40 6.8 1.33 2.25

TABLE 8.11 Blown Non-Break Safflower Oil at 180°F Viscosity Cooking Time (hr)

Color Gardner

Acid No.

0 10 18 28 42 48 53

10 1 1/2 1 1/2 2 3+ 4 7

0.5 1.6 3.9 5.6 7.8 8.9 12.4

Saponifi- Gardner cation No. Holdt 190 206 — 218 221 — 231

A H+ T Z2/3 Z4 1/3 Z6 Z8 2/3

Stokes

Log Viscosity (Stokes)

0.50 2.05 5.50 25.6 75.1 145.0 770.0

1.698 0.312 0.740 1.408 1.876 2.161 2.887

TABLE 8.12 Blown Safflower 22 G at 180°F Viscosity Cooking Time (hr)

Color Gardner

Acid No.

0 10 18 28 31

5+ — — — 5+

1.8 — — — 3.0

Saponifi- Gardner cation No. Holdt 192 — — — 206

G+ U X Z2 Z31/4

Stokes

Log Viscosity (Stokes)

1.70 6.27 12.70 36.2 50.7

0.230 0.797 1.103 1.559 1.705

230

Safflower

immersed in the caustic solution for 90 min, at which point the best film was half destroyed. The table lists the oils from best (first) to worst (last). A similar test was performed with immersion in boiling water for 1 hr. In the heavy bodied group, Z3 DCO proved slightly better than safflower 22Z3 regarding whitening at the end of the hour. Both were superior to 22 heat-polymerized safflower and linseed oils that had similar whitening levels. In the unbodied group, safflower 22G and DCO G–H were approximately the same and were superior to nonbreak safflower and V.M. linseed oils.

Limed Oils Limed oils, high-acidity bodied oils thinned with mineral spirits and reacted with lime to form calcium soaps of polymerized fatty acids, can be readily made from safflower polymers. The polymers AZ7–Z8 lime quickly and can be used for cold liming or hot liming in solution. If liming is to take place, the polymers should have viscosities of at least Z5–Z6. Table 8.24 compares safflower and linseed polymers limed under similar conditions. The limed safflower oil dries at a similar speed to the limed linseed oil, is nonyellowing, and displays a higher solution viscosity than the linseed product. Table 8.25 illustrates a limed oil made from conjugated safflower bodied to Z7 viscosity. Cold liming takes 16 hr to reach full viscosity; warm liming will reach full viscosity in 2–3 hr. The higher viscosity of safflower limed oils allowed for good coverage and hiding qualities in primers, and flat and semigloss paints.

Figure 8.10. Changes with time in a blown nonbreak safflower oil at 180°F log of (a) viscosity, (b) acid number, and (c) color.

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Figure 8.11. Changes in log of viscosity with time of a blown nonbreak safflower oil and blown safflower 22g.

Maleated Oils Safflower oil can be easily treated with maleic anhydride. These products hold their color well and have an improved dry. Charlie Thurmond and his associates at Monsanto presented the first paper comparing a maleated safflower oil to a maleated soybean oil (17), and showed maleated safflower oil to be superior in every way (Table 8.26). Maleic addition can be accomplished by reacting the oil and maleic anhydride at 400–450°F for 1 hr, then adding a polyol, such as pentaerythritol, and finishing esterification at 450–565°F. The final temperature used depends on the TABLE 8.13. Constants for Blown Safflower Oils Blown Z3–Z4 Viscosity range Iodine value (Wijs) Specific gravity (15.5°/15.5°C) Color (Gardner 1933) Saponification value aModified Hanus Method. Source: Von Mikush (10).

Mineral Spirits Blown Soluble Blown Z3 Safflower 22 Z3

Z3+–Z4+ 95–105

Z3 98 (avg.)

Z3+–Z4+ 141.4 (avg.)a

0.980 4–6 218

0.972 9–11 208–212

4–6 206

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TABLE 8.14 Comparison of Drying of Safflower, Linseed, and Soybean Oils 0.003” Films Vehicle Clarity

Film Tack Time (hr)

Film PrintFree (hr)

After Tack

Drier Formulation: 0.5% lead, 0.05% cobalt, and 0.05% calcium as metal: oil content Safflower Ppt. 3.75 7.2 Slight Raw linseed Slow ppt. 2.7 7.5 Very slight Raw soya Ppt. 5.8 Tacky after 8 h Strong Drier Formulation: 0.5% lead, 0.05% cobalt, and 0.02% manganese as metal: oil content Safflower Clear 4.25 7.0 Slight Raw linseed Slow ppt. 2.7 7.7 Very slight Alkali-refined soy Ppt. Wet after 8 h Strong Source: Prane (15).

polyol used, percentage of maleic added, and acid value or viscosity desired. Fumaric acid can also be used, and conjugated safflower oils also maleate readily. Since viscosity increases rapidly as the cook progresses, tight temperature controls are needed. The Northern Regional team at Peoria demonstrated that safflower oil could be maleated to much higher product yields than either soy or linseed oils (18). Cummings of PVO obtained a patent in 1972 on a process in which safflower oil was reacted with maleic anhydride at only 300–350°F in the presence of sulfur dioxide. This produced products that were lighter in color, lower in viscosity, and of higher acidity than earlier examples (19). Cummings suggested that this product could be incorporated at 10% of the vehicle in a latex paint, contributing greater smoothness in brushing, better leveling, and reducing foaming in the can.

Co-polymers Safflower oil and conjugated safflower oils styrenate readily. Dow Chemical, among others, published recommendations during the early 1950s on copolymerization with vinyl toluene (20). In 1970, Cummings obtained a very interesting patent covering in situ conjugation of safflower oil (using SO2 as a catalyst) during co-polymerization with styrene or TABLE 8.15 Comparative Drying Times Out of Dust Drier Formulation: 0.24% lead, 0.03% cobalt, and 0.015% manganese as metals: oil content Dehydrated castor oil Z3 1 5 /6 Dehydrated castor oil G–H 6 Safflower 22 Z3 2 3 /4 Safflower 22 G 2 2 /3 Nonbreak safflower oil 6 1 /3 Z2 safflower oil—heat bodied 3 1 /3 V. M. linseed oil 4 1 /2 Z2 linseed oil—heat bodied 3 3 /4 Nonbreak soybean oil 8

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TABLE 8.16 Comparative Study of Nonbreak Safflower Oil with Various Driers Drier Metal (%) Pb

Co

Mn

0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24

0.03

Zn

Ca

Zr 4

0.03 0.015

0.03 0.03

0.015 0.03 0.015

0.03

0.10

Time to Set to touch (h) (min)

Time Out of Dust (h) (min)

25 5 4 5 4 5

7 4 8 7 7

8 25 25 25 25 35

20 45 20

TABLE 8.17 Comparative Study of Heat-Bodied Safflower Z2 with Various Driers Drier Metal (%) Pb

Co

Mn

0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.05

0.03

Zn

Ca

Zr

0.03 0.015

0.03 0.03

0.015 0.03 0.015 0.10 0.2

Time to Set to touch (h) (min) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

30 45 15 50 45 45 40

Time Out of Dust (h) (min) 3 4 2 4 3 3 3

25 5 55 50 35 20

TABLE 8.18 Influence of Drier Formulation on a Thick Raw Safflower Oil Film 0.003” Drier Metal (%) Pb

Co

0.5

0.05 0.05

Mn

Ca

0.05 0.5 0.5 0.5

0.5

0.5 0.5 0.5 0.3 0.5 0.5 Source: Prane (15).

0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.8 0.05 0.05 0.05

0.05 0.05 0.05

0.05 0.05 0.05 Ppt. 0.1 0.05 0.05 0.02 0.05

0.02 0.02

0.02

Vehicle Clarity Clear Clear Clear Clear Ppt. Ppt. Slow ppt. Dense ppt. Clear Slow ppt. Slow ppt. Ppt. Clear Ppt. Clear Slow ppt.

Film Tack Time (hr)

Film Print-Free Time (hr)

6.75 Tacky after 8 4.25 7.75 Wet after 8 4.5 6.25 3.8 6.0 4.5 6.0 5.25 7.25 Wet after 8 4.0 6.5 7.5 Tacky after 8 6.0 Tacky after 8 3.7 5.5 3.75 6.5 3.25 5.8 4.2 Sl. tacky after 8 3.25 5.8 3.25 6.5

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TABLE 8.19 Comparative Study of Safflower 22 G with Various Driers Drier Metal (%) Pb

Co

0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24

0.03 0.03 0.03

Mn

Zn

Zr

0.03 0.015 0.015 0.03 0.015

0.03

0.10

Time to Set to touch (h) (min) 1 2 1 1 3 2

Time Out of Dust (h) (min)

40 40 10

2 4 2 2 4 3

40 12 30 30 30 45

TABLE 8.20 Comparative Study of Safflower 22 Z3 with Various Driers Drier Metal (%) Pb

Co

0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.24 0.05

0.03 0.03 0.03

Mn

Zn

Ca

Zr

0.03 0.015 0.015 0.03 0.015 0.2

0.1 1

Time to Set to touch (h) (min) 1 1 1 1 1 1 6

5 5 5 5 5 15 2

Time Out of Dust (h) (min) 2 2 2 3 3 2 35

45 45 15 40 40 45

methyl methacrylate. By doing this during the manufacturing process, Cummings was able to avoid the cross-linking that occurs when conjugated oils are heated, which forces down the conjugation content of a resin. This results in a product that is less viscous and has a lower acid level than if a conjugated safflower oil was used as the starting material. Table 8.27 compares three alkyd resins produced by similar methods from three starting materials with in situ conjugated nonbreak safflower oil. Table 8.28 compares the films produced on steel panels that have been treated in various ways. It is obvious that a superior coating results (21). TABLE 8.21

Safflower Oils, Drying Studiesa

Nonbreak Safflower 22 G Safflower 22 Z3 Heat-bodied, Q viscosity Heat-bodied, Z2 viscosity Heat-bodied, Z6 viscosity Heat-bodied, Z7 1/2 HA Blown, G viscosity Blown, Z3 viscosity Soluble blown, Z3 viscosity Safflower 22–70 aDrier Metal (%): 0.24% Pb, and 0.03% Co.

Time Set to Touch (hr) (min) 4 25 1 10 1 5 3 0 1 30 1 45 1 10 4 20 3 10 3 10 0 50

Time Out of Dust (hr) (min) 8 0 2 40 2 45 3 54 3 25 3 25 4 25 6 6 7 45 6 0 3 0

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TABLE 8.22 Flexibility Comparisonsa Kauri Reduction Test Passes (%) Nonbreak safflower Heat-polymerized safflower, Q viscosity Heat-polymerized safflower, Z2 viscosity Heat-polymerized safflower, Z6 viscosity Heat-polymerized safflower, Z7 1/2 Safflower 22 G Safflower 22 Q Safflower 22 Z3 Safflower 22–70 Regular blown safflower, Z3–Z4 Miscible blown safflower, Z3 Comparative Oils: Dehydrated castor oil, G–H Dehydrated castor oil, Z3 V. M. linseed Heat-polymerized linseed, Z2 viscosity Nonbreak soy oil

295 290 285 285 240 285 290 290 250 250 275 280 290 225 235 295

aDrier Formulation: 0.24% lead, 0.03% cobalt, and 0.015% manganese as metals; oil content.

TABLE 8.23 Caustic Resistance Dehydrated castor oil Z3 Safflower 22 Z3 Heat-polymerized safflower Z2 Heat-polymerized linseed Z2

Dehydrated castor oil G–H Safflower 22 G Nonbreak safflower V. M. linseed

TABLE 8.24 Comparison of Limed Oils Produced from Bodied Safflower and Linseed Oils

Viscosity Color Acid number Limed Oil: Percent solids Acid value Consistency at 40% NV Color Viscosity reduced to 25% aLinseed oil gel slightly firmer.

Safflower

Linseed

Z7 + 1/2 7 1/2 26.2

Z7 + 1/2 9 22.1

40.2 41.2 0.66 0.83 Solid flowable gel Solid flowable gela 6 1/2 8 1/2 1 Z7 + /3 Z6

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Safflower

TABLE 8.25 Characteristics of Limed Oils Produced from Z7 Conjugated Safflower Oil Starting Oil: Viscosity Color Acid number Limed Oil: Acid number Nonvolatile Color Viscosity at 40% NV Viscosity at 25% NV

Z7 1/2 8 8.3 0.3 40% 5–6 Soft solid gel Z6

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, PVO developed great quantities of data on copolymerization and published it in three bulletins (22–24). Bulletin 14 described the use of conjugated safflower oil with styrene and methyl methacrylate. Bulletin 18 dealt with 100% methacrylated alkyds. The last bulletin described two methods for vinyl toluenation using equal mixtures of 122G and nonbreak safflower oil. In the first method, vinyl toluenation was carried out at the relatively low temperature of 120–125°C with sufficient VMP naphtha (special naphtholite) present with the base oil or resin so that when the oil was completely co-polymerized with the monomer, a theoretical nonvolatile value of 60% would result. This procedure did not require any reflux. In all cases, the vinyl toluene (or monomer mixture) was mixed with the catalyst and added from a dropping funnel so that the addition would be completed in 120–140 min. It was equally possible to start with the 100% solids resin and add vinyl toluene (VT), standard 265 thinner (VM&P), and catalyst to it 120°C. If processing permitted, this latter method gave clearer VM&P solutions. As a general rule, 43% of blended oil, modified oil, or isophthalic alkyd was copolymerized with 57% of vinyl toluene or monomer mixtures. Usually, a 3% excess was used when calculating the monomer and was subtracted from the VMP naphtha to correct for the fact that 100% conversion of the monomer was never obtained under short cooking schedules. Thus, the values approached the desired 60% solids. Also, to help bolster the percent nonvolatile, the peroxide catalyst was considered to be a solvent. TABLE 8.26 Comparison of Maleated Safflower and Soy Oils Safflower Acid value Viscosity (100% solids) Color Drying times: Set to touch 6 hr 24 hr

Soy 8 K 8

6.6 l 8

2 3/4 hr Slight tack Trace tacky

4 1/2 hr Heavy tack Trace tacky

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TABLE 8.27 Alkyd Resins Produced from In Situ Conjugated Safflower Oil and Three Other Starting Materials D Nonbreak Safflower Oil

E Conjugated Safflower Oil

F Dehydrated Castor Oil

G Nonbreak Safflower In Situ Conjugation

Starting oil: Properties at 50% solids in xylene: Viscosity at 25°F 8 stokes V- 40.4 stokes Z2 1/3 35.1 stokes Z2Gardner color 1–2 2–3 3–4 Conjugation: Cis-trans (%) 0 2.25 5.22 Trans-trans (%) 0 4.78 3.33 Isolated trans (%) 0 21.3 7.0 Properties at 100% solids in xylene: Acid number 0.8 23.5 23.8

23 stokes Z+ 3 2.44 3.84 22.9 12.8

In the second method, a high temperature of 135–145°C with reflux was employed. In order to obtain the higher temperature when using VM&P thinner, 65% theoretical solids was maintained during and after monomer addition. This was made possible by starting with a 65% solids solution of base resin or blended oils in VM&P. The 65% solids solution was brought to the reflux temperature and the vinyl toluene, catalyst, and VM&P were added dropwise over 2–3 hr. After holding for 3 hr, the product was further thinned to 60% with VM&P. The initial reflux temperature was approximately 145°C; this dropped to about 136°C. This method allowed the temperature of any cook to be regulated, since the VM&P could be added separately from time to time to control concentration and viscosity. These methods produced products that were soluble in low Kauri Butanol value aliphatic thinners and propellant systems. While they were not very solvent or impact resistant at high monomer levels, they produced products that were useful in sanding sealers, aerosol sprays, hammer finishes, and paper coatings, among other applications. The use of 122 conjugated safflower oil led to the following improved properties over proprietary products previously available: TABLE 8.28 Test Results Obtained from Steel Panels Coated with the Alkyd Resins Produced in Table 8.27 Treatment

D

Immersed in boiling Bad blistering water for 30 min (tiny blisters); recovered after 45 min Immersed in cold Not affected water for 24 hr Immersed in 75% of film 2% aq. NaOH at removed 25°C for 30 min

E

F

G

Somewhat less blisterin than in D; recovered after 45 min Not affected

Several large blisters; film removed where it had blistered Not affected

No blistering

10% of film removed

15% of film removed

Not affected removed

Not affected

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Safflower

1. Lighter colors: 1–2 Gardner. 2. eHigher viscosities: Allowed use of more solvent at same KU. 3. Faster drying: Made the nonconjugated portion of the formula dry faster. 4. Greater flexibility: Dimer content acted as a plasticizer. 5. Nonyellowing: No linolenic acid present. 6. Better clarity: Nonconjugated oils tended to cloud. 7. Greater compatibility: Infinite VM&P tolerance. 8. Early sanding: Tested better. 9. Low-temperature dry: At 40°F demonstrated nongumming in sanding tests. 10. Lower cost: Allowed the use of 50% nonbreak safflower oil, and inexpensive solvents.

Alkyds In the years when its low price allowed employment as an industrial oil, safflower oil achieved its greatest use in the alkyd resin field (25,26). An alkyd resin is the reaction product of a polyfunctional alcohol with a polybasic and a monofunctional acid (27). Practically every major paint manufacturer employed safflower oil modified alkyds extensively in their products during the 1950s to the 1950s. Safflower oil was shown by Thurmond et al. to alcoholize more easily and rapidly than either linseed or soybean oils (Table 8.29 [17]), by Gordon et al. to be clearly superior to soy in all alkyd lengths and to linseed for certain special uses (28), and Prane compared a number of alkyds of various lengths quite early in the 1950s (Table 8.30 [15]). Pruett et al. showed in an accelerated yellowing experiment that safflower short oil alkyds resisted yellowing better than any other vegetable oil except cottonseed (29). Safflower oil’s quick rate of alcoholysis, because of its formation of linear polymers, enables safflower oil alkyds to reach complete esterification at a low acid number without excessive viscosity. Since safflower oil polymerizes relatively slowly in the 400–500°F range, the range at which most esterifications occur, raising the temperature slightly will increase the rate substantially if a higher viscosity is desired. Conjugated safflower oil alcoholizes more easily and with less catalyst than DCO requires. Other than limiting temperatures to a maximum of 450°F to avoid premature jelling, all types of alkyds can be formulated from conjugated safflower oil. Safflower 122 alkyds and enamels baked to equal hardness and had more resistance to baking yellowing than dehydrated castor alkyds and enamels. Conjugated short oil alkyd enamels are more compatible with melamine resins and are of equal hardness and color quality as DCO. When cost was considered, the conjugated safflower products were far superior until safflower prices began to escalate in the 1970s. Table 8.31 illustrates three different oil length alkyd formulations made from 122G oil. The short- and medium-length resins are well suited for baking and fast air-dry applications; the longer alkyd can be combined with tall oil fatty acids to make an inexpensive, very fast drying, low-color product, or an excellent copolymer reactor with styrene, vinyl toluene, or methyl methacrylate. Tables 8.32–8.34 compare conjugated safflower oil alkyds with similar DCO alkyds.

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TABLE 8.29 Alkyd Alcoholysis Rates for Safflower and Other Oils Alcoholysis at 450°F with Glycerine and 0.1% Ca(OH)2 Safflower oil 5 min Soy oil 15 min Linseed oil 13 min Alcoholysis at 480°F with Pentaerythritol and 0.1% Ca(OH)2: Safflower oil 30 min Soy oil 43 min Source: Thurmond et al. (16).

Varnishes Safflower oil varnishes demonstrate good color and flexibility, excellent drying, better than average water resistance, and caustic resistance that is equal to or better than equivalent grades of linseed oil. Conjugated safflower varnishes compare favorably with equivalent formulations produced from DCO.

Pigmented Finishes In 1957 PVO employed the Daniel Litter Laboratories of New York to evaluate safflower oil in paint formulations. Their conclusion was “Safflower is generally superior to either soya or linseed oil in paint performance.... Therefore, safflower oil can be considered to be a more versatile oil than any other on the market. Through this versatility it offers a distinct saving in plant facilities and in inventory....Safflower oil should be critically studied by every vehicle and paint manufacturer” (30).

In 1963 PVO was able to report, “One of the nation’s largest paint companies (DuPont) now incorporates safflower oil as eighty percent of their total paint vehicle for their first quality line of paints” (31). Sears’ DeSoto Paint Co. incorporated safflower oil in practically every alkyd-based product in their-Berkeley plant during the same period. By this time, PVO had 12 years of durability exposure studies showing that safflower had the weathering durability of linseed oil. This was confirmed by various paint company test fences. Exterior house paints made from safflower compared to linseed showed the differences detailed in Table 8.35. The principal difference was the drying pattern. Safflower oil paints remained open after application as linseed began to set to a skin dry. The safflower paint set up shortly after the linseed paint and continued to dry throughout the entire film depth. The top surface of the linseed paint dried quickly, but the lower part of the film remained soft for a long period. In 2–3 days, the safflower paint film was hard and tough, while the linseed paint still had a soft underlayer. This manner of drying accounted for safflower’s superiority in low flattening and wrinkling resistances, and allowed one to apply a second coat more quickly. Safflower High Acid

240

TABLE 8.30 Composition and Properties of Alkyds

Type

Safflower Soybean Linseed Safflower Soybean Linseed Safflower Soybean Linseed Safflower Soybean Linseed

Source: Prane (14).

%Oil 42.5 42.5 42.5 52.6 52.6 52.6 65.4 65.4 65.4 63.2 63.2 63.2

%PA 40.9 40.9 40.9 35 35 35 25 25 25 25 25 25

Alcohol Glycerol Glycerol Glycerol Glycerol Glycerol Glycerol Glycerol Glycerol Glycerol Penta Penta Penta

Thinner (50% Xyolo and 50% M.S.) M.S. M.S. M.S. M.S. M.S. M.S. M.S. M.S. M.S.

%NV 50 50 50 50 50 50 75 75 75 70 70 70

Z3 Z Z4+ Q–R P+ Z2K+ H JW–X W–X Z2+

Cut Viscosity G–H 40% 40% 40% 40% 40% 40% 65% 65% 65% 60% 60% 60%

WI+ YAl AJ+ C A+ B+ II M

Acid No.

Calc. Hydrox. Value

Color Gardner

12.7 11.1 11.7 4.5 7.5 5.8 9.3 8.9 8.2 9.2 8.4 8.2

84 84 84 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40

6+ 8+ 8+ 7 9+ 8+ 79 8889+

Safflower

Short Short Short Medium Medium Medium Long Long Long Long Long Long

Oil

Viscosity G–H

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TABLE 8.31 Comparison of 122G Safflower Alkyds at Different Oil Lengths Oil Length

36%

PVO safflower 122–G Baking Synthetic glycerol, 99% 605 parts Ca(OH)2 120 Phthalic anhydride 683 Triphenyl phosphite 2.4 Benthal 101 Synthetic glycerol 292 Xylene for reflux 90 Cooking temperature (°F) 430 Cooking time = 4 hr % Nonvolatile 50 Solvent Xylene type Viscosity S–T Color (Gardner) 2–4 Acid number of solution 3–4 Dry—1.5 mil film — (0.3% Pb, 0.03% Co, 0.015% Mn)

43%

55%

Baking 738 parts 150 678 3.0 — 234 90 430 2–3 hr 50 Xylene type M–P 2–4 3–4 —

Air dry or baking 924 parts 177 585 3.0 — 113 90 440 4–5 hr 50 Mineral spirits Z2–Z4 2–4 3–5 3/4 hr initial dry 15 hr through dry

Source: PVO, unpublished data.

TABLE 8.32 Baking 43% Oil Length Alkyds—Comparison of Safflower 122G and Dehydrated Castor Oil Oil in Alkyd

% U.F. in Vehicle

Filma

Baking Time Sward at 300°F Hardness

Safflower 122G D.C.O. Safflower 122G D.C.O. Safflower 122G D.C.O. Safflower 122G D.C.O. Safflower 122G D.C.O.

— — 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15

Clear Clear Clear Clear Enamel Enamel Enamel Enamel Enamel Enamel

30 30 30 30 30 30 60 60 240 240

Safflower 122G D.C.O.

15 15

Enamel Enamel

30 30

10 8 10 10 16 14 22 20 32 28

60° Gloss

— — — — 86 85 85 85 — — Reverse impact 20 Gauge steel >160 in lbs >160 in lbs

Color of Film — — — — White White White White Slightly yellow Yellow

a1 Mil dry film on glass or steel; no driers. Source: PVO, unpublished data.

Z-7 bodied oil was often used as an additive in other paint formulas to give improed brushing, leveling, antisag, and antisettling properties (32). A new safflower paint surface has a different “feel” from linseed paint; linseed paints have a slicker feel. However, the less slippery character of safflower-based paints does not affect dirt pick-up.

242

Safflower

TABLE 8.33 Study of Compatibilities of Safflower 122G and Dehydrated Castor Oil 43% Oil Length Alkyds with Urea Formaldehyde and Melemine Resins Filma Comp. SwardComp. Sword Comp.Sward Comp. Sward Safflower 122G Alkyd, U.F. Safflower 122G Alkyd, U.F. D.C.O. Alkyds, U.F. D.C.O. Alkyds, U.F. Safflower 122G Alkyd, Melamine Safflower 122G Alkyd, Melamine D.C.O. Alkyd, Melamine D.C.O. Alkyd, Melamine

Clear Enamel Clear Enamel Clear Enamel Clear Enamel

C C C C C C C C

16 16 24 24

C C C C C C C VSI

24 — 24 42 40

— — — — C VSl C I

C C C C C SI C I

42 44

32 32 44 48

a2 mil dry film on glass, baked 300°F, min, no driers. bRatio by weight of vehicle solids. Abbreviations: C = Comptible; VSI = Very Slightly incompatible; SI = Slightly Incompatible; and I = Incompatabile. Source: PVO, unpublished data.

TABLE 8.34 Baking 54% Oil Length Alkyds—A Comparison of Safflower 122G and Dehydrated Castor Oil Alkyds Alkyd

Filma

Driers

Safflower 122G D.C.O. Safflower 122G D.C.O. Safflower 122G

Clear Clear Enamel Enamel Enamel

None 6 None 6 None 8 None 8 0.3% Pb, 0.03% Co, 0.015% Mn, 0.3% Pb 0.03 Co, and 0.015% Mn Driers 60° Gloss

D.C.O.

Alkyd Steel Safflower 122G D.C.O. Air-Dried Films Alkyd Safflower 122G

D.C.O.

Filma

Enamel None Enamel None

Sward

95 97

Hardness

Tack

Wrinkle

12 10

32

None None None None None

None None None None Trace

32

None

Trace

Reverse Impact 20 Gage >160 in lbs >160 in lbs

Filma Driers Cotton-Free DryTack at 18 hr 1 d Enamel 0.3% Pb, 6 ½ hr Slight 2 0.03% Co, and 0.015% Mn Enamel 0.3% Pb, 3 ½ hr Slight 4 0.03 Co, and 0.015% Mn

1 wk 6

6

a1 mil dry film on glass or steel. Source: PVO, unpublished data.

In 1959 PVO also issued a comprehensive bulletin recommending very long oil length (90%) isophthalic oils made with safflower. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation did not manufacture isophthalic oils or alkyds, but it did provide proven formulas to paint manufacturers wanting to use the technique.

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In 1960, Carlton of Cal Research presented a comprehensive paper showing how safflower oil could be reacted with various phthalic isomers and how the acidolysis products could be converted into alkyds. The process worked best with a mixture of oil and fatty acids, required no catalysts, and was safer, since glycerol could be pumped into a closed kettle, thus eliminating any chance for fumes to escape (33). But PVO soon decided to produce a pure safflower oil vehicle of 100% solids derived from specially processed safflower oils—Saff White. This was designed to allow a paint manufacturer to purchase one vehicle that could be used to formulate a complete exterior house paint with good qualities and low cost. Saff White could be combined with alkyds to make exterior trim enamels. Saff White sold for a premium of $0.03/lb over nonbreak safflower oil and $0.015 less than conjugated 122G safflower oil.

Water-Thinned Drying Oils As the higher demand for water-based paints began to reduce markets for paints thinned with mineral spirits, PVO’s research department responded with PVO 44–0, an emulsion of specially processed safflower oil based on work by Cummings. It involved a nonionic emulsifier in conjunction with a fully bodied Z8 safflower oil, blended with G bodied oil and dispersed as 5 µm sized particles in a continuous water phase. Two patents were issued covering this invention (34), and the means to produce it (35). This product was offered for $0.042/lb over nonbreak safflower oil prices. It combined the advantage of oil and latex paints, offering 1 hr recoating time, easy application and clean up, excellent adhesion to chalky surfaces, durability, and blister resistance. Paints formulated from it required no primers. It had the properties detailed in Table 8.36. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation hired the Litter Laboratories to test and verify the adhesion of PVO 44–0 house paints over chalky surfaces. They tested 44–0 tint base and white paints coated over a naturally weathered standard house paint with an ASTM chalk rating of 4. This was tested with other products as a comparison; the result was tested with tape tests that showed the amount of paint film TABLE 8.35 Comparison of House Paints Made from Safflower and Linseed Oils

Initial dry Skinning Through dry Initial color Tint colors Ease of pigment wetting Yellowing Weathering Tint retention Dew flattening resistance Wrinkle resistance Source: PVO, unpublished data.

Safflower Oil Paint

Linseed Oil Paint

Slower Not pronounced Faster White Clear Wets with some difficulty Nonyellowing Very good Good Excellent Excellent

Faster Pronounced Slower Off-white Slightly dull Wets easily Yellows Very good Good Fair Fair

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Safflower

removed by pulling off tape (Table 8.37). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation ran similar tests over 3-year exposed paints and achieved similar results (Table 8.38). Panels held under running water after 1 hr showed no wash off. 44–0 paints held their whiteness in all exposures and registered 83% on a Photovolt Reflection Meter versus 72% and 76% for two standard linseed paints. The emulsion at 65% solids conttent in water was a milky white liquid and when formulated it was recommended to bring the pigment volume concentration to 30% for best results. It could be formulated in standard manufacturing equipment. While the PVO 44–0 material was successful and subsequently was licensed to Pacific Anchor company, the paint trade for oil-based products was declining—they were not fashionable. Safflower oil’s escalating prices also limited the market. Earlier work by Cummings and Sjoquist in producing weather-durable, clearcoating products and wood finishes had led to the PVO 44–0 product (36), but this work also resulted in development of emulsions with a synthetic latex and 35–95% water to produce superior clear redwood finishes. Normally the preferred synthetic latex was homopolymer of vinyl acetate, although many other polymers were successfully tried.

Urethanes The chance to use vegetable oils in urethane foams attracted PVO into backing the formation of Polytron Corporation in 1957. Others had advocated use of vegetable oils (37), including safflower oil (38), in polyurethane foams, but in practice other polyols gave better performance at a cheaper cost. During the 1960s, PVO also introduced Povothane safflower urethane enamel vehicles that had all of the properties of the best alkyd enamels with superior chemical and water resistance, abrasion resistance, and hardness (Sward hardness of 28 after 1 month [39]).

Particle Board Safflower oil achieved rather large consumption in the Northern California plant of Masonite Corporation. When safflower prices stayed under $0.15/lb, the Masonite Corporation used over 6,000,000 lbs annually for several years. TABLE 8.36 Properties of PVO 44–0 Appearance pH Viscosity at 25°C 50–60 Keb Units Nonvolatile content Lbs/gal: Emulsion Solids Average particle size 1.5 µm Freeze-thaw Source: PVO, unpublished data.

Creamy-White Fluid 5–7 100–330 cP (Brookfield #4 spindle 20 rpm) 6.5 ± 1% 8.0–8.1 7.9–8.0 Passes 120 hr cycles of 0°F

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TABLE 8.37 Adhesion Properties of House Paints Produced from PVO 44–0 and Competing Products upon Chalky Surfaces Paint Removed (%) 1 Week 1 Month PVO 44–0 white emulsion paint PVO 44–0 tint-based emulsion paint Acrylic house paint Polyvinyl acetate house paint Conventional oil house paint

5 0 95 40 0

2 0 95 30 0

Automotive Finishes In the 1950s, George E. Moser, PVO’s sales representative in Detroit, convinced researchers at the Ford Motor Company and their suppliers to employ safflowerbased short oil alkyds in automotive finishes, and they were used for several years. Eventually these were replaced by coconut oil based alkyds modified by urea, or melamine-formaldehyde resins. Japanese auto makers continued to use safflower oil during and after this period; automotive markets were probably the largest consumer of industrial applications of safflower oil in Japan. Acrylics have captured these markets today.

Fat Spliting Since normal safflower oil is relatively pure in the linoleic fatty acid, one might expect that it would attract producers of pure fatty acids. In 1959, Beal and Brekke from USDA’s Peoria Utilization Laboratory reported on a liquid-liquid extraction method capable of producing 95% pure linoleic acid from 75% linoleic safflower fatty acid using furfural as a selective solvent (40), hexane as a secondary solvent, and fractionating in a Podbielniak “double-pup” centrifugal extractor. In 1963 this was followed by a cost study by Johns, Beal, and Griffin, Jr., the showed that the method was capable of making 97% pure linoleic acid at a cost of $0.21/lb starting with safflower oil at $0.168/lb (Figure 8.12 [41]). Screenivasan et al. proposed a low-temperature crystallization process for producing high-purity linoleic acid from safflower, employing temperatures as low as 70°F with acetone and petroleum ether as solvents (Figure 8.13). This paper also TABLE 8.38 Properties of House Paints Produced from 44–0 and Competing Products Exposed for 3 Years Paint Removed 1 Week 1 Month PVO 44–0 tint-base emulsion paint Properietary acrylic emulsion paint Property linseed-solvent paint

0 95 0

0 95 0

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Safflower

gave a complete description of various experimental methods for preparing safflower methyl esters and methyl linoleates as well as discussion of methods for identifying the various isomers and adducts affecting purity (42). However, relatively little has been commercially produced in this direction because of safflower oil’s increasingly high price. The oleic mutation (see Chapter 10) has seen more efforts to split and esterify oleic fractions.

Plasticizers Greenspan and Gall showed that Safflower oil yielded epoxides of good stability and color that might have promise as stabilizers or emulsifiers (43). Researchers at Battelle Memorial Institute and the USDA Northern Regional Research Laboratory, working on a cooperative project, found that adducts of conjugated linoleic acid or esters prepared from safflower fatty acids or esters that were reacted with dienophiles (di-n-butyl maleate and n-butyl acrylate) were catalyzed by traces of selenium (44). These products were evaluated as plasticizers in polyvinyl chloride (PVC), acrylonitrile rubber, polyvinylidene chloride, and in PVO plastisols by comparison with control plasticizers (di-2-ethyhexyl sebacate, a commercial petroleum plasticizer and a polymeric epoxy plasticizer). Overall the acrylic adducts appeared to be equal to or better than the controls in PVC. In PVC plastisols, the experimental plasticizers demonstrated better viscosity characteristics than the controls. In studies with polyvinylidene chloride, compatibility was good, but slight problems with heat stability were observed. In nitrile rubber comparisons, most adducts were compatible and the dimethylester of the acrylic adduct equalled or exceeded all controls. The overall rating was to place the safflower oil adduct esters and expoxides as equal to the petroleum type of control plasticizer but with less volatility and less effect from ASTM oil extraction. Later researchers at the Northern and Eastern Regional Laboraories reported on PVC plasticizers produced by hydroformylation or oxo reaction under rhodiumtriphenylphosphine catalytic action and then converted to accetates (45). Acetoxymethylated safflower oil produced good compatibility and outstanding permanence that was better than commonly used plasticizers. Subsequently, another group from the same laboratories reported that plasticizers employing safflower esters of monodi-, and tricarboxystearic acid (particularly methyl dicarbomethoxysterate containing 13–49% methyl tricarbomethoxystearate) did a good job of plasticizing PVC and had better antimigration and volatility qualities than di-2-ethyhexylpthalate, the industry standard (46). Again, the limitation on safflower oil in this field is its high price.

Herbicide Carriers Small amounts of safflower oil have been employed as carriers for herbicides, but price has generally kept it from this market (46).

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Figure 8.12. Qualitative flow diagram showing the steps to produce linoleic acid from safflower oil. Source: Lyon and Applewhile (37).

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Methyl Esters In the 1950s, PVO began producing safflower methyl esters (PVO Methyl Linoleate) that, were offered at a $0.035/lb premium over nonbreak grades. Safflower methyl esters were produced by PVO using the method described by Bradshaw (48). A typical batch consisted of 12,000 lbs of nonbreak safflower oil, 1,800 lbs of anhydrous methanol, and 55 lbs of caustic soda flakes. The procedure was as follows: 1. Mix caustic and methanol by adding caustic slowly to methanol with agitation. The temperature may rise to 110°F.

Figure 8.13. Flow sheet showing the steps necessary to produce crystallization of farry acids from corn, cottonseed, and safflower oils. Source: Screenivasan, et al. (42).

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2. Warm the oil so that it is slightly higher in temperature than the caustic methanol. Add the caustic methanol to the oil with good agitation Blanket with nitrogen (not carbon dioxide). 3. While agitating, raise the batch temperature to 160°F, while agitating hold at 160°F for 1–1.5 hr. Cut off the heat and agitation and cool to ambient temperature. The settling time should be a minimum of 2 hr, overnight is better. 4. Draw off the glycerin by gravity from the bottom. A cone-bottomed tank produces the best separation. The glycerin layer is dark and quite viscous, when compared to the light-colored, water-thin methyl ester layer. There is a clean line separating the two layers. 5. The crude methyl esters at this stage contain some residual glycerol, methanol, and soap. Several procedures can be used to clean it up. a. Using the same batch equipment, warm water; about 5–10% of the batch can be added with agitation. A settling time of 1 hr is adequate. On the amounts shown in the typical batch above, 10 lbs of muriatic acid added to the wash water has been sufficient to neutralize the soap. Check the wash water after settling. If the pH is much above 7.0, wash again with acidic water. The wet methyl esters can be dried by blowing for 30 min with air or CO2 heated to 220°F. The final product is filtered with filter aid. b. An alternative method for cleaning up the crude methyl esters is to put them through a centrifugal water wash refinery, followed by vacuum dry ing. This is our current procedure. Filtration is not necessary in this case if all lines are clean (49). This procedure resulted in 95% yield of methyl ester. Cummings developed a double alcoholysis process that produced yields close to 100%. This entailed going through the first four steps and then adding 735 lbs of additional anhydrous methanol, heating the mixture to 150–160°F for 1 hr, cooling, and water washing, The methanol does not separate but is removed with the wash water. Table 8.39 displays analysis and characteristics for this product compared to its origins, Table 8.40 illustrates the comparison between typical alkyds formulated from methyl linoleate and dehydrated castor oil, soy, and linseed fatty acids Table 8.41 compares the final results. In 1966, Schofield, Butterfield, and Dutton from the USDA Peoria labs demonstrated a convenient system for preparing pure methyl linoleate employing double countercurrent distribution with continuous stills and an acetonitrile-hexane solvent system (51), In 1986, catalytic isomerization of safflower oil and methyl linoleate with rhodium complexes was reported that could be done under very mild conditions to produce good yields of conjugated products (52).

Miscellaneous Reactions Kaparthi and Chari charted the solubility of safflower oil in aqueous solutions of ethanol. They found that the solubility was dependent on the temperature and concentration, with safflower oil being completely soluble in absolute alcohol at 70°C, soluble in 98% ethanol at 80°C, and requiring 90°C to be soluble in 95% alcohol (53).

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Other interesting reactions that have been reported (particularly by USDA Regional Labs and by Indian cooperators) concerning possible industrial uses for safflower oil are listed as follows: • • • • • • •

Reactions of mercuric acetate in methanol to produce 94–96% purity methyl linoleate when extracted with pentane (54); Introduction of hydroxyl groups at or near double bonds (55,56); Diels-Aldur adducts involving maleic anhydride reacting with conjugated and epoxidized safflower fatty acids (57), styrene in the presence of hydroquinone (58), or acrylic and related acid dienophiles (59); Carboxylation of safflower oil to produce products useful as lubricants or plasticizcrs (60); Emulsion-polymerization of safflower acrylic or methacrylic esters to produce hard, glossy, water- and chemical-resistant films (61); Dimerizalion of safflower fatty acids using sulphate-treated zirconia catalyst (62); and Reduction of safflower oil by refluxing sodium borohydride in a mixture of t-butanol and methanol to give a 75% fatty alcohol yield (63). TABLE 8.39 Analysis, Characteristics, and Comparisons for Methyl Linoleate Analysis, Characteristics, Comparisons: Methyl Linoleate Methyl Linoleate as: Conjugated diene Isolated diene Methyl oleate Methyl palmitte Methyl stearate Physical and Chemical Characteristics:

None 76% 14% 7% 3%

Methyl Linoleate Acid number 0.5 Gardner color 9 Color after heat bleaching 3 Maximum moisture and volatiles 0.3% Comparisons with Safflower Oil and Safflower Fatty Acids: Safflower Safflower Methyl Oil Fatty Acids Linoleate Iodine number (Wijs) 143 140 143a Saponification number Viscosity 25°C, Cp Specific gravity 15.5/15.5°C Refractive index 25°C Unsaponifiable matter Total fatty acid Diene conjugationb aModified Hanus Method. bAOCS Tentative Method Cd-7–48 (50). Source: PVO, unpublished, data.

192 50 0.924 1.4744 0.5% 95.6% nil

202 24 0.903 1.4646 0.9% 99.0% nil

192 6 0.890 1.4574 0.5% 95.2% nil

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TABLE 8.40 Comparison of Alkyds Made from Methyl Linoleate and Competing Materials Methyl Linoleate Weight of material Pentaerythritol Phthalic anhydride Lime Physical Properties: Nonvolatile matter Viscosity, (G-H) Acid no. (at 100% solids) Color Gardner

D.C.O.

Fatty Acids Soy

Linseed

448 108 100 0.249

421 108 100 —

421 108 100 —

421 108 100 —

100% Zl2.4 8 3/4

70% Z+ 6.0 4 1/2

100% Z2+ 2.6 10 1/4

100% Z+ 2.5 10 1/4

The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation tried increasing safflower sales in the late 1960s by offering safflower polyanhydride (SPA) by reacting amounts of maleic anhydride with safflower oil or derivatives (64,65). Subsequently, conjugated epoxy esters and conjugated resin vehicle were offered. A conjugated epoxy ester was a 50 wt% epoxy ester prepared from an epoxy resin and a safflower fatty acid emulsified with water and a nonionic emulsifier. A conjugated resin vehicle was a 45% conjugated 122 G safflower isophthalic alkyd. Research in industrial applications of safflower oil has almost declined to nothing in the 1980s and 1990s as safflower prices increased and discouraged use in these markets. Some industrial oil research continues in Mexico, the United States, and Europe. Utilization continues for conjugated safflowers, employment in spealized alkyds, and in specialized coatings for formed metal items. The overall market in the United States for industrial use of safflower oil probably has fallen to a maximum of 5,000,000 lbs. TABLE 8.41 Evaluations of Alkyds Produced in Table 8.40a Deying Time (hr)

ML

4

Set up slight tack Practically no after tack

Set up slight tack Practically no after tack

2 2

3 12

24 Sward Hardness 48-hr air dry 40 min, 250°F Resistance after 48-hr air dry 5% alkali Hot water Cold water

DCO

Failure time (min) 25 120 55 175 Whitened and Very slightly softened; whitened, no recovered in softening; no 45 min recovery

Soy

Linseed

Not set up

Set up tacky

Soft and tacky

Practically no after tack

1 3

3 8

35 55 Very white, soft, no recovery

25 90 Whitened and softened; recovered in 45 min

aDried using a drier combination of metal: oil 0.24% lead, 0.03% cobalt, and 0.015% manganese.

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References 1. “Safflower Oil,” PVO bulletin, San Francisco, California, 1952, 35 pp. 2. Safflower Oil and Safflower Oil Products—Properties and Applications, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, 1954, 78 pp. 3. Falkenburg, L.B., W. De Jong, D.P, Hanke. and S.B. Radlove, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 25: 237 (1948). 4. Rathjen, W.E., L.O. Cummings, and J.A. Kneeland, U.S. Patent 3,278,567 (1966). 5. Nanavata, D.D., B. Nath, and J.G. Aggarwal, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 36: 226 (1959). 6. Sastry. G.D.R., B.G.K. Murthy, and J.S. Aggarwal, Paint Manuf. 40: 32 (1970). 7. Markandey, V., G.S. Sastry, et al., Paint Manuf. 41: 40 (1971). 8. Christensen, L.M., Am. Paint Jour. 34: 54 (1950). 9. Rhoades, W.F., and A.J. DaValle, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 28: 466 (1951). 10. Von Mikush, and Frazier, 1 & E Chem. 13: 782 (1941). 11. “Conjugated Safflower Oil,” PVO bulletin, San Francisco, California, August 1953, 21 pp. 12. Frankel, E.N., E.A. Emken, and V.L. Davison, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 307 (1966). 13. Frankel, E.N., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 33 (1970). 14. Korus, R.A., and T.L. Mousetis, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 61: 537 (1984). 15. Prane, J.W., Official Dig. Fed. Paint Varnish Prod. Clubs 26: 344 (1954). 16. Packer, H., and L.M. Christensen, Am. Paint J.: 60 (1950). 17. Thurmond, C.R., A.R. Hempel, and P.E. Marling, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 28: 354 (1951). 18. Miller, W.R., E.W. Bell, J.C. Cowan, and H.M. Teeter, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 36: 394 (1959). 19. Cummings, L.O., Patent 3,639,650 (1972). 20. Vinyltoluene for Use in Paints and Varnishes, The Dow Chemical Company, Plastics Department, 1954. 21. Cummings, L.O., U.S. Patent 3,668,159 (1972). 22. PVO Bulletin No. 14: PVO Conjugated Safflower 122 Oils in Metal Decorating Vehicles, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, Richmond, California, 1963, 18 pp. 23. PVO Bulletin No. 18: Copolymers of Conjugated Safflower Oil Alkyds, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, Richmond, California. 24. PVO Bulletin No 20: 122 Conjugated Safflower Oil Vinyl Toluene Copolymers, Vegetable Oil Corporation, Richmond, California. 25. Purdy, R.H., L.O. Cummings, C.E. Claassen, and J.A. Kneeland, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 36: 26 (1958). 26. Rheineck, A.E., and L.O. Cummings, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 409 (1966). 27. Kraft, W.M., E.G. Januse, and D.J. Sughrue, in Treatise on Coatings, edited by Myers and Long, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1967. 28.Gordon, J.A., P.T. Hamlin, and R.J. Cartmell. Safflower Alkyds—Preliminary Investigation, Presented at Fall Meeting, American Oil Chemists’ Society, San Francisco, Sept. 27, 1950. 29. Pruett, O.S., M.L. Blank, and W.O. Lunberg, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 38: 27 (1954). 30. Frederick K. Daniel, Report of February 8, 1957. 31. PVO Bulletin No. 7: “Exterior House Paints”; PVO, Richmond, California, 6 pp. 32. PVO Bulletin 21: “HAZ7 in Paints”, PVO, Richmond. California, 6 pp.

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33. Carlton, E.F., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 37: 366 (1960). 34. Cummings, L.O., and J.A. Kneeland, U.S. Patent 3,266,977 (1966). 35. Cummings, L.O., U.S. Patent 3,669,900 (1972). 36. Cummings, L.O., J.W. Sjoquist, and J.A. Kneeland, U.S. Patent 3,332,899 (1967). 37. Lyon, C.K., and T.H. Applewhite, J. Cellular Plastics. 1967. 38. Lyon, C.K., V.H. Garrett, and E.N. Frankel, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 51: 331 (1974). 39. PVO Bulletin No. 10: “Urethane Enamel Vehicles,” PVO, Richmond. California, 7 pp. 40. Beal, R.E., and O.L. Brekke, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 36: 397 (1959). 41. Sohns, V.E., R.E. Beal, and E.L. Griffin, Jr., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 40: 169 (1963). 42. Screenivasan, B., J.B. Brown, E.P. Jones, V.L. Davison, and J. Nowakowsky, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 39: 255 (1962). 43. Greenspan, F.P. and R.J. Gall, J. Am. Oil Chem Soc. 33: 391 (1956). 44. Teeter, H.M., J.C. Cowan, L.E. Gast, W.J. Yurgen, and R.A. Clark, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 38: 117 (1961). 45. Frankel, E.N., F.L. Thomas, and W.F. Kwolek, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 52: 498 (1975). 46. Dufek, E.J., FL. Thomas, E.N. Frankel, and G.R. Riser, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 53: 198 (1976). 47. Hirst, L.E., and R.D. Inicki, Proc. Northeast Weed Control Conf. 24: 30 (1970). 48. DuPont, E.I., U.S. Patent 2.271,615. 49. PVO Purchase Specification PS-4 (tent.) Oct. 28, 1970. 50. Official and Recommended Methods of the American Oil Chemists’ Society. 51. Schofield, C.R., R.O. Butterfield, and H.J. Dutton, Lipids 1: 163 (1966). 52. Amitabha, B., and T.C. Kasar, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 63: 1444 (1986). 53. Kaparthi, R., and K.S. Chari, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 36: 77 (1959). 54. Steams, E.M., Jr., H.B. White, Jr., and F.W. Quackenbush, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 39: 61 (1962). 55. Rao, G.V., and K.T. Achaya, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 286 (1970). 56. Rao, G.V., and K.T. Achaya, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 289 (1970). 57. Sastry, G.S.R., B.C.K. Murthy, and J.S. Aggarwal, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 48: 686 (1971). 58. Sastry, G.S.R., B.C.K. Murthy, and J.S. Aggarwal, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 48: 689 (1971). 59. Sastry, G.S.R., B.C.K. Murthy, and J.S. Aggarwal, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 49: 192 (1971). 60. Frankel, E.N., F.L. Thomas, and W.F. Kwolek, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 51: 393 (1974). 61. Joshi, S.K., and P.C. Chatterjee, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 54: 607 (1978). 62. Radjadhyaksh, R.A., U.D. Chaudhari, and G. W. Joshi, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 65: 793 (1988). 63. Rao, Y.R., Patulu, A.J., and G. Lakshminarayana, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 66: 597 (1989). 64. PVO Bulletin No. 28: “SPA Safflower Polyanhydride,” PVO, Richmond, California, 3 pp. 65. PVO Bulletin No. 27: “SPA,” PVO, Richmond, California, 3 pp.

Chapter 9

Medical, Pharmaceutical, Cosmetic, and Edible Research

Although safflower is an ancient crop, its use as an oil crop is quite recent except in India. Most countries that produced safflower used it as a source of dye and food coloring, or as a medicinal. Even in India, very little research was done on safflower as a food oil until production of the crop began to increase in the 1960s. Prior to that time, Indian safflower oil was extracted by very primitive methods and consumed locally; even today most safllower oil is produced for local use. When John Blum of Durkee Famous Foods presented a paper for the Symposium on Safflower in 1966, he was able to cite only 17 references in the literature, several of which were statistical in nature (1). Even after 1961, with the polyunsaturated boom, research on safflower oil’s edible applications had remained quite sparse. Very little knowledge existed in the late 1950s or early 1960s about the proper techniques for handling (starting with the seed), extracting, refining, bleaching, deodorizing, transporting, and bottling edible safflower oil or using it to manufacture other products, such as margarine or mayonnaise. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s competitor. VOPCO, had an edge on PVO in this field, since it was a general refiner and processor of edible vegetable oils in addition to being a miller, while Durkee, Best Foods, Lever Brothers, Kraft, and General Mills all had refining and food-processing experience. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had no experience in producing edible grades of safflower oil, nor did it have expertise in the techniques in the best ways to process, handle, store, and transport. It had to play a quick game of catch-up. Therefore, most of the research on edible safflower oil initially concentrated on a study of its composition (see Chapter 3) which then proceeded along two paths: medical, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic research; and other research on processing (much of it was applied and unpublished) and on how to deal with factors safflower’s structure and how these factors were affected by light, time, temperature, and various chemical and physical modifications.

Medical Research Today the words, “cholesterol,” “coronary heart disease,” and “polyunsaturated and saturated fats” are part of the American vocabulary. This was certainly not the case in 1950 when safflower was being introduced into U.S. production. However, epidemiological studies begun during World War II in Scandinavia had led people to notice that the incidence of coronary heart disease decreased when dietary fats were in short supply. 254

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Mortality rates fell in Norway and Finland, where a significant decrease in fat consumption had occurred, whereas the mortality rate declined very little in Denmark where fat intake was relatively unchanged (2). Keys et al. made a landmark report comparing diets and heart disease among Japanese living in Japan with people of Japanese extraction living in Hawaii and California; he found a striking correlation between consumption of dietary fat, serum cholesterol, and the occurrence of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease (3). The Hawaiians and Californians studied had increased their intake of saturated fats through the consumption of meat and dairy products, and their measured plasma lipids and incidence of atherosclerosis went up. Jolliffe reported on an investigation of United Nations food and mortality data that showed that increased consumption of saturated fats was the leading factor to explain why certain countries had higher coronary heart disease death rates than others (4), A Korean war pathology report showed a shocking 77% incidence rate of heart disease or lesions in the bodies in young men that had died of other wounds (5). During the period in which these studies were conducted, others were investigating how serum cholesterol could be altered by feeding different types of fat, particularly polyunsaturates (6,7). Further investigations along this line demonstrated the existence of a link between lowered blood cholesterol by ingestion of polyunsaturated fats, while cholesterol increased if diets contained high levels of saturated fatty acids and/or cholesterol (8–10). Several large efforts were commenced during this early period, and the announcement about the huge Framingham study concerning the effect of diet on heart disease in men sparked a great deal of interest among nonscientists for the first time. Keys et al. produced reports in which interpretations of multicountry data led to predictability formulas demonstrating that saturated fatty acids raised cholesterol levels twice as effectively as polyunsaturates lowered serum cholesterol readings (11, 12). Later, Hegsted et al. were to elaborate on these findings (13). Opposing this argument were Kinsell and others who believed that increasing dietary polyunsaturates was a more effective treatment than Ansel Keys’ argument advocating less saturates (14–16). Kinsell and PVO became very close, and Kinsell’s work influenced PVO’s entry into edible safflower oil marketing. Subsequently, Kinsell became a medical advisor for the National Safflower Council of NIOP and some of his later work was supported by contributions raised by that group. In later years, Fred Mattson became closely associated with work that backed Procter and Gamble’s claims for Crisco oil, while Stanford University did work sponsored by Corn Products. After earlier work sponsored by Corn Products, Roslyn Alfin-Slater prepared a report for the National Safflower Council, seemed to get caught up in the enhusiasm of the day, and reported that the Framingham study showed that the risk of coronary heart disease for men with serum cholesterol over 260 mg was four times greater than for men with cholesterol levels below 200 mg (17,18). However, over the course of 12 years or longer, the study found no significant differences in mortality between the groups fed a cholesterol-reducing diet and a control diet (19). Reports on other long-term studies showed varying results as well (20–22). Why dietary ingestion of polyunsaturates appeared to lower serum cholesterol level was unknown. Various investigators proposed different mechanisms over the years: increased excretion of sterols and bile acids in the feces or conversion of cho-

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lesterol in the bile acids (23–25); accelerated conversion of cholesterol to cholic acid (26); altered bile acid and sterol structures through intestinal action (27); redistributed cholesterol into other tissues (28); modified lipid configuration (29); and increased fatty acid oxidation resulting in decreased synthesis of low-density lipoproteins (LDL) that transport cholesterol into the blood (30). Earlier researchers reported only cholesterol levels, and were unconcerned or unaware of LDL and high-density lipoproteins (HDL). In the 1970s, researchers began to realize the importance of differentiating the two (31). Brown and Goldstein did a marvelous job of describing the flow of research on LDL receptors and their role in forming atherosclerotic plaque (32). Studies in recent years have shown that polyunsaturated fatty acids tend to dampen the suppression of LDL receptors by saturated fatty acids and cholesterol (33–36). In 1985, Mattson and Grundy showed that HDL was depressed by polyunsaturates but not by monounsaturates, while LDL was lowered equally by both fatty (37). That study led researchers to look at monounsaturated fats as having the potential to produce better dietary regimes to reduce serum cholesterol. Other studies also demonstrated that monounsaturates might lower LDL equally with polyunsaturates (38,39). Sirtori et al. reported a lessened reduction (40), while Mensink et al. found a heightened reduction (41). Grundy published extensively on monounsaturates using oleic safflower oil as his dietary medium (42–44). Soon HDL was considered by the press and public to be “good cholesterol” and LDL as “bad cholesterol.” The National Diet-Heart Study had published its final report in 1968 (45). A substantial group of men aged 45–54 achieved significantly lower serum cholesterol levels, when compared to their starting measurements and to a control group, by eating modified foods that contained less total fat, less cholesterol, and increased amounts of polyunsaturates. This group suffered one-half the heart disease rate that of similar age groups. Other studies at the V.A. Hospital in Los Angeles on older men, and by Turpeinen et al. on younger, hospitalized men showed lower cholesterol levels and lower heart disease mortality when compared with control groups (22, 46). Many other studies have given similar results (47–50). Based on all of these studies, various recommendations were made about fat in the diet (51–54), the most prestigious and widely circulated being the recommendation of the Nutrition Committee of the American Heart Association and the joint statement by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Science, the National Research Council, and the Council on Foods and Nutrition of the AMA (55). In brief, the recommendations are 1. People should begin to have their cholesterol levels checked routinely. 2. Persons who had elevated cholesterol levels that put them “at risk” should be given appropriate medical advice—namely, maintaining desirable body weight by a combination of exercise and reduced caloric intake and to reduce cholesterol and saturated fat consumption. In the latter case, this meant substiting polyunsaturates for saturates in the diet. 3. Dietary advice should take care to provide for an adequate intake of essential nutrients. 4. Manufacturers should be encouraged to make food products with clear labeling.

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that would enable the public to achieve these dietary goals available at reasonable prices. Any legislative or regulatory hindrances should be repealed. 5. Research studies should be undertaken to measure whether modification of plasma lipids and other risk factors actually do reduce the risk of heart disease. The fifth point was considered in the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial and the Coronary Primary Prevention Trial which were launched at that time. The latter included drug intervention as well as dietary modification—both were based on polyunsaturated oil diets. In 1982, the American Heart Association made a major policy announcement a about a National Cholesterol Education Program and expanded on this in a fourth announcement in 1986, issuing three new booklets containing dietary advice (56–58). All ignored the more recent work on diets high in monounsaturates and their effect on LDL/HDL cholesterol levels, and recommended avoidance of olive oil. An AMA spokesperson characterized Grundy’s high monounsaturated diet as important research, but found it too early to alter its recommendations (59). The Metabolic, Nutritional, and Health Aspects of Olive Oil and Oleic Acid, a colloquium on monounsaturates, had been held on November 21, 1985 at the New York Academy of Medicine. It was attended by researchers, such as Mattson; Grundy; George Christakis, who had directed the New York Prudent Diet (47,48) study; and Keys, at that time engaged in revising his earlier predictability studies (11,12) to accommodate monounsaturates. Eventually, the public message began to be moderated (60,61). As Alfin-Slater pointed out in her review for the National Safflower Council (17), epidemiological studies provided the first clues that led to hypotheses that supported clinical experimentation with dietary changes involving more polyunsaturates and less cholesterol. These changes were aimed at reducing serum cholesterol and, in turn, decreasing the risk of coronary heart disease. The hypothesis that increasing polyunsaturates and reducing ingested cholesterol to reduce serum oholesterol was proven out in a number of studies. The hypothesis that the dietary changes would decrease the risk of coronary heart disease had to be proven in longterm studies, and has been less conclusive. Other hypotheses, such as lowering serum cholesterol by reducing the consumption of saturates, by increasing the polyunsaturated to saturated (P/S) ratio in the diet, or by eating foods that had a high P/S ratio in order to counterbalance more saturated foods, have also been tested. No tests have been made on whether a product that contained 78% linoleic acid was, “better” than one that contained 76%, or even if the human body could detect such small differences. Similarly, no proof has been produced that having 6% saturated fatty acids in a food is “better” than 8%. The statistician can show that such a fat will provide less saturated fatty acids in an average diet, but the statistician cannot prove that it is significant to the body. The advertisements can show that safflower oil has the highest level of polyunsaturates of any commercially available oil and has the highest P/S ratio, while canola oil, when compared with other oils, contains less saturated and more unsaturated fat by 1 or 2%—but is this significant to the average human body? Not really, according to a 1991 report in which 16 healthy men were fed diets in which 39% of the total calories were in the form of

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safflower or canola oil (62). Neither regime altered levels of HDL, but both diets lowered total cholesterol and reduced LDL. Huge advertising campaigns have been built on “contains no cholesterol,” “highest in polyunsaturates,” “lowest in saturated fatty acids,” linked in a clever way with fear of heart disease. Then researchers began to understand that their original measurements of serum cholesterol were sometimes flawed. As time passed, they realized that serum cholesterol was a much more complex system than was first thought. Campaigns have been waged against eggs, dairy products, red meat, animal fats, tropical fats, among others, and in favor of polyunsaturates, oat bran, defatted rice bran, then normal rice bran, monounsaturuted fats, and w-3 oils. Now the press, and subsequently the public, have been introduced to the specter of trans fatty acids that must be eliminated from the diet. Hundreds of diet plans have been advocated since 1950, making many of the doctors who wrote them best-selling authors. Since the 1960s, the Food and Drug Administration has tried to develop better food-labeling regulations concerning fats, but as of this writing they still are not agreed upon, Needless to say, the public is confused. Eminent researchers have spent their lives trying to find answers. Some people, such as Thomas J. Moore, question their results because these researchers have received massive funding from institutions or corporations that had an interest in finding answers that benefit their cause (5). Other researchers like Reiser have warned against extremism, propaganda, and unbalanced diets (63). Reiser has been involved in two extensive studies on the metabolic rate of fatty acids, including linoleates, from safflower oil (64,65). It can be argued whether data obtained in studies of various dietary effects on the organs of mice, rats, rabbits, or monkeys means that the same changes will occur in humans, but the studies certainly point out the need for much more knowledge. For example, Sugano et al. reported in 1989 on a study of colon tumors in rats fed diets containing either partially hydrogenated corn oil (trans fat) versus high oleic safflower oil (cis fat). After 60 weeks, little difference was observed from either regime except for steroid excretion (66). In 1985, the American Society for Experimental Biology handed down a consensus report discounting claims that trans fatty acids raise cholesterol (67). Tidwell, McPherson, and Gifford found that trans, trans isomers of linolein were intermediate in their effect in lowering cholesterol in the blood—better than coconut oil but worse than safflower oil (68). This contrasts with the highly publicized Harvard study on nurses (69), or the Dutch study that condemns trans fatty acids in margarines (70), and has received much attention recently. Another area that has stimulated extensive research is the effect of heated or oxidized fat, especially linoleic acid, on health, particularly for the acceleration of atherosclerosis or cancer. Kubow cites 34 references from 1976–90 on this subject (71) His conclusions on the subject are worth quoting: “The relationship between the long-term consumption of lipid peroxidation products and human health is not clear. The results of animal studies must be interpreted with caution, since the dietary intake of oxidized products must be high (10–15%, w/w, of diet) to produce an effect on laboratory animals, and may not represent an intake typical of humans. In the absence of more epidemiological data, it

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is reasonable to assume that a moderate consumption of mildly oxidized fats, although not entirely free from suspicion, is safe. It can be concluded that overused and abused oils undoubtedly contain oxidized material that, if chronically consumed in large amounts, could pose a human health risk. Further research is needed on the long-term effects of consuming mildly oxidized fats produced under commercial and domestic conditions.”

Many research reports on laboratory animals seem to show an increase in various types of cancerous tumors when linoleic-rich diets containing safflower oil are compared to w-3 diets or oleic fatty acids (72,73). Yet Lasekan. Chasen, et al. have shown that many of the studies on induced mammary tumorigenesis in rats ignore the fact that 4% linoleic acid is required for optimum tumor generation (because of its essential nature in the diet itself) and that once the optimum amount of linoleic acid is provided in a diet, oleic or linoleic-rich diets have similar effects on tumor promotion (74). Li Dajue edited scores of abstracts on a myriad of studies involving every bodily function imaginable (75). Hagenbart pointed out, “Human studies, while useful, have thus far been limited in number” (76). Not only are good studies on human subjects lacking in many areas of study, but too often when results involving a human trial are released they may be based on as few as two subjects and/or incorporate feeding products that do not correspond to what people normally ingest in their everyday diets. In a way, it appears that some researchers are more intersted in generating publicity that in good science. Hagenbart quotes David Kritchersky of the Westar Institute, Philadelphia, as saying, “Everyone who speaks on heart cancer should begin with, ‘Based on what we know now...’ ” (76). In the 1950s, reducing caloric intake was the primary dietary role. In the 1960s, lowering serum cholesterol seemed to be the primary dietary objective, first by increasing ingestion of polyunsaturates, then by using products with better P/S ratios. Safflower oil was well suited for those purposes. Next came a resurgence of emphasis on lowering saturates and negative questions about polyunsaturates’ role in cancer elevation or aging of the skin, that pushed the emphasis toward canola oil. Then increased understanding of HDL and LDL inspired interest in olive oil and oleic safflower. Most recently, studies pushing for decreasing the general fat consumption have returned to prominence (temporarily ignoring oat bran, aerobic exercising, jogging, w-3 capsules, etc.). We continue to learn more about the human body and the foods we eat through medical research the diet. But it is clear that we have much more to learn, and the interplay between genetics and environmental changes, including our diet, is an issue for never-ending study. The factors we have examined in the earlier parts of this chapter concern traditional Western types of Medical Research, as it relates to safflower oil, but safflower seed, florets, and oil have been employed in Eastern cultures for thousands of years as medicinals. Weiss reported that Sanskrit writers referred to safflower oil as kusumbha, and that it was regarded as a purgative, not only in India, but also in Egypt and East Africa. In more modern times, charred safflower oil is used for the treatment of sores and rheumatism (77). Although there are many references listing the employment of safflower-based products as medicinals in Egypt, France. India, and China, reports on the results obtained through long-term trials are sparse.

260

Safflower

Formulas for numerous medicinals containing dried safflower florets appear in the Chinese literature (78–84). They are combined with many other herbal products, mainly for the treatment of pain, various heart problems, and menstrual problems. A tea based on safflower florets was introduced in Beijing in 1991 (81), and a polyamino acid nutrient based on safflower protein isolate is manufactured in Inner Mongolia (85). I have been unable to read the original reports of recent Chinese medical research (83,84,86–90).

Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Research In ancient times, safflower was used as an ingredient in rouge by the Egyptians, French, and Japanese, but we have no research data available that supported these applications. The Macassar hair oil of India has long employed safflower oil as an ingredient (91). In the 1950s, PVO worked with Abbott Laboratories on an application to employ safflower oil instead of sesame oil as a carrier for penicillin, but I do not believe any data was published. Shapiro et al. published data in 1957 on the use of safflower oil as a vehicle for the injection of androgens (92). In 1960, Singleton et al. demonstrated that safflower oil was able to produce emulsions that were better able to withstand repeated freezing-thawing cycles than emulsions made from more saturated oils, such as cottonseed (93). Particle size remained stable at all levels of thawing. This showed that safflower oil had good potential as a dispersant for solutions of dextrose to be used in intravenous alimentation. Inclusive data on Abbott Fat Emulsion (10%) that was derived from safflower oil was published in 1979 (94). In 1985, the Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel produced a 27-page study concerning all aspects of safflower research. It contained a bibliography of 145 references, most of which had to do with dietary effects of safflower (95). This report listed, as of 1981, 94 cosmetic products that contained safflower oil as an ingredient; the bulk of them employed a concentration of 5% or less in the formulations studied. In animal tests, safflower was not an eye or skin irritant or a contact sensitizer. Products containing up to 5% safflower oil were negative for human skin irritation, sensitization, or photosensitization. The panel concluded that safflower oil was safe as a cosmetic ingredient in the present usage practices (95). Surprisingly, one of the earlier references that should be of interest to cosmetologists was left out. In this report, Goodman found that safflower oil was nonallergenic (96).

Edible Research India has produced and processed safflower oil locally in tiny oil mills for many years (97), but serious research on safflower oil in India waited until the midtwentieth century. Safflower also is used in Bombay as an ingredient of Sweet Oil, made by crushing groundnuts, safflower, and sesame together (77). When the polyunsaturated boom stimulated interest in the United States, safflower oil faced problems. As Blum pointed out (1), because of its high iodine

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value and high linoleic acid content, safflower oil was susceptible to oxidation. This was accentuated by the relatively low content of g-tocopherol, the most significant natural antioxidant present in safflower oil. Soltoft and Dollear were blunt in their paper “Safflower seed oil is not as suitable for edible purposes as other domestically produced edible oils” (98). Also, margarine produced from safflower had a sandy texture (91). New ways needed to be found to deal with these imperfections so the public could have a highly polyunsaturated oil. Oil Research In PVO’s research laboratory, three types of safflower oil were evaluated regarding keeping quality. Prepress oil proved to have the best keeping quality (J. Kneeland memorandum to B.T. Rocca, Jr., April 15, 1957.) Well-Settled ExpellerPrepress Solvent-Extracted Oil Processed Oil Oil Unsaponifiable matter (%) Total tocopherols, as a-tocopherol Keeping quality, AOM value (hr)

0.61 71.5 4.75

0.54 62.0 4.25

0.54 71.0 7.75

Soon Kneeland reported that cooperative discussions with Durkee Famous Foods personnel had found that PVO prepress oil was also superior to solventextracted oil in producing salad oil (April 25, 1957, PVO memorandum). The solvent-extracted oil appeared to have a higher wax content and hence a poorer chill test since the wax was not removed by filtration. Prepress oil showed a slight wax cloud that was not troublesome and appeared later. Later work by PVO would produce recommendations to package safflower oil in amber glass bottles under nitrogen capping. The USDA Peoria Laboratory confirmed this in a series of tests against cottonseed and soybean oils that indicated that safflower oil was more light-stable than either of the previously mentioned oils but still recommended brown bottles (99). Much later, Faria and Mukai did a very thorough study on lipid photooxidation using safflower oil (100). They confirmed that photooxidation was proportional to the total amount of light absorbed and that a-tocopherol, an important compound that interrupts chain reactions and inhibits autoxidation, does little to inhibit photooxidation. They found that light not only degraded safflower oil in transparent bottles by creating photooxidation reactions but also enhanced the formation of free radicals leading to objectionable off-flavors. Another way to combat safflower oil’s polyunsaturated nature to oxidize was to add antioxidants. Beal, Moser, and Brekke of the USDA discussed antioxidant addition to safflwer oil in their early paper on preparation of safflower salad oil (101). Thompson and Sherwin presented a very thorough study of various commercial and experimental antioxidants employed in stabilizing safflower oil (102). Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), propylgallate (PG), and nordihydroquaiaretic acid (NDGA), the most widely used antioxidants at the time (along with citric acid as a synergist or metal deactivator) were discussed (Figure 9.1.).

262

Safflower

Figure 9.1. Structures of several antioxidants. They pointed out the relatively low stabilizing value these antioxidants had when dealing with safflower oil. In addition, BHA and BHT had an odor, while PG and NDGA lacked “carry through,” in food products. Also, NDGA was bitter, and both PG and NDGA produced color upon contact with iron. Since iron was involved in storage and food preparation, PG and NDGA were difficult to use. Table 9.1 lists the results of tests with the above compounds plus 2’,4’,5’-trihydroxybutyrophenone (THBP). A total of 60 experimental and food-approved antioxidants were reviewed by Thompson and Sherwin, and they concluded that the product with the most promise at the time was tert-butylhydroquinone (Figure 9.2 [TBHQ]). As can be seen in Figure 9.3, TBHQ was quite superior to the food-approved antioxidants of the day at concentrations from 0.01–0.05%. At a 0.25% concentration, TBHQ was between two to three times as effective as PG. tert-Butylhydroquinone subsequently became the state-of-the-art antioxidant in commercial applications for safflower oil until the 1980s, when public presure forced most manufacturers to drop the use of all antioxidant additives. TABLE 9.1 Antioxidant Potency in Safflower Oil Antioxidant None (control) BHA BHT PG NDGA THBP a

Duplicate tests.

Oil Life (Time to PV = 70 meq/kg oil) AOM at 210°F (hr) Storage at 110°F (hr) 9 9:10a 13:12a 24:23 12 21:18a

21 21:21a 49:50a 103:81a 56 90:101a

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Figure 9.2. Structure of TBHQ. Gyorgy, Murata, and Sugimoto reported in 1974 on use of tempeh, oil as an antioxidant in safflower and other oils. Tempeh is obtained by fermenting cooked, dehulled soybeans with the fungus Rhizopus oligosporus. An oil extracted from tempeh carries natural antioxidant properties. On safflower, however, it provided only, limited retardation of oxidation (103). In 1975, Cort et al. of Hoffmann-La Roche presented data showing how the chroman, 6-hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethylchroman-2-carboxylic-acid (Trolox C) produced superior antioxidant action with safflower oil (Figure 9.4 [104]). Table 9.2 is a comparison of the comparative antioxidant efficiency of Trolox C in safflower oil at 0.02% in a thin-layer test, compared to standard commercial antioxidants, and a control. Trolox C was not cleared for human consumption in 1975, and to my knowledge has not been employed commercially in safflower oil applications. The USDA Utilization Laboratories produced significant research while studying the oxidation reactions in safflower oil that the antioxidants were to prevent. Within this body of research, they developed new methods for following the compositional changes when oils are subjected to heat and deep fat frying. Frankel et al. did a series of studies on oxidation products using safflower and other oils (105–108). They showed that freshly deodorized safflower oil exhibited very similar dimer contents to other vegetable oils, yet it displayed vastly different oxidative and flavor stabilities. Deodorization destroys hydroperoxides, so it was difficult to analyze the extent of damage that may have occurred to an oil before deodorization. Using chromatography, it was possible to estimate the degree of oxidation that an oil had experienced and to be able to follow what was happening afterward. Later, Frankel and others at Peoria analyzed headspace volatiles from vegetable oils that had been subjected to accelerated oxidation (109). This expanded earlier work on volatiles from safflower methyl esters done at Albany (110). The oils were subjected to a modified Schaal oven test, in which the oil samples were stored for 8 days at 60°C and then analyzed. The oils were then stored at 60°C for an additional 8 days. The major volatile compounds formed in safflower and other oils are shown in Table 9.3. Safflower oil showed the highest peroxide value (PV) of the all oils tested and the most total volatiles after 8 and 16 days. This result would be expected because of the high level of unsaturation, which would cause the PV to increase at a geater rate than generation of volatiles.

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Figure 9.3. Antioxidant potency in safflower oil

Figure 9.4. The chemical formula of the chroman, 6-hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethylchroman-2-carboxylic-acid.

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TABLE 9.2. Comparison of Antioxidant Action in Safflower Oil Antioxidant Control BHA BHT PG TBHQ Trolox C

Time to reach 70 PV (meq/kg) 6 8 10 16 33 39

Schwartz and Rady at the USDA in Philadelphia reported that oxo-fatty acids (OFA) occur in a wide range of oils, including safflower oil (111). These nonvolatile carbonyls increase dramatically when oils are exposed to acidic conditions. Safflower oil with less than I.O PV contained 1.3 µmoles OFA/g with a spectrographic absorption maximum of 365–378 nm before exposure; after exposure, PV had elevated to 292 and the OFA level climbed to 48.6 µmoles/g. The same levels were attained by safflower oil permitted to oxidize in an open container under ordinary light for 2–3 years. Additional investigations by some of Frankel’s colleagues at the USDA Peoria Laboratory and the USDA Eastern Laboratory at Philadelphia gave further data on factors that affected oil flavor or that generated storage reactions showing the effect, respectively, of malonaldehyde acetals and of diclorocarbenes that were induced by ozonolysis (112,113). Previously, Forss et al. had shown vinyl-n-amylketone to be the compound resposible for metallic off-flavors in oxidized safflower oil or dairy products (114). Earlier, Yuki and Ishikawa measured tocopherol contents and AOM values for safflower oil, and eight other vegetable oils, before and after simulated deep-fat fyring (115). They showed that the residual ratio of tocopherol in treated oils increased in proportion to the degree of unsaturation, so that the level of tocopherol oxidation degradation was lowest in safflower oil. The results comparing linoleic safflower with oleic safflower showed that the tocopherols in more unsaturated oils are more stable than those in more saturated oils (Tables 9.4 and 9.5). In Table 9.6, Evans et al. compared room odors of safflower and oleic safflower oil, with other salad and cooking oils. The oleic safflower oil displayed much better oxidative stability than normal safflower oil and compared favorably with a other oils in room odor (117). In four papers over an 8-year period, Sims and Fiorti of General Foods published interesting data concerning various oxidation reactions for safflower. Their original paper showed that the addition of unsaponifiables isolated from olive, corn, wheat germ, and vernonia gave protection to safflower against oxidative polymerization during deep frying. 4-a-Methyl sterols produced good protection (118). A subsequent paper reported on high-temperature reactions of safflower oil with various amino acids (119); this work tied in with studies on the effect amino acids had on the autoxidation of safflower oil in emulsions (120). They also reported on the chemical and organoleptic properties of oxidized fats (121), and of dried emulsions (122). In liquid emulsions containing safflower and various amino acids, methionine demonstrated stong antioxidant tendencies, particularly if sodium caseinate was employed as the matrix. In freeze-dried emulsions, methionine, threonine, lysine, and

Volatilea Compound Pentane

Pentanal

Hexanal

2-Heptanal

Octanal

Nonanal

2,4-decadienal

Concentration (ppm) Storage Time (d) 0 8 16 0 8 16 0 8 16 0 8 16 0 8 16 0 8 16 0 8 16 0 8 16

aMajor volatiles formed from each oil. Source: Snyder et al. (109).

Canola

Corn

0.5 0.9 26.3 0.5 1.6 2.2 1.7 9.8 45.5 — 1.9 5.9 0.6 4.0 14.7 0.6 2.2 1.7 0.4 3.8 8.7 — 3.6 7.8

1.3 68.4 76.4 0.4 5.3 21.0 0.8 50.8 60.3 — 2.3 4.1 0.6 9.4 27.9 — 2.1 1.9 — 2.5 2.3 0.4 7.4 11.5

Cottonseed 1.1 82.8 117.9 — 6.2 20.8 1.2 47.6 59.3 — 7.5 8.9 0.6 23.3 39.1 0.6 2.5 2.4 — 2.7 2.5 — 5.7 10.0

Olive

Peanut

0.4 27.1 57.2 — 9.6 25.6 1.2 19.3 32.2 — 5.2 3.9 0.6 12.1 27.8 0.6 5.0 6.3 0.4 3.6 9.8 — 3.0 5.5

4.5 41.9 75.7 — 7.5 19.2 1.1 30.6 59.7 — 6.0 5.1 0.5 8.5 41.5 0.5 3.3 2.5 — 4.0 4.3 — 4.6 11.2

Safflower 1.6 110.8 144.7 0.4 7.3 20.8 0.8 41.5 110.6 — 8.9 10.0 0.5 29.3 56.3 — 3.6 3.7 — 1.5 1.5 — 7.0 14.8

Soybean Sunflower Seed 0.6 23.5 66.7 — 11.6 15.9 0.8 41.4 62.8 — 6.0 7.3 0.5 27.6 38.2 — 2.6 2.7 — 2.3 2.3 0.2 8.0 12.2

0.9 84.9 127.8 — 9.2 28.0 0.8 39.3 81.8 — 5.0 8.0 0.5 17.8 36.3 — 1.5 1.1 — 1.5 2.4 — 6.9 14.4

Safflower

Heptanal

266

TABLE 9.3 Effect of Storage on Intensity of Individual Volatiles

TABLE 9.4 General Properties of Oils Used in the Tests Soybean

Fe (ppm) Cu (ppm) Total tocopherol (TLC-GLC)d a-Tocopherol µ-Tocopherol d-Tocopherol Total tocopherol (EE)e Active oxygen method value (hr)

0.06 133.2 0.7 8.8 6/0.8 0.80 0.04 66.8 4.8 47.1 12.7 72.3 11.5

aIncreasing ratio of viscosity in treated oils to that of original oils. bmeq/kg, Henick’s method (116). c133/5 mm cel. dmg/100 g. eEE = Emmerie-Engel’s colorimetric method. Source: Yuki Ishikawa (115).

0.07 107.8 0.6 3.7 13/1.1 0.92 0.04 37.8 13.0 25.2 Trace 44.1 19.2

0.09 109.3 1.3 9.3 20/2.7 0.70 0.06 38.8 32.3 6.1 Trace 83.0 17.5

Corn

Cottonseed

Safflower

Safflower

Palm

0.06 108.4 1.5 4.8 10/1 0.85 0.04 85.7 20.4 65.2 Trace 93.8 19.0

0.06 110.0 1.2 15.2 11/1 0.60 0.02 62.6 38.2 25.1 Trace 68.2 15.5

0.06 150.2 0.3 10.9 5/0.5 0.50 0.03 33.0 28.1 3.4 1.2 35.1 8.0

0.05 85.2 1.1 4.9 3/0.3 0.88 0.08 34.2 31.6 2.5 Trace 37.3 27.3

0.05 52.1 0.8 6.4 14/1.2 0.58 0.04 18.9 12.4 6.5 Trace 38.5 45.0

Medical, Pharmaceutical, Cosmetic, and Edible Research

Acid value Iodine value Peroxide valuea Total carbonyl valueb Lovibond color, Y/Rc

Rapeaseed Rice Bran

267

268

TABLE 9.5 General Properties of Oils Treated Under Simulated Deep Fat Frying Conditions for 10 Hours Frying Conditions for 10 Hours Rapeseed

Rice bran

Corn

Cottonseed Safflower

0.31 127.6 40.0 16/1.9 20.7 0.80 0.04

0.55 104.0 32.2 20/2.9 18.6 0.90 0.04

1.02 107.1 32.1 30/7.5 9.7 0.80 0.08

0.29 104.9 41.2 15/2.3 15.4 0.95 0.04

0.16 107.2 60.3 18/2.8 11.4 0.60 0.03

0.27 142.7 49.9 131.0 17.8 0.70 0.04

0.28 82.5 34.3 12/1.2 11.5 0.80 0.08

0.39 49.5 44.0 13/1.5 10.7 0.95 0.04

53.6 (63.7) 4.4 37.8 11.5 53.1 (60.0)

25.2 (72.0) 12.0 13.2 0 26.5 (73.3)

27.5 (53.5) 25.0 2.5 0 61.1 (55.9)

41.0 (74.7) 13.1 27.9 0 52.5 (71.4)

47.2 (91.2) 30.8 16.2 0 48.7 (77.5)

30.0 (50.0) 24.6 3.0 2.4 27.1 (43.2)

17.3 (32.6) 15.6 1.7 0 16.0 (24.0)

6.2 (0) 4.0 2.1 0 9.2 (0)

6.0

8.0

11.5

8.3

9.0

4.0

7.5

4.5

aIncreasing ratio of viscosity in treated oils to that of original oils. bmg/100 g. cFigures in parentheses show the ratio of tocopherol contents remained in treated oils to that of original oils. dEE = Emmerie-Engel’s.

Safflower

Palm

Coconut 0.73 8.3 30.8 10/0.9 3.4 0.40 0.03 0 0 0 0 Trace

8.2

Safflower

Acid value Iodine value Total carbonyl value Lovibond color Y/R Viscosity increases (%)a Fe (ppm) Cu (ppm) Total tocopherol (TLC-GLC)b (80.2)c a-Tocopherol µ-Tocopherol d-Tocopherol Total tocopherol (EE)d (73.5) Active oxygen method value, hr

Soybean

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TABLE 9.6. Comparison of Room Odors for Safflower and Other Oils Sunflower Oil Initial flavor Room odor Active oxygen method, 8 hr PV

Safflower Oil

Oleic Safflower Oil

6.0 5.6 5.3

8.3 5.7 5.3

8.1 5.5 5.2

HWS Soy- Cottonseed bean Oil Oil 7.4 5.9 0.9

8.1 6.7 2.9

histidine all demonstrated antioxidant qualities. Added sugar tended to hasten oxidation (120). In dried emulsion studies, a formula was developed to correlate oxyen absorption and carbonyl value to predict flavor scores for emulsions with a high degree of accuracy (see the following equation [122]). Y = a - 0.02341 X1 - 1.6787 X2 Where: Y = Predicted average flavor score; X1 = O2 absorption determined (meq/kg oil); X2 = Carbonyl value, optical density at 500 µm wavelength; and a = Initial flavor score. At the 1993 joint AOCS/JAOCS Annual meeting in Anaheim, California, Takasago and associated presented a paper discussing the influence of moisture on the autoxidation of safflower oil under various levels of oxygen exposure (123). This was the latest in a series of reports published by Takasago dating back to 1980, measuring the various factors that would cause increases in safflower PV. In 1982, Takasago et al, showed that the PV of safflower autoxidized in oxygen for 110 hr at 50°C increased as the level of dissolved water went up (124). In air, the PV increased as well, but at a much lower rate. Table 9.7 illustrates differences between the two systems. In a 1982 paper they reported on the reactions between dissolved water and oxygen in various derivatives produced from safflower oil. Table 9.8 lists the results of their investigation (125). Shortly thereafter, a study was published showing the number of metal ions taken up by safflower oil containing various levels of dissolved water under various gases (126). They found that if the number of peroxide groups exceeded the dissolved water groups, autoxidation increased due to metal-ion catalysis. Surprisingly, metal ions dissolved at a greater rate under a nitrogen atmosphere than when under normal air or an oxygen atmosphere (Table 9.9). In 1983, they continued their study and determined the rates at which metal ions dispersed into safflower oil relative to the amount of dissolved water (Table 9.10 [127]). TABLE 9.7 Peroxide Value for Safflower Oil at Various Levels of Dissolved Moisturea H2O (ppm) PV (after air autoxidation) PV (after oxygen autoxidation)

10

20

84

244

0.8 24.1

266

406

844 854 1089 1518 1815

4.6 37.0 41.5

aSamples autoxidized in oxygen and in normal air.

41.1

40.7

6.2

8.3

46.5

57.8

270

TABLE 9.8 Relation Between Dissolved Water and Dissolved Nitrogen in Methyl Decanoate, Decanoic Acid, and 1-Decanol Oxygen Concentration (%) Organic Compounds Methyl deconoate

1-Decanol

Water

Log

45

1.65

200

2.30

646

2.81

2789

3.44

61 1084 2440 12350 191 782 12100 30794

1.79 3.04 3.39 4.09 2.28 2.89 4.08 4.49

20% Dissolved Timea gas (s) log O2 N2 O2 N2 O2 N2 O2 N2 O2 O2 O2 O2 O2 O2 O2 O2 O2 N2

aTime required to reach a constant oxygen concentration.

108 108 122 126 192 210 324 342 60 67 91 120 132 222 282 300 108 114

2.03 2.03 2.09 2.10 2.28 2.32 2.51 2.53 1.80 1.83 1.96 2.08 2.12 2.35 2.45 2.48 2.03 2.06

40% Timea

60% Timea

(s)

log

(s)

log

156 174 204 210 294 318 474 498 114 130 156 192 252 360 444 450 186 192

2.19 2.24 2.31 232 2.47 2.50 2.68 2.70 2.06 2.11 2.19 2.28 2.40 2.56 2.65 2.66 2.27 2.28

234 246 300 306 414 444 642 678 180 189 216 262 372 522 618 642 276 288

2.37 2.39 2.48 2.49 2.62 2.65 2.81 2.83 2.26 2.28 2.33 2.42 2.57 2.72 2.79 2.81 2.44 2.46

80% Timea (s) log 336 360 438 462 598 624 955 985 294 303 348 420 576 762 870 900 432 450

2.53 2.56 2.64 2.66 2.78 2.80 2.98 2.99 2.47 2.48 2.54 2.62 2.76 2.88 2.94 2.95 2.64 2.65

100% Timea (s) log 900 1060 1380 1560 1620 1820 2550 2760 780 810 930 1050 1800 1920 2040 2280 1200 1680

2.95 3.03 3.14 3.19 3.21 3.28 3.41 3.44 2.89 2.91 2.98 3.02 3.26 3.28 3.31 3.36 3.08 3.23

Safflower

Decanoic acid

Dissolved Water (ppm)

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Increased levels of dissolved water also promoted higher PV during long-term storage; however, differences in temperature did not appear to produce changes (Table 9.11 [128]). Finally, the dispersal of water in safflower oil in methyl linoleate was studied by Takasago to see what portion was free water, what portion was structural water, and any remaining water. The remaining water was mostly considered to be unsymmetrically hydrogen bonded at low concentrations (17–64 ppm) of dissolved water, and mostly structural water at higher levels (129). All of the data is interesting, but it should be noted that the safflower oil used contained only 69.4% linoleic fatty acid and also contained 3.6% linolenic fatty acid. Both of these levels are very unusual for normal safflower oil and may have had some effect on the data. Margarine Research As Blum pointed out, margarines produced from safflower oil may evidence physical changes in crystal structure or polymorphism, and the product resulting could be said to have a sandy texture (1). This is caused by the crystalline structure of the margarine transforming to the b-crystalline form, a form that consists of large crystals instead of the smooth uniform state in which the margarine was originally formed. The more diverse the triglyceride mixtures formed in an oil are, the more stable a hydrogenated product will be. Since safflower oil is quite uniform in structure, it therefore has a natural bias toward the b form. Durkee Famous Foods produced a margarine formulation for PVO’s Saffola, that incorporated about 5% cottonseed oil in order to increase the amount of palmitic fatty acids to produce a more stable crystalline structure and modify the product organoleptically so it had a plesant mouthfeel. Subsequently, when Saffola adopted a soft margarine, a crystalline structure was worked out in which a small amount of the lattice was heavily hydrogenated and the balance of the oil remained in aliquid form. TABLE 9.9 Dissolved Tin and Ion from Tin-Plate in the Presence of Dissolved Water under Nitrogen, Normal Air, and Oxygen Atmospheres Heating Temperature H2O (ppm) 20 270 850 1520 20 270 850 1520 20 270 850 1520 a

Coexited Gas 20°C (760 mm Hg) Sn (ppm) Fe (ppm) O2

Air

N2

At 5°C, iron and tin ions were not detected.

non 0.02 0.04 0.07 non 0.02 0.04 0.14 non 0.11 0.25 0.51

non non non non non non non non non non 0.11 0.28

50°C Sn (ppm) Fe (ppm) non 0.05 0.18 0.20 non 0.05 0.15 0.37 0.06 0.50 2.46 4.30

non 0.12 0.30 0.41 non 0.16 0.30 0.45 0.05 — 0.45 0.95

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TABLE 9.10 Relation Between Dissolved Water, Dissolved Iron, and AV of Safflower Oil in an Iron Plate at 180°C States of Reaction Heating Time H2O (hr) (ppm) 0 1 2 3

226 518 827 1012

Oil-H2Oa H2O AVc (ppm)

Oil-H2O-Feb Fe AVc (ppm)

0.60 0.89 1.06 1.27

0.60 1.49 2.21 2.53

230 580 9.35 1168

0.48 0.60 1.10 1.71

aOil-dissolved water. bOil-dissolved water-iron plate. cAV = Acid Value.

Lever Brothers Company filed for a patent in 1962 (130). The patent called for a margarine with an oil phase consisting of one-half liquid oil (70% safflower oil) all one-half composed of selectively hydrogenated peanut (65%) and safflower (35%) oils. Kraft was able to solve safflower’s inherent problems by other means, producing a 100% safflower margarine of excellent flavor, texture, and organoleptic appeal. The Vegetable Oil Products Company marketed 50/50% and 40/60% safflower oil/butter blends in the 1970s that achieved good acceptance in the Southern California and Arizona markets. Little was published concerning safflower margarine technology per se, but a good review of the methods and procedures that apply to this problem is available (131). The earlier report by Zalewski and Kummerow on preparation of two-component margarine base stocks also illustrates how safflower oil problems as a margarine oil could be overcome (132). In 1966, an investigation into conjugated hydrogenation of safflower oil employed a nickel catalyst in the presence of alcohol under pressure. This process produced a product of 46 IV when all linoleic acid had disappeared. Hydrogen in this type of system (high-pressure autoclave at 180–250°C) was shown to be derived from the alcohol (133). Frankel of the USDA at Peoria also published two interesting papers on hydrogenation techniques involving safflower (134,135). The first demonstrated how chromium carbonyl complex (Cr(CO)3) catalysts could be used to assist in selective hydrogenation of safflower oil and retain a 90–95% cis configuration. This process also resulted in a product of 80–90 VI (similar to oleic safflower) that remains liquid and requires no further fractionation. In the latter study, Frankel et al. expanded on earlier work to produce various synthetic fats similar to peanut, olive, or oleic safflower oil by stereo selective hydrogenation employing arene-Cr(CO3). In 1972, Ben-et and his associates further developed this thesis, and showed that selective conjugation of methyl esters of safflower could occur at the double bonds forming trans products, but a second selective hydrogenation step employing arene-Cr(CO3) as a catalyst, would return the final product to the 90–95% cis configuration as Frankel had observed (136). A study was performed in India on the effect of linoleic acid position in the safflower triglycerol on the hydrogenation rate. This research showed conclusively that hydrogenation occurs preferentially at the 1,3-position as opposed to the 2-position (137).

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TABLE 9.11 Autoxidation of Safflower Oil Containing Dissolved Water During Long-Term Storage in Normal Air Time of Storage (h) Dissolved Water Temperature in Safflower Oil (ppm) of Storage (°C) 14 220 930 1560 14 220 930 1560

20 20 20 20 50 50 50 50

450

1000

5000

14000

0.4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.7 0.8 0.8 0.8

0.6 0.8 1.1 1.2 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.4

0.8 1.5 1.7 1.9 0.8 1.7 2.1 2.4

1.1 12.7 2.1 2.3 1.2 2.5 4.3 6.4

Mayonnaise and Miscellaneous Edible Research Blum stated that safflower oil was particularly well suited for use in a number of processed foods due to its “high natural cold test and good flavor stability at low levels of oxidation” (1). Blum’s company, Corn Products, used safflower oil quite often during this period in its Best Foods Mayonnaise in multimillion lb quantities whenever safflower oil’s price was advantageous compared to the cottonseed oil normally employed at that time. They found no drop-off in taste, appearance, odor, or texture. As Singleton’s work had shown, safflower oil withstood repeated freezethaw cycles better than cottonseed oil (93). Hanson et al. also reported that frozen salad dressings made from safflower oil were stable and superior toother oils when stored at 10–20°F (138). Recently, safflower oil has been shown to be an excellent substitute for the production of sophorose lipids (from the yearst Torulopsis bombicola) by Zhou and various associates associates (139–141). Unfortunately, little research has been published on the employment of safflower oil in various types of salad dressings, frozen desserts, modified canned milk, cake mixes, bread, and other products. After 1955, when safflower oil began to be employed in edible products, manufacturers had to rely on their own resources to develop new formulations. Federal research in safflower oil utilization declined dramatically after 1970 as research funding declined. The Federal government’s support for safflower was reduced because emphasis was redirected to environmental issues and because of the decline in the volume of safflower production. References 1. Blum, J.E., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 416 (1966). 2. Stamler, J., J. Natl. Med. Assoc. 50: 161 (1958). 3. Keys, A., N. Kimura, A. Kusukawa, B. Bronte-Stewart, N. Larsen, and M. Keys, Ann. Int. Med. 48: 83 (1958). 4. Jolliffe, N., and N. Archer, J. Chron. Dis. 9: 636 (1959). 5. Moore, T.J., Heart Failure, Random House, Inc., New York, 1989, 308 pp. 6. Kinsell, L.W., J. Partride, L. Boling, S. Margen, and G.D. Michaels, J. Clin. Endocrinol. Met. 12: 909 (1952).

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39. Dreon, D.M., K.M. Vranizan, R.M. Krauss, M.A. Austin, and P.D. Wood, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 263: 2462 (1990). 40. Sirtori, C.R., E. Tremoli, E. Gatti, G. Montanari, M. Sirtori, S. Colli, G. Gianfranceschi, P. Maderna, C.Z. Dentone, G. Testolin, and C. Gatti, Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 44: 635 (1986). 41. Mensink, R.P., M.B. Katan, and N. Engel, J. Med. 321: 436 (1989). 42. Grundy, S.M., J. Am. Med. Assoc. 256: 2849 (1986). 43. Grundy, S.M., N. Eng. J. Med. 314: 745 (1986). 44. Grundy, S.M., Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 45: 1094 (1987). 45. The National Diet-Heart Study: Final Report. Circulation 37, Suppl. 1, Monograph No. 18, National Diet-Heart Study Research Group, 1968. 46. Turpeinen, O., M. Miettinen, M.J. Karvonen, P. Roine, M. Pekkarinen, E. Lehtosud, and P. Alivirta, Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 21: 255 (1968). 47. Christakis, G., S.H. Rinzler, M. Archer, and A. Kraus, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 198: 129 (1966). 48. Rinzler, S.H., Bull. Nat. Acad. Med. (Second Series) 44: 936 (1968). 49. Lepen, P., Acta Med. Scand. Suppl. 466: 1 (1966). 50. Bierenbaum, M.L., D.P. Green, A. Florin, A.I. Fleischman, and A.B. Caldwell, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 202: 1119 (1967). 51. Frederickson, D.S., R.I. Levy, and R.S. Lees, N. Eng. J. Med. 276: 34 (1967). 52. Lees, R.S., and D.E. Wilson, N. Eng. J. Med. 284: 186 (1971). 53. Intersociety Commission for Heart Disease Resources, Circulation 42: A55 (1970). 54. American Health Foundation Position Statement on Diet and Coronary Heart Disease, Prevent. Med. 1: 255 (1972). 55. Council on Foods and Nutrition, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 222: 1647 (1972). 56. The American Heart Association, The American Heart Association Diet, New York 1986. 57. The American Heart Association, Cholesterol and Your Heart, New York, 1986. 58. The American Heart Association, Coronary Risk Factor Statement for the American Public, New York, 1986. 59. “Benefits of High Monounsaturated Fats ‘Remains to be Seen’: AHA,” Food Chemical News, March 31, 1986, p. 12. 60. “Researchers: Add HDL, Triglycerides, to Cholesterol Screening,” Geriatrics 48: 24 (1993). 61. Ginsberg, H.N., S.L. Barr, A. Gilbert, W. Karmally, R. Deckelbaum, K. Kaplan, R. Ramakrishnan, S. Holleran, and R.B. Dell, N. Eng. J. Med. 322: 574 (1990). 62. Wardlaw, G.M., J.T. Snook, M.-C. Lin, M.A. Puangco, and J.S. Kwon, Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 54: 104 (1991). 63. Reiser, R., Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 26: 524 (1973). 64. Bottino, N.R., R.E. Anderson, and R. Reiser, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 1124 (1965). 65. Bollinger, J.N., and R. Reiser, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 1120 (1965). 66. Sugano, M., M. Watanabe, K. Yoshida, M. Tomioka, M. Miyamoto, and D. Kritchensky, Nutr. Cancer 12: 177 (1989). 67. “Netherlands Study Puts trans in Spotlight Again”, INFORM 1: 875 (1990). 68. Tidwell, H.C., J.C. McPherson, and P. Gifford, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 843 (1965). 69. Willet, W.C., M.J. Stampfer, J.E. Manson, G.A. Colditz, F.E. Speizer, B.A. Rosner, L.A. Sampson, and C.H. Hennekens, Lancet 341: 581 (1993). 70. Mensink, R.P., and M.B. Katan, N. Eng. J. Med. 323: 439 (1990).

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71. Kubow, S., Trends in Food Science and Technology, Elsevier Science Pub. Ltd., London, 1990, pp. 67–70. 72. Gammal, E.B., K.K. Carroll, and E.R. Plunkett, Cancer Res. 27: 1737 (1967). 73. Narisawa, T., M. Takahashi, H. Kotanagi, H. Kusaka, Y. Yamazaki, M. Koyama, Y. Fukuara, Y. Nishizawa, M. Kotsugai, Y. Isoda, J. Hirano, and N. Tanidi, Jap. J. Cancer Res. 82: 1089 (1991). 74. Lasekan, J.B., M.K. Chasen, A. Gendron-Fitzpatrick, and D.M. Ney, Nutr. Cancer 13: 153 (1990). 75. Li, D., Abstracts on Safflower, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 1993, 784 pp. 76. Hagenbart, S., Food Prod. Des. 2: 27 (1992). 77. Weiss, E.A., Castor, Sesame, and Safflower, Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, 1971, pp. 333, 534. 78. Wang, Z., China Health Preservation Dictionary, Dalian Publishing House, 1990, pp. 277–279. 79. Xie, R., Yearbook of Traditional Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1977, p. 142. 80. Rao, H., Yearbook of Traditional Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1977, p. 142. 81. Bao, Y., et al., Yearbook of Traditional Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1987, p. 140. 82. Dai, M., Yearbook of Traditional Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1987, p. 140. 83. Zhang, X., Yearbook of National Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1989, pp. 135–136. 84. Chen, F., Yearbook of Traditional Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1989, pp. 135–136. 85. Li, X., C. Fu, and M. Jiao, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 1993, pp. 844–854. 86. Li, D., and Y. Han, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 1993, pp. 837–843. 87. Hong, X, Yearbook of Traditional Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1988, p. 103. 88. Li, H., Yearbook of Traditional Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1988, p. 104. 89. Zhang, X., Yearbook of Traditional Chinese Medicine, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1988, p. 105. 90. Liu, Y. et al., Oily Fat and Health, People’s Health Publishing House, Shanghai, 1989, p. 258. 91. Salunkhe, D.K., J.K. Chavan, R.N. Adsule, and S.S. Kadam, World Oilseeds. Van Nostrand, Reinhold, New York, 1992, p. 356. 92. Shapiro, S.L., L. Freeman, and S. Kobrin, Arch. Inter. Pharm. 111: 30 (1957). 93. Singleton, R.S., R.R. Benerito, and J.L. White, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 37: 88 (1960). 94. Cannon, R., W. Byrne, and M. Ament, Ped. Res. 13: 396 (1979). 95. “Final Report of the Safety Assessment of Safflower Oil,” J. Am. Col. Toxicol. 4: 171 (1985). 96. Goodman, D.H., J. Allergy 35: 38 (1964). 97. Howard, A., and J.S. Remington, Safflower Oil, Agric. Res. Inst. Bul. 124, Pusa, India.

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134. Frankel, E.N., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 11 (1970). 135. Frankel, E.N., F.L. Thomas, and J.C. Cowan, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 497 (1970). 136. Ben-et, G., A. Doley, M. Schimmel, and R. Stern, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 49: 205 (1972). 137. Kaimal, T.N.B., and G. Lakshminarayana, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 56: 578 (1979). 138. Hanson, H.L., and L.R. Fletcher, Food Technol. 15: 256 (1961). 139. Zhou, Q.H., V. Klekner, and N. Kosaric, “Production of Glycolipids by Torulopsis bombicola Growing on Glucose and Safflower Oil,” 7th International Conference on Surface and Colloid Science, Compiegne, France, July 7–13, 1991. 140. Zhou, Q.H., V. Klekner, and N. Kosaric, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 69: 89 (1992). 141. Zhou, Q.H., and N. Kosaric, Biotech. Let. 15: 477 (1993).

Chapter 10

Protein and Meal Research

In the early days of safflower development in the United States, it was much easier to find the results of safflower meal feeding trials with beef or dairy cattle, poultry, and hogs than to find any research pertaining to the feeding of safflower products. The reason was that feeding trials were much more conclusive than trials that involved human beings. While it was impossible to ask the animals their opinions about the feed being tried, the animals in a trial were usually slaughtered afterward, so that very precise measurements of the trial’s results were available. Except in wartime pathology studies, data concerning the feeding of human beings must of necessity come from the interpretation of secondary reactions or from deductions made by tests on laboratory animals. Most of the western states where safflower was produced were protein deficient, so the possibility of a new high-protein supplement was a welcome subject for investigation at a number of Land Grant Colleges. Accordingly, when George Kohler of the USDA Albany Laboratories presented a review on safflower meal at the 1965 meeting of the American Oil Chemists’ Society in Cincinnati, he was able to cite 24 references concerning feeding trials for cattle, sheep, or poultry (1). Much of the earliest work concentrated on feeding safflower meal to beef cattle, but as more safflower meal became available, efforts expanded to lambs, chicks, layers and broilers, dairy cattle, and rabbits. With the development of decorticated meal, research studies on swine, turkeys, and hull utilization started up. In more recent times, investigations on protein isolates and various minor constituents in the meal protein have surfaced. All the research done to date has been unable to change the basic problems faced by safflower meal—it is high in fiber and has a slightly bitter taste; any processing that removes the fiber or the taste tends to cost more than the market will bear.

Cattle Feeding Research One of the earliest safflower meal tests in the United States was performed by Christensen of North Dakota State University in 1931–32. He compared two groups of streers that for 140 days were fed 18% protein expeller safflower meal and 34% linseed meal, respectively. The steers found the two meals equally palatable and the weight gain was approximately the same if they were fed 1.25 lb of safflower meal daily (2). The “fabulous Baker boys” at the University of Nebraska performed the most consistent early tests with trials that began in 1945 under the aegis of the Chemurgy Department (3–5). As can be seen in Tables 10.1–10.3, steer calves fed expeller safflower meal that provided approximately the same level of protein (Lots 3 and 10) 279

280

Safflower

TABLE 10.1 Ingredients Used in the Feeding Trials Listed in Tables 10.2 and 10.3 First trial Second trial 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Supplement Soybean oil meal Safflower meal Safflower meal 95% Safflower meal, 5% urea 93% safflower meal, 7% urea 45% Safflower meal, 45% dayhdrated alfalfa meal, 5% urea 45% Safflower meal, 50% dehydrated alfalfa meal, 5% urea

Source: Baker et al. (4).

had almost identical weight gains when compared with those fed soybean meal (Lots 1 and 8). The tests also showed that lots fed higher daily amounts of safflower meal gained more than those given less meal, but the rate of increase declined with higher increments of the supplemental meal. Tables 10.4 and 10.5 illustrate the results of a trial for fattening lots of 10 Hereford yearling steers. The lots that were fed lower amounts of safflower meal compared favorably in weight gain and carcass gradig with a lot fed soybean meal. Palatability of safflower meal was slightly lower for the TABLE 10.2 Safflower Meal as a Protein Supplement for Growing Calvesa Lot

1

Ave. initial wt (lbs) 441 Ave. final wt (lbs) 660 Ave. gain/head (lbs) 219 Ave. daily gain (lbs) 1.71 Ave. daily feed/head (lbs) Corn silage 21.18 Ground ear corn 5.00 Supplement 1.00 Ave. feed required for 100 lb gain (lbs) Corn silage 1,228 Ground ear corn 286 Supplement 57 Composition of pelleted supplements, % Soybean oil meal 100 Safflower meal — Dehydrated alfalfa meal — Urea — Crude protein or protein equivalent in supplement, % 41.8 Phosphorus in supplement, % 0.49 Ave. daily intake of supplement protein or protein equivalent 0.418

2

3

4

5

6

7

447 644 197 1.57

440 660 220 1.76

441 642 201 1.61

438 645 207 1.65

430 637 207 1.65

429 638 209 1.67

22.12 5.00 1.00

21.30 21.56 5.00 5.00 1.79 1.22

22.37 5.00 1.05

22.10 5.00 1.00

21.80 5.00 1.28

1,405 318 64

1,211 1,344 284 312 102 76

1,352 3093 64

1,327 302 60

1,319 303 78

— 100 — —

— 100 — —

— 95 — 5

— 93 — 7

45 — 50 5

— 45 50 5

21.4 0.48

21.4 0.48

32.4 0.47

38.1 0.50

40.7 0.40

31.9 0.35

0.214

0.383 0.395

0.40

0.407

0.408

aTrial occurred from December 8, 1950 to April 12, 1951. There were 11 steer calves per lot. Source: Baker et al. (4).

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TABLE 10.3 Safflower Meal as a Protein Supplement for Growing Calvesa Lot Ave. initial wt (lbs) Ave. final wt (lbs) Ave. gain/head (lbs) Ave. daily gain (lbs) Ave. daily feed/head (lbs) Corn silage Ground ear corn Supplement Ave. feed required for 100 lb gain (lbs) Corn silage Ground ear corn Supplement Composition of pelleted supplement, % Soybean oil meal Safflower meal Dehydrated alfalfa meal Urea Cude protein or protein equivalent in supplment, % Ave. daily intake of supplement protein or protein equivalent

8 431 612 211 2.15

9

10

432 430 626 642 194 212 1.97 2.16

11

12

13

14

438 623 185 1.89

439 637 198 2.02

439 641 202 2.06

436 638 202 2.0

21.66 20.72 18.50 20.49 21.30 22.90 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 1.00 1.00 2.03 1.45 1.12 1.07

21.92 5.00 1.39

1,006 1,047 986 1,085 1,054 1,097 232 253 232 263 247 243 46 50 91 77 55 52

1,063 243 68

100 — — —

— 100 — —

— 100 — —

42.6

21.1 21.1

— 95 — 5

— 93 — 7

45 — — 5

— 45 50 5

32.0

38.2

39.7

30

0.426 0.211 0.428 0.464 0.428 0.425

0.417

aTrial occurred from January 2, 1952 to April 9, 1952. There were 10 steer calves per lot. Source: Baker et al. (4).

first days of the trials. Trials in Wyoming (6–8), Arizona (9), and Washington, (10) all yielded similar results. Good total digestible nutrients (TDN) data had been generated at the University of California at Davis under a grant from PVO. Until the mill at Sidney closed, feed yards in Nebraska used safflower meal regularly, having based their purchases on TDN data. Starting in December 1959, PVO sponsored an investigation at the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station to evaluate safflower meal in winter rations for beef calves and mature beef cows, and in fattening rations for beef cattle. In the first two trials, safflower meal pellets were compared with a commercial range pellet or with unsupplemented grass hay; in the latter trial, safflower meal was compared with dried molasses beet pulp. In all of the trials, safflower products did not perform as well as the controls and evidenced some palatability problems. Rolled barley combined with safflower meal seemed to offer a good choice (11). A trial in Arizona in 1967 showed safflower meal to be equal to cottonseed meal in both a summer feed trial with heifers and in a winter feeding trial with steers (12). By 1960, publicly conducted cattle-feeding trials became rare. Most safflower meal produced in California started moving into other markets. In the 1970s, experiments were conducted aimed at increasing the polyunsaturated fatty acid levels in meat fat. Scott and associates had developed a method for

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Safflower

TABLE 10.4 Weights of Safflower Meal Incorporated in Lots Tested in Table 10.5 Lot 1 2 3 4

Supplement 1.0 lb soybean oil meal 2.0 lbs of safflower meal 3.0 lbs safflower meal 1.0 lb of a combination of 100 lbs of safflower plus 8.4 lbs urea

Source Baker et al. (4).

protecting polyunsaturated fats fed to dairy cattle by encasing the polyunsaturates in a formaldehyde-protein coating (13–16). The formaldehyde-protein remained stable at the pH of the rumen and protected the polyunsaturates from hydrogenation to satuates by rumen microorganisms. These studies were adapted by the USDA, and experiments were initiated to use similar methods to change beef fats to higher levels of unsaturates. They found that veal fat from calves fed encapsulated safflower oil contained four times as much linoleic fatty acid as normal meat (17). Further trials that fed growing and mature steers by this method increased linoleic levels up to 20.6% in growing steers but only 5.8% in mature animals. It was found that the rendered fats from these animals were naturally less stable (18). These methods have not been adopted commercially. TABLE 10.5 Safflower Meal for Fattening Cattle Lot Ave. initial wt (lbs) Ave. final wt (lbs) Ave. gain/head (lbs) Ave. daily feed/head (lbs) Ground shelled corn Soybean oil meal Safflower meal Safflower-urea Alfalfa hay Ave. feed required for 100 lb gain (lbs) Ground shelled corn Soybean oil meal Soybean meal Safflower-urea Alfalfa hay Shrinkage in shipment, % Selling price/cwt., Omaha Dressing % Number of carcasses at each grade Prime Choice Good

1

2

3

4

582 950 368 2.92 14.72 0.98 — — 4.45

599 940 341 2.70 13.93 — 1.97 — 4.45

601 909 308 2.44 12.78 — 2.96 — 4.45

593 926 333 2.64 14.13 — — 41 4.45

501 34 — — 152 3.58 34.00 58.3

515 — 73 — 1651 3.88 34.00 58.0

523 — 121 — 182 3.41 34.00 57.3

535 — — 41 168 4.32 34.00 59.8

1 9 0

1 9 0

1 7 2

0 9 1

Trial occurred from February 8, 1951 to June 14, 1951. There were 10 steers per lot. Source: Baker et al. (4).

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Dairy, Milk, and Cheese Research Feed mixes for dairy cattle have been the primary market for California safflower meal producers for 40 years. Rabak’s initial review reported on a limited feed test for a dairy cattle ration that contained 33% safflower meal and was readily consumed by dairy cows with no noticeable effect on flavor or odor of milk produced (19). Christensen’s report stated that safflower meal was a fairly good substitute for linseed meal for milk cows and produced no laxative or constipation problems (2). In 1943, Liebscher and von Demer joined in with a good analysis of safflower meal for dairy feeders (20). In the early 1950s, three reports showed good results with safflower meal feeding of dairy cattle. Contrary to what beef feeders had reported, milk cows seemed find safflower meal palatable (21–23). Pitttman and Elder of Utah State Agricultural College reported in 1955 that some dairy farmers in their area were having good results by mixing 200 lb of whole safflower seed with 1 ST of barley. Putting this mixture through a hammer mill reduced dust and produced protein and fat levels comparable to feeding corn (24). Efforts to incorporate safflower oil into milk, using the encapsulation method (13–16), were tried by the USDA at Beltsville using a 37% formaldehyde solution added to a homogenized safflower oil-sodium caseinate mixture (25). This resulted in a transfer of 17–42% of the safflower oil into milk fat. A later study by the USDA resulted in fat transfers that ranged from 3–30% and produced milk that developed a slightly oxidized flavor (17). This effect was slight in fresh milk but worsened after 24 hr. The cream incorporating 30% safflower oil required longer aging to churn well and produced a softer butter that was readily spreadable at refrigerated temperatures when compared to normal butter. The linoleic acid content of milk fat doubled (26). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation engaged in extensive research with the Carnation Company’s Los Angeles factory to produce an evaporated milk modified with safflower oil. A satisfactory product was produced, but Carnation’s marketing division decided not to produce it commercially. Tavasolian and Shabbah did some unusual research and found a renin enzyme substitute in safflower seed and in safflower meal (the activity was much higher in the meal) that produced a fresh, soft, white cheese after incubation (27). This cheese had a pleasing, aromatic odor. It dried at room temperature and could be refrigerated for 2–3 weeks. To date there has been no commercial usage of this discovery.

Poultry Research Mrs have been written on feeding poultry with safflower meal, and surprisingly, with its high fiber content, results have been reasonably good. Kratzer and Williams reported in 1947 that partially decorticated safflower meal, consisting of 27–29% protein, seemed to be slightly deficient in certain amino acids to attain maximum growth rates for chicks (28), but in a later report they felt that good results could be obtained feeding chicks with safflower meal. The mix was supplemented with lysine and methionine (29). This latter test was based on a reported 50% protein meal; the protein content may have been reported erroneously.

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Safflower

TABLE 10.6 Composition of the Experiment Diets Material

Diet 1a

120 Basal mixb Ground com 80 Ground safflower 0 seed Total 200

Diet 2a

Diet 3a

Diet 4a

Diet 5a

120 70 10 (5%) 200

120 60 20 (10%) 200

120 5 30 (15%) 200

120 40 40 (20%) 200

aWeight in lbs. bBasal mix consisted of 100 lbs of ground corn, 30 lbs of fish meal, 125 lbs of soybean oil meal, 15 lbs of alfalfa meal, 4 lbs of bone meal, 5 lbs of limestone flour, 2.5 lbs of salt, 1 lb of vitamin A mix, 1 lb of choline chloride, and 12 gm of pantothenic acid supplement. Source: Pittman and Draper (24).

Pittman and Elder reported on two trials with meat-type chicks in which rations containing up to 20% safflower meal (apparently expeller meal) produced slightly higher weight gains than a control group fed the diet shown in Table 10.6 (24). Table 10.7 illustrates the results of the trial. Petersen, Wiese, et al. reported that a decorticated safflower meal with a protein content of 35% could replace soybean meal in a chick ration if 5% fish meal and 5–10% meat meal was included (30). Raj later reported that undecorticated solventextracted safflower meal could be successfully incorporated in starter mixes in place of peanut meal. Safflower meal could be included at up to 5% of the diet without supplementation, or up to 20% of the diet if methionine and lysine supplementation was provided (31). Others, including the great Hobe Halloran, had similar studies on the use of decorticated safflower meal for chick rations (32–37). Kohler concluded that lysine was the primary deficiency in safflower meal, the methionine shortage not being as serious (1). TABLE 10.7 Average Weight, Feed Consumption and Feed Conversion of StraightRun Meat-Type Chicks Fed Varying Amounts of Safflower Seed Meal Experimental diets Control, No Safflower 5% Safflower 10% Safflower 15% Safflower 20% Safflower Seed Meal Seed Meal Seed Meal Seed Meal Seed Meal Feeding trial 1 Ave. wt. to 10 weeks Ave. feed consumption to 10 weeks Feed required/lb gain Feeding trial 2 Ave. wt. to 6 weeks Ave. feed consumption to 6 weeks Feed required/lb gain Source: Pittman and Draper (24).

3.11

3.19

2.75

3.00

3.27

9.21 2.96

10.04 3.14

7.95 2.89

9.03 3.01

9.88 3.02

1.28

1.36

1.32

1.34

1.36

5.75 2.87

5.56 2.78

6.58 3.20

5.72 2.86

5.39 2.69

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Grau and Zweigart were some of the early investigators of using safflower meal to feed laying hens. They reported on an 11-week experiment in which decorticated safflower meal having a 41% protein content replaced all or part of the soybean meal in a control ration (38): the experimental rations achieved comparable results in egg production, feed consumption, and fresh egg quality. In a much longer (10 month) trial conducted by Petersen and others (30,39), decorticated safflower meal successfully replaced 50% of the soybean meal in a ration that contained 2.5% herring meal and 7.5% meat meal. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, and later the Safflower Council, sponsored research that showed that laying hens utilized decorticated safflower meal with a protein content of 42% more efficiently (920 Kcal/lb of meal [40]) than had been found earlier for chicks (720 Kcal/lb of meal [34]). The same authors had earlier reported favorably on the general use of decorticated meal in poultry feeds (41). Subsequently, they found for laying hens that the metabolizable energy of undecorticated safflower meal (20% protein content) was 725 Kcal/lb of meal (42). Raj found that layers could do well with diets based on a 5% solvent-extracted safflower meal or a 10% expeller meal (43); in some cases the diet could contain up to 20% of either type of meal (31). March and Macmillan showed that if White Leghorn pullets were fed a diet containing 50% safflower oil during their first 14 weeks of egg production, they would produce consistently higher egg weights than control groups fed tallow. The amount of linoleic acid in the diets was 4.3 and 0.6%, respectively. All data collected support the hypothesis that linoleic acid is necessary for the synthesis of the lipoproteins carried to the ovary for absorption by the developing ova, and egg size cannot be maximized if linoleic acid levels are deficient (44). A group under Dick Auld at the University of Idaho produced a series of reports that compared the feeding value of rapeseed meal with safflower meal for broilers (45–47). A Pakistan study on broilers indicated that safflower meal could compete with soy meal (48). Pittman and Draper reported on feeding whole safflower seed to growing turkeys. In their Utah trial, 3,000 male turkeys were fed mash, rolled barley, and safflower seed on a free choice basis. The turkeys preferred safflower seed to barley seed, and by the end of the trial they were consuming more safflower seed than rolled barley and mash combined. At 25 weeks of age the turkeys had attained an average weight of 25 lbs, and a high proportion were graded A (24).

Lamb and Sheep Research In Wyoming, Faulkener and Paules ran early trials using safflower to fatten lambs and achieved good results when compared to a soy diet (49,50). Goss and Otagaki collected digestion data on lambs using decorticated meal (51). Dixon and some Australians showed that safflower meal could produce acceptable results when compared to linseed or a barley-urea combination fed to young crossbred sheep on roughage diets (52). The University of Idaho rapeseed project also compared safflower and rapeseed meals for sheep in addition to poultry (46). A crude digestibility study on maintenance feedings of “Gentile di Puglia” rams was conducted at Bari, Italy, that compared safflower meal with crushed olive twigs and almond hulls. The safflower meal was not pleasing to the taste, but when combined with the other two products gave satisfactory results (53).

286

Safflower

Feeding Studies on Swine, Rabbit, and Other Animals Safflower has not been considered a particularly good meal for feeding to swine because of its high fiber content. However, a 1964 test by Valadez and Pickett at Purdue University had contradictory results (54). The test consisted of 37 crossbred gilts that were assigned to one of three gestation diets: 1. A basal corn-soy gestation ration; 2. A basal ration with one-third of the soy protein replaced by safflower protein; or 3. A basal ration with two-thirds of the soy protein replaced by safflower protein. 24.7% protein/31.2% fiber undecorticated safflower meal was employed. All gilts received the basal ration during lactation, and made satisfactory gains during their gestation period. There was no difference in number or weight of pigs at farrowing or at 15 days of age, but total litter weight at farrowing was lower for the gilts on the two-thirds safflower protein diet. The authors concluded that substituting up to one-third safflower protein for soy in a gilt gestation ration was warranted. In 1985, a test was designed in which rabbits and guinea pigs were fed several rations based on 50 wt% alfalfa meal; and wheat to fill the balance after adding either 34% safflower seed, 43% cottonseed, 39% flaxseed, 20% soybeans, or 15% soybean meal. These various rations were fed to groups of rabbits, guinea pigs, and their young at birth until the young reached 9 weeks of age. Rabbits’ lactation and growth were the same on all diets, except that lower results were produced with cottonseed. Guinea pigs preferred the soy diets and produced more milk on the soy diet than with other diets. The cottonseed diet produced the lowest gain (55). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation engaged in some trials with mink feeders, but no commercial success was ever reported. A 1987 Indian report commented on protein degradability in three-year-old Surti buffaloes. The report compared safflower meal with various other protein concentrates (56).

Fish Feeding Research As far as I know, there is no published data on fish feeding available. During the late 1950s and 1960s, PVO did some commercial production of pelleted products to feed trout in the State of California’s Trout Fisheries. These fish were later released into the state’s lakes and streams. These experiments used a 42% protein meal that after mixing with other ingredients was pressed into 1/8” pellets and dyed red. The fish in the experiments readily accepted the pellets, but the pellets did not hold up well when compared to pellets made from other less fibrous meals. This market never developed into a steady outlet. Japanese fish farms used safflower meal regularly in the 1960s and 1970s, employing both 20% and 42% protein meal in this market. Normally, not more than 5 wt% was devoted to safflower, so its primary use was as a filler.

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General Nutritional and Protein Isolate Research A series of studies have discussed various factors of safflower meal that limit its desirability and suggest ways to improve it. Palter et al. first surveyed the world collection of safflower for seeds that were high in lysine value (57). They found considerable genetic variability and also showed that environmental changes can result in large variances in the lysine content of safflower meal. In subsequent studies, the structure of the safflower steroid, cellobioside, was discussed (58), a new steroid, 15a, 20b-dihydroxy-D4-pregnen-3 was isolated (59); followed by 2hydroxyaretiin (60). Sakamura and associates then reported on further isolation work on the cathartic ligna glucosides. They identified several phenolic factors plus three conjugated

Figure 10.1. Flowsheet for the processing of safflower protein isolate. Source: Kulkarni et al. (78).

288

Safflower

serotonin derivatives: (N-feruloylserotonin; N-(p-coumaroyl) serotonin; and N(pcoumaroyl) serotonin mono-b-glucopyranoside (61,62). Lyon et al. at the USDA Albany Lab explored three ways of removing deleterious glucosides from safflower meal (63). Lyon’s paper discussed the limitations of safflower meal as source of protein for humans because of the bitterness factor (mataisinol monoglucoside) and the mildly cathartic nature of 2-hydroxyarctiin. Analytical methods for estimating cathartic activity and bitterness factors were developed that would enable plant breeders to attempt to resolve these problems and determine if it was economically feasible to eliminate them by one of the three proposed treatments. One of Lyon’s associates, Betschart, outlined the development of safflower protein and isolates derived from it. He compared safflower protein isolates with similar isolates from soy; he found that the safflower protein isolates were useable in citrus and carbonated beverages, and for the fortification of wheat breads and pastas. Based on market prices at the time, he estimated the cost of a safflower protein isolate containing 93% protein to be $0.42/lb compared to a soy protein isolate of 92–93% protein at $0.449/lb (64–66). Paredes Lopez of Mexico and his associates reported on a series of studies with safflower protein isolates produced in the laboratory and commercially. The two methods used were miscellization and isoelectric precipitation. The latter method was the more efficient method of production, since it produced higher protein yields, but the isolate produced by miscellization had better properties (67–69). Both methods delivered safflower isolates with good food quality characteristics. India has done quite a bit of basic research on safflower protein. For example, Prakash of the Central Food Technological Research Institute has a series of studies on the high molecular weight protein fraction from safflower (carmin [70–74]). Kulkarni (now of the University of Mauritius) has a similar set of studies of safflower protein properties (75–78). Figure 10.1 shows the process that Kulkarni used to produce safflower protein isolate. He maintains that safflower seed can be successfully decorticated prior to extraction by using a disc huller. I am uncertain that this part of the process can be performed on a long-term basis. Table 10.8 illustrates the composition of various fractions obtained in various stages of his process. Table 10.9 shows the properties of the materials produced. His final conclusion was that 10% safflower meal isolate can be incorporated into bread and produce acceptable bread quality while increasing the bread protein from 11 to 17% (78). TABLE 10.8 Chemical Composition of Safflower Seeds and Processed Products (wt% on a dry weight basis) Sample

Protein N x 6.25

Total Lipids

Crude Fiber

Total Ash

24.5 38.3 54.5 62.1 94.6

26.5 35.1 0.9 0.3 nd

39.8 3.2 4.6 4.8 nd

8.4 3.9 3.8 3.9 0.01

Seeds Kernels Defatted meal Debittered meal Protein isolate

Abbreviation: nd = not detectable. Source: Kulkarni et al. (78).

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TABLE 10.9 Functional Properties of Safflower Meal, Isopropanol-Treated Meal, and Safflower Protein Isolates Property Bulk density (g/ml.) Water absorption capacity (g/100 g flour) Fat absorption capacity (g/100 g flour) Emulsion activity (ml. oil/g flour) Emulsion capacity (ml. oil/g flour) Emulsion stability (%) Foam capacity (% volume increase) Foam stability (%) Color, Munsell notations

Safflower Isopropanol-Treated Safflower ProMeal Safflower Meal tein Isolate 0.32 ± 0.02 126 ± 4.0 198 ± 3.0 45 ± 0.5 58 ± 1.5 55 ± 2.0 160 ± 4.0 43 ± 2.0 2.5Y 8/4

0.46 ± 0.02 158 ± 3.5 136 ± 2.0 19 ± 0.5 28 ± 1.0 40 ± 1.0 133 ± 2.0 35 ± 1.5 2.5Y 6/4

0.49 ± 0.05 188 ± 4.0 140 ± 2.0 16 ± 0.5 19 ± 1.0 45 ± 1.0 125 ± 2.0 33 ± 1.5 N 8/2

Source: Kulkami et al. (78).

In the 1950s and 1960s, when PVO had its joint venture with General Mills, Inc. (GMI). GMI performed considerable research on the production of textured protein products from safflower meal. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation reasoned that a safflower isolate could be produced more cheaply than a soybean isolate because the separate debittering required in soy isolate production could be accomplished with safflower in one of the normal production steps. The program was not instituted because it was determined that to build a plant that utilized economies of scale demanded a minimum supply of at least 500,000 ST of meal.

Safflower Hull Research Research on safflower hulls differed from the protein-oriented work involved with safflower itself. Since safflower hulls are very high in fiber, low in protein, hard to digest, and very abrasive, utilization research was required to find markets for them. John Kneeland of PVO was a master at organizing this type of effort. An 11-page report outlined what safflower hulls were, how they could be produced, alternatives of size of production and logistics involved, market developments, competition, and future plans (79). He reported the analysis of then-available hulls as 40% cellulose, 23% hemicellulose or pentosans, 22% lignin, 4–9% protein, 1–4% fat, 1.4–2.0% ash and 5% moisture. Fiber analysis was 45–50%. They were very light; about [3 lbs/ft3. The BTU content was 8100 for hulls having a 3.6% oil content. He pointed out that hulls produced by prior expelling and extracting would have different absorbency characteristics than hulls produced by the tail-end process after extraction. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had dealt with three feeding trials and had sponsored a laboratory study by a UC Davis Ph.D. candidate. One trial was conducted in cooperation with the Vit-A-Way Company of Texas, which was interested in selling a special concentrate aimed at increasing fiber utilization. Safflower hulls were fed to steers in competition with cottonseed hulls. The steers ate the safflower hulls readily. Steers fed safflower hulls for 2 months gained 1–8 lbs/head daily; the steers fed cottonseed hulls gained 2.15 lbs. After this point safflower gains dropped off and the trial was suspended. In a second private trial at Cotati, California, safflower hulls experienced palatability problems. Molasses was added, but the steers fed safflower hulls fared much worse than the hay-fed control lot. Cattle

290

Safflower

TABLE 10.10 Results from Diets Containing 35% Safflower Hulls and Hay Feeding Safflower Hulls

Control

Daily gain Feed consumed, lbs/head/day Feed to gain 100 lbs Feed cost/100 lb gaina

1.19 21.5 1793 $38.99

2.72 28.2 1029 $21.29

aSafflower hulls at $10/ST. Source: PVO, unpublished data.

rejected a 46% hull ration in another feeding trial at Marysville, California. A 35% hull ration was more successful, but still produced the negative results shown in Table 10.10. In 1952, PVO supported Otagaki’s thesis work at UC Davis, in which various pretreatments of safflower hulls and the possible effects on cellulose-lignin degradation by rumen microorganisms were studied. The hulls were physically, chemically, and enzymatically attacked in attempts to break down the cellulose-lignin complex. These treatments were quite severe. The water treatment involved autoclaving at 17 lbs pressure for 2 hr. Rumen contents were carefully handled in the lab and treated hulls were also subjected to rumen action by placing them in a sack implanted in the rumen of a fistulated sheep. The results shown in Table 10.11 were quite disappointing. It was concluded that the cellulose-lignin complex was highly resistant to treatment or released a digestion depressant. In any case, it was obvious from the trials in Table 10.11 that the feeding of safflower hulls, except at levels less than 5 wt%, was not a practical alternative. Various chemical markets were considered (Table 10.12). It was determined that safflower hulls would be worth only $6/ST, less the cost of erecting a proper boiler feeder system, when compared to the then low cost of natural gas. Alpha-cellulose production was explored, but a number of negative factors resulted in the realization that it was uneconomical. Safflower hulls had been found to have very short fiber TABLE 10.11 Digestion of Treated Safflower Hullsa

Finely groundb Water 30-day digestac 1.25% NaOH 5% NaCO3 5% NaCIO2 10% NaCIO2 20% NaCIO2 50% NaCIO2 Pure Cellulose (filter paper)

Temp. (°C)

Time (hr)

% Digested

Number of Trials

– 123 39 123 123 123 100 100 100 –

– 2 30 d 2 2 2 2 2 2 –

21.8 19.8 22.4 25.4 24.0 28.9 22.6 34.2 50.4 62.1

14 13 7 7 7 8 7 6 16 33

aAll treated materials were washed, dried, and ground to 30 mesh after treatment. bGround in ball mill for 24 hr. cRumen enzymes. Source: PVO, unpublished data.

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TABLE 10.12 Possible Miscellaneous Uses of Safflower Hulls Market

Advantages (other than low cost)

Disadvantages

1. Paper and paperboard products using Fiber too short usual or modified paper techniques 2. Filler in conjunction with lon Short fibers okay; fiber staples for paper products makes a denser and harder surface product 3. Filler and extender for plastics, Have to grind to phenol and urea type flour and bleach 4. Filler for plywood Have to grind and other glues to flour and bleach 5. Filler for industrial hand soaps Low ash 6. Extender and diluent Have to grind; for fertilizers floats to surface and insecticides of water 7. Filler for roofing and linoleum Dark in color 8. Filler for insulation 9. Filler for explosives and rubber Not dense enough 10. Filler for bricks and ceramics Makes light and porous brick that are baked in an oven 11. Filler and extender for Organic matter concrete blocks objectionable 12. Ground hulls used as Low absorbency sweeping compound 13. Ground hulls and ash used to Low absorbency and low clean up oil and grease in ash (not abrasive) service stations, etc. 14. Fuel Burns readily and has low ash Material bulky 15. Destructive distillation to get May recover some volatiles charcoal briquettes 16. Furfural manufacture High furfural yield Inadequate supply 17. Xylose sugar manufacture Uneconomical 18. Cattle feed as roughage Low TDN 19. Mulch and soil conditioner Slow decomposition Floats to surface to keep soil porous 20. Stock, stable, and poultry Nonstaining Not absorbent litter and bendding 21. Supporting medium for hydroponic plant cultures 22. Soil diluent for seed planting 23. Insulation to keep steel Have to compete with ingots from cooling too rapidly rice hulls 24. Metal cleaner and polisher Hulls tough and resilient Low absorbency 25. Cleanser of waste corrosive Low absorbency fluids used in electroplating 26. Tannin extraction from the layer Low yield between the hull and meat 27. Packing material for glass and china 28. Abrasive for metal stamping 29. Deburring and polishing material Low absorbehcy for metal parts 30. Additive for drilling mud

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length by Fiberboard Research Laboratory chemists. It was estimated that the bulkiness would reduce digestion yields, the pentosan content would interfere with dissolution, and the minimum plant size would require more hulls than appeared to be available. Various fermentation processes were considered, but they were deemed to be unsuitable based on prior results reported by wood chemists. In 1960, PVO explored the market for safflower hulls as an adhesive extender for plywood bonding after an Arthur Little study showed very promising results. A trade name, SAFFIL was adopted, and studies were conducted to find the best method for inexpensive production of the 200-mesh ground hulls required for this market. The high cost eventually canceled efforts in this direction. Marketing hulls as a principal filler for skateboard wheels succeeded for sales of several truckloads, but could not be sustained. Safflower hulls also worked well as an ingredient in a light-weight brick in which the hulls were mixed with a volcanic ash and clay. The brick was then fired, which caused the hulls to vaporize, leaving tiny air pockets in the brick. After much effort this market was abandoned as well. As we had found in other applications, this market could not support a price for hulls that was better than the return obtained by leaving the hull in the 18–25% protein safflower meal and selling it as animal feed. References 1. Kohler, G.O., D.D. Kuzmicky, R. Palter, J. Guggolz, and V.V. Herring, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 413 (1966). 2. Christensen, F.W., Steer Feeding Trials, 1931–32, North Dakota Agricultural Experimental Station Bulletin 286. November 1935, 14 pp. 3. Baker, M.L., G.N. Baker, C. Ervin, L.C. Harris, and M.A. Alexander, Feeding Safflower Meal, Nebraska Agricultural Experimental Station Bulletin 402, January 1951, 11 pp. 4. Baker, M.L., G.N. Baker, and J.K. Matsushima, Safflower Meal as a Supplement for Cattle, Nebraska Agricultural Experimental Station Bulletin 447, August 1959, 15 pp. 5. Baker, G.N., T. Gosku, and M.L. Baker, Undecorticated Safflower Meal as a Protein Supplement for Wintering Calves, Nebraska Agricultural Experimental Station Bulletin 458, September 1960, 7 pp. 6. Hilston, N.W., C.B. Roubicik, and L. Paules, Comparative Value of Soybean Meal, Safflower Meal, and Urea for Fattening Steers, Wyoming Agricultural Experimental Station Mimeo Circular 2, August 1951, 6 pp. 7. Hilston, N.W., C.P. Stroble, and L. Paules, Comparative Value of Soybean Meal, Safflower Meal, and Urea for Fattening Steers, Wyoming Agricultural Experimental Station Mimeo Circular 20, June 1952, 6 pp. 8. Hilston, N.W., C.P. Stroble, and L. Paules, Feed Age 3: 38 (1953). 9. Stanley, E.B., O.F. Pahnish, and C.E. Safley, Dried Cantaloupe, Safflower Meal, and Salt in Ariz. Cattle Feed Rations, Arizona Agricultural Experimental Station Mimeo 105, July 1951, 4 pp. 10. Heinemann, W.W., M.E. Ensminger, and W.E. Ham, The Feeding Value of Wood Molasses, Dehydrated Alfalfa, Dehydrated Apple Pomace and Undecorticated Safflower Meal When Fed to Fattening Cattle, Washington Experimental Station Bulletin 543, October 1953, 21 pp. 11. Montana Agricultural Experiment Station, Evaluation of Safflower Meal, Bozeman, Montana, July 18, 1960. 12.“Safflower Meal Acceptable Substitute for Cottonseed Meal”, Arizona Farmer Ranchman, Phoenix, Arizona, June 10, 1967.

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13. Scott, T.W., L.J. Cook, K.A. Ferguson, I.W.M. Donald, R.A. Buchanan, and G.L. Hills, Aust. J. Sci. 32: 291 (1970). 14. Scott, T.W., L.J. Cook, and S.C. Mills, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 48: 358 (1971). 15. Paichney, G.J., H.L. Davies, T.W. Scott, and L.J. Coon, Aust. J. Biol. Sci. 25: 205 (1972). 16. Cook, L.J., T.W. Scott, G.S. Faichney, and H.L. Davies, Lipids 7: 83 (1972). 17. Edmondson, L.F., R.A. Yoncoskie, N.H. Rainey, F.W. Douglas Jr., and J. Bitman, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 51: 72 (1974). 18. Kimoto, W.I., R. Ellis, A.E. Wasserman, and R. Oltjen, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 51: 401 (1974). 19. Rabak, F., Safflower: a Possible New Oil-Seed Crop for the Northern Great Plains and the Far Western States, USDA Circular 366, 1935, 14 pp. 20. Liebscher, W., and H. von Demer, Mitt. die Landwirt 58: 1030 (1943). 21. “Dairy Cows Get Safflower Meal at Caldwell Station,” Idaho Agr. Sci. 38: 2 (1953). 22. Ross, R.H., G.W. Cleveland, and D.L. Fourth, Amer. Dairy Sci. Assoc., Western Div. Proceedings 34: 72 (1953). 23. Ross, R.H., G.W. Cleveland, and D.L. Fourth, J. Dairy Sci. 37: 671 (1954). 24. Pittman, D.W., and C.I. Draper, Safflower, Its Possibilities and Culture in Utah, Circ. 136, Agricultural Experimental Station, Logan, Utah, 1955, 16 pp. 25. Bitman, J., L.P. Dryden, H.K. Goering, T.R. Wrenn, and R.A. Yoncoskie, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 50: 93 (1973). 26. Wrenn, T.R., J. Bitman, J.R. Weyant, D.L. Wood, K.D. Wiggers, and L.F. Edmondson, J. Dairy Sci. 60: 521 (1977). 27. Tavasolian, B., and F. Shabbah, J. Agr. Food Chem. 27: 190 (1979). 28. Kratzer, F.M., and D. Williams, Poultry Sci. 26: 623 (1947). 29. Kratzer, F.M., and D. Williams, Poultry Sci. 30: 417 (1951). 30. Petersen, C.F., A.C. Wiese, G.J. Anderson, and C.E. Lampman, Poultry Sci. 36: 3 (1957). 31. Raj, A.G., Ind. J. Poultry Sci. 16: 89 (1981). 32. Halloran, H.R., and J.A. Kneeland, Feedstuffs 33: 70 (1961). 33. Young, R.D., and H.R. Halloran, Poultry Sci. 41: 1696 (1962). 34. Zablan, T.A., M. Griffiths, M.C. Nesheim, R.J. Young, and M.L. Scott, Poultry Sci. 42: 619 (1963). 35. Valadez, S., W.R. Featherston, and R.H. Pickett, Poultry Sci. 44: 909 (1965). 36. Kuzmicky, D.D., and G.O. Kohler, Poultry Sci. 47: 1266 (1968). 37. Kuzmicky, D.D. and G.O. Kohler, Poultry Sci. 47: 1473 (1968). 38. Grau, C.R., and P.A. Zweigart, Cal. Agr. 7: 8 (1953). 39. Petersen, C.F., Flour Feed 56: 14 (1955). 40. Almquist, H.J., and H.H. Halloran, Animal Nutrition and Health, July 1969. 41. Halloran, H.H., and H.J. Almquist, Feedstuffs 40: 7 (1968). 42. Almquist, H.J., and H.H. Halloran, Animal Nutrition and Health, January 1972. 43. Raj, A.G., and P. Kothandaraman, Ind. J. Poultry Sci. 16: 364 (1981). 44. March, B.E., and C. Macmillan, Poultry Sci. 69: 634 (1990). 45. Petersen, C.L., R.J. Katz, et al., Abstract of the Annual Meeting of the Poultry Science Association, Davis, California, 1982. 46. Thomas, V.M., R.J. Katz, et al., Proceedings of the International Conference on Plant and Vegetable Oils as Fuel, American Society for Agricultural Engineers, Fargo, North Dakota, 1982, pp. 270–278. 47. Thomas, V.M., R.J. Katz, A.A. Auld, C.F. Peterson, and E.A. Sauter, Poultry Sci. 62: 882 (1983). 48. Rehman, A., and M.Y. Malin, Pakistan J. Biochem. 19: 39 (1986). 49. Faulkener, E.K., and L. Paules, Saffmeal for Fattening Lambs, Wyoming Agricultural Experimental Station, Mimeo C1. August 1951, 7 pp.

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50. Faulkener, E.K., and L. Paules, Saffmeal for Fattening Lambs—2nd Year’s Trials, Wyoming Agricultural Experimental Station, Mimieo C12, March 1952, 7 pp. 51. Goss, H., and K.K. Otagaki, Cal. Agr. 8: 15 (1954). 52. Dixon, R.M., W. Karda, B.J. Hoskins, and A.R. Egan, Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition in Australia, edited by D.J. Farrell, 1989, pp. 15–24. 53. Pinto, F., B. Ciruzzi, G. Vonghai, and G. Marisco, Abstracts of the Second International Safflower Conference, Hyderabad, India, January 9–13, 1989. 54. Valadez, S., and R.A. Pickett, Studies in Progress, Purdue University, Indiana, September 11, 1964. 55. Johnson, N.P., and L.F. Barrio, J. Appl. Rabbit Res. 8: 64 (1985). 56. Kunju, P.J.G., M. Ram, and J.L. Kukreja, Ind. J. Animal Nutr. 4: 77 (1987). 57. Palter, R., G.O. Kohler, and P.F. Knowles, J. Agr. Food Chem. 17: 1298 (1969). 58. Palter, R., W.F. Haddon, and R.E. Lundin, Phytochemistry 11: 2327 (1972). 59. Palter, R., R.E. Lundin, and G. Fuller, Phytochemistry 11: 819 (1972). 60. Palter, R., R.E. Lundin, and W.F. Haddon, Phytochemistry 11: 2871 (1972). 61. Sakamura, S., Y. Terayama, S. Kawakatsu, A. Ichihara, and H. Saito, Agr. Biol. Chem. 42: 1805 (1978). 62. Sakamura, S. Y. Terayama, S. Kawakatsu, A. Ichihara, and H. Saito, Agr. Biol. Chem 44: 2951 (1980). 63. Lyon, C.K., M.R. Grusman, A.A. Betschart, D.J. Robins, and R.M. Saunders, J. Am. Oil. Chem. Soc. 56: 560 (1979). 64. Betschart, A.A., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 56: 454 (1979). 65. Betschart, A.A., and R.M. Saunders, J. Food Sci. 43: 964 (1978). 66. Betschart, A.A., R.Y. Fong, and M.M. Hanamoto, J. Food Sci. 44: 1022 (1979). 67. Paredes Lopez., O., and C. Ordorica Falomir, J. Sci. Food Agr. 37: 1097 (1986). 68. Paredes Lopez, O., and C. Ordorica Falomir, J. Sci. Food Agr. 37: 1104 (1986). 69. Paredes Lopez, O., C. Ordorica Falomir, and T.A. Carabez, Lebensmittle—Wissenschaft Technologie 21: 328 (1988). 70. Latha, T.S., and V. Prakash, Die Nahrung 30: 833 (1982). 71. Latha, T.S., and V. Prakash, J. Agr. Food Chem. 32: 1411 (1984). 72. Latha, T.S., and V. Prakash, Acta Alimentaria: (1986). 73. Zirwer, D., V. Prakash, B. Raab, K.D. Schwenke, and K. Gast, Die Nahrung 33: (1989). 74. Booma, K., and V. Prakash, Acta Alimentaria 18: 417 (1989). 75. Kulkarni, D.N., Processing and Utilization of Safflower Meal, Ph.D. Thesis, Marathwada Agricultural University, Parbhani, India, 1973. 76. Kulkarni, D.N., N.V. Joeglekar, and M.S. Narasinga Rao, in Oilseeds—Constraints and Opportunities, edited by H.C. Srivastava, Oxford IBH Publishing House, New Delhi, India, 1975. 77. Kulkarni, D.N., M.S. Narasinga Rao, and U.M. Inge, Proceedings of the Second International Safflower Conference, Hyderabad, India, 1956, p. 76. 78. Kulkarni, D.N., K.D. Kulkarni, and D.R. Vencatasamy, “Functionality and Product Application of Safflower Meal and Protein Isolate,” presented at the Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing, China, 1993. 79. Kneeland, J.A., Safflower Hulls, A Review—1959, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation Research and Development, September 1959, 11 pp.

Chapter 11

Analytical Research

Relatively little research has been done on improvements aimed specifically at safflower analyses. Primarily, developments worked out in other fields have been adapted to safflower work. Certainly the development of the gas-liquid chromato graph (GLC) has impacted vegetable oil chemistry in much the same manner that the fax machine has changed communication and the CD has changed the enjoyment of recorded music. In 1970, the AOCS Smalley Gas Chromatography Check Program showed that GLC analysis was as reliable as most people already felt it was, and safflower oil was the easiest oil to measure the fatty acid distribution with GLC (1). The three most important analytical changes specific to safflower have received relatively little public attention. The first was the adaptation of the Carter Dockage Tester to the performance of dockage analysis on safflower seed by Wayne Wolcott and Dave Johnson of PVO working with personnel of the California Department of Agriculture. The second was the development by PVO’s Ernie Jacobsen of a rapid, reliable method for determining oil content of safflower seed. The third was the work by Clem Burton-Smith on the development of a reliable method of sampling and analysis that was adopted by the National Institute of Oilseed Products (NIOP). When safflower first began to be purchased in the United States, the buyer’s contract provided the entire terms of the trade. In 1950, PVO asked the State of California Bureau of Field Crops, which was already involved in sampling and testing flaxseed—at that time the state’s most important oilseed crop, to develop a simple set of third party grading standards. Discussions between Harry Spires, Head of the Bureau, Mance Langford, and me resulted in establishment of a dockage test. All parties agreed that it would be better to buy safflower on a dockagefree (clean) basis rather than providing, as Federal grades did for grains and flaxseed, certain allowances for foreign material or plant trash to be delivered by the farmer. Our reasoning was to try to encourage the farmer to deliver the cleanest seed possible, rather than setting a lower standard that allowed the delivery of some admixture without penalty. It was easy to say that foreign material constituted dockage, but it was also necesary to develop a standard defining which parts of the safflower plant contributed to dockage. As simple as it sounds, we decided to class parts of the seed that were removed by the seed cleaner in PVO’s San Francisco oil mill as the level of acceptance. For example, parts of the load smaller than a 9/128” round hole would end up in the trash, as would sticks, buttons, stems, and large parts of the plant that were normally carried over the top of the cleaner (8/64”). Finally, empty or partially filled hulls were lifted off the stream by the aspiration system of the cleaner. 295

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All of PVO’s screen sizes and references to empty or partially filled seeds we were incorporated in the State of California’s first Safflower Grade (2) and subsequently adopted in the National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules (3). This required sifting over a series of Tyler screens or repeated runs through a Bates aspirator in order to capture all of the empty hulls. This system worked well for several years. As the size of the safflower crop expanded, it became apparent to PVO and others engaged in the sale of safflower seed to Japan that the original system for finding empty hulls was faulty and imprecise. Two factors were involved in this dilemma: PVO had found that an increasing number of hulls could be found by repeated passes of a recleaned sample through the Bates Aspirator—hulls continued to come off even after 10 passes; and the State of California wanted to find a faster method, since either hand sieving or repeated runs of the aspirator was taking too much time. Johnson and Wolcott of PVO’s Field Crops Department and personnel of the Bureau of Field Crops ran hundreds of tests through a Carter Dockage Tester, modified until its air suction consistently pulled off a standard amount of “empties” without picking up filled safflower seed. Finally, the modified Carter Dockage Tester system was adopted by the State of California (4), incorporated into the NIOP Rules (5), and has performed well ever since. When safflower first started to be traded, buyers and sellers quickly found that it was a hard seed to measure for oil content. Extraction with petroleum either for 8 hr in a Soxhlet system could result in variations of 3–5% oil content on the same sample. This problem was partially solved by calling for the sample to be extracted for 4 hr and then to be carefully ground with sand in a mortar and pestle, and reextracted for an additional 4 hr (3). This method still produced too much variability. A method for grinding safflower seed in a Waring-type high-speed mincer-blender was proposed (6), but safflower quickly ground into a mush that was hard to work with. Jacobsen in PVO’s control laboratory finally solved the problem; he worked out a procedure for grinding a larger sample in the presence of an equal amount of diatomaceous earth, then taking a portion of this sample for extraction in a Butt-type extractor. This not only allowed for faster work, but eliminated the problem caused by regrinding since imperfect washing or grinding of the mortar and pestle often would result in the loss of part of the sample, producing variable results. Jacobsen’s method was first publicly described during the First Utilization Conference on Safflower held in Albany, California, in 1967 (7). With modification, this method was later adopted into AOCS Method Aa 4–38 and by NIOP (8.9). Even though Jacobsen’s method reduced variation in safflower seed oil content analyses to 0.25%, when safflower was shipped overseas, much larger variations resulted from the sampling and analyses produced by public and private samplers and analysts. These problems occurred with sunflower seed as well. In 1978, NIOP assigned Burton-Smith, then Chairman of its Sampling and Analysis Committee, to find the answer. He found that each organization involved in sampling or analyzing safflower seed was diligently performing its job, but each was reading interpretations into the described procedures that differed. Burton-Smith ferreted out all of these differences, proposed wording changes that prevented different

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interpretations of a particular procedure and these procedures were incorporated into the NIOP Rules of 1979–80 (10). Johnson et al. reported on a rapid dielectric method for determining the oil content of safflower in 1956 (11). Neustadt described the dielectrometric meter method (12). but it never caught on. Soon nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) devices appeared on the market. Much work was done to improve NMR techniques, and it was used extensively in most safflower planting seed research work. However, the official method of analysis continues to be the Jacobsen method. The development of hand-held refractometers to determine the iodine number via refractive index was outlined by Neustadt and Hunt et al. (12,13). It has become very important in differentiating oleic safflower seed from the normal varieties in everyday control situations (see Chapter 15). Burkhardt and Fuller studied the colorless phosphatide precursors in certain safflower varieties that produce dark-colored oil. These were identified as phoshatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylmyoinositol, and phosphatidycholine (14). They found that these compounds were only partially removed by conventional refining and bleaching processes. They recommended that varieties high in these precursors could produce normal-colored oil if the crude extracted oil was not heated above 100°C since heat activated the kernel precursors. They recommended refining the oil only after it was joined with the prepress oil. An alternate method for removing the precursors was to precipitate them with water (15). Moser and others at the USDA Peoria Laboratory did a full study on the effect of light on the flavor of edible oils and confirmed that PVO’s decision to market safflower oil in amber glass bottles was correct. A fluorescent light test was described to allow evaluation of commercially processed samples of edible oil (16). Wyatt and Day reported on a simplified yet precise method for evaluating oxidation rancidity in safflower and other oils by the use of average flavor threshold panel testing (17). Several researchers have reported on improved methods utilizing various from of chromatography or ozonation to identify various factors in safflower oil Bishov and Hanick discussed the use of gas chromatography for an accelerated oxidation of safflower oil (18); ozone titration to quickly determine degree of unsaturation was discussed by Maggiolo and Tumolo (19); GLC identification of fatty acid composition (20); triglyceride separation by reversed phase HPLC (21) as opposed to glass capillary gas chromatography using preliminary derivatization to improve analysis (22). Gunstone, Qureshi and others discussed use of lipolysis (23–25) and thin-layer chromatography (24–26); Evans and others of the USDA discussed countercurrent distribution and lipase hydrolysis (27). D.F. Kuemmel of Procter & Gamble earlier had demonstrated how GLC and oxidative cleavage could also be used to find minor fatty acids in safflower oil (28). Fedeli et al. have shown a number of ways to measure differences in lipid composition in the cotyledons, embryos, tegument, and skin of safflower seed (29). A Sperry-Webb procedure was modified in a paper by Norcia and Rosenthal to find “fast-reacting” sterols in safflower oil. They found that fast-reacting sterols in safflower contribute not more than 0.11 mg/100 gm of oil versus not less than 0.4 mg/100 gm of oil composed of slow-reacting sterols (30).

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Finally, two fine papers should be mentioned. Müller-Mulot describes the development of a classic method for the determination of individual tocopherols of vegetable oils (31). His findings for safflower are reported in Chapter 3. Chiba, Takazawa, and Fujimoto presented a simple method for the estimation of carbonyl content in the presence of peroxides by the use of triphenyl phosphine reduction (32). References 1. Herb, S.F., and V.G. Martin, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 415 (1970). 2. Official Standards for Safflower Seed, State of California, Dept. of Agriculture, Sacramento. California, 1951, 5 pp. 3. “USA Safflower Seed (Export Terms)—Rule 110(g),” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, Amendments to 1963 Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, November 1, 1963, pp. 4–6. 4. Official Standards for Safflower Seed, State of California, Dept. of Agriculture, Sacramento, California, June 1, 1965, 5 pp. 5. “USA Origin Safflower Seed—Rule 110(g,h),” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, 1965–1966, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, July 1, 1965, pp. 64–67. 6. Kennedy, W.K., and J. Unrau, Agronomy J. 41: 93 (1949). 7. Jacobsen, E., First Research Conference on Utilization of Safflower, Albany, California, USDA ARS 74–74, 1967, pp. 28–31. 8. Official and Recommended Methods of the American Oil Chemists’ Society, The American Oil Chemists’ Society, Champaign, Illinois, 1989. 9. “USA Origin Safflower Seed,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, 1969–1970, National Institute of Oilseed Products. San Francisco, California, August 1, 1969, pp. 68–75. 10. “USA Origin Safflower Seed,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, 1979–1980, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, July 1, 1979, pp. 68–75. 11. Johnson, R.M., W.H. Hunt, M.H. Nuestadt, and L. Zeleny, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 33: 314 (1956). 12. Neustadt, M.H., Rapid Testing of Oilseeds for Oil Quantity and Iodine Number of Oil, USDA Technical Bulletin No. 1171, October, 1957, 26 pp. 13. Hunt, M.H., M.H. Neustadt, A.A. Shurku, and L. Zeleny, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 28: 5 (1951). 14. Burkhardt, H.J., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 69 (1970). 15. Burkhardt, H.J., and G. Fuller, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 219 (1970). 16. Moser, H.A., C.D. Evans, J.C. Cowan, and W.F. Kwolek, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 30 (1965). 17. Wyatt, C.J., and E.A. Day, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 734 (1965). 18. Bishov, S.J., and A.S. Henick, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 477 (1966). 19. Maggiolo, A., and A.L. Tumulo, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 38: 279 (1961). 20. Spencer, G.F., S.F. Herb, and P.J. Gormisky, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 53: 94 (1976). 21. Plattner, R.D., G.F. Spencer, and R. Kleiman, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 54: 511 (1977). 22. D’Alonzo, R.P., W.J. Kozarek, and R.L. Wade, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 59: 292 (1982). 23. Gunstone, F.D., R.J. Hamilton, and M.I. Qureshi, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 319 (1965). 24. Gunstone, F.D., and F.B. Padley, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 955 (1965).

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25. Gunstone, F.D., and M.I. Qureshi, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 42: 961 (1965). 26. Gunstone, F.D., F.B. Padley, and M.I. Qureshi, Chem. Ind. (London), 483 (1964). 27. Evans, C.D., D.G. McConnell, C.R. Scholfield, and H.J. Dutton, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 345 (1966). 28. Kuemmel, D.F., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 41: 667 (1964). 29. Fedeli, E., N. Cortesi, F. Camurati, and G. Jacini, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 49: 233 (1972). 30. Noreia, L.N., and B.E. Rosenthal, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 168 (1966). 31. Müller-Mulot, W., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 53: 732 (1976). 32. Chiba, T., M. Takazawa, and K. Fujimoto, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 66: 1588 (1989).

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Chapter 12

Unconventional Use Research

Weiss and Knowles commented on spiny types of safflower being employed in India and the Near East as a border planting where its spines helped it act as a fence against children or marauding animals. Other parts of this book refer to the employment of safflower seed and florets in jewelry (see Chapter 1), in the production of dye from the florets (see Chapters 3 and 16), the use of florets as a food colorant (see Chapters 3 and 16), and as a horticultural plant (see Chapters 1 and 3). Three other uses worth noting are its employment as a bird feed, as an ornamental, and as a glaze for pottery or cloth (Roghan).

Birdseed Export trade in small amounts of the whiter types of safflower seed for bird feeding has gone on from India and China for most of this century. It is employed in China and Taiwan for the feeding of ducks, in Europe for the feeding of tame pigeons, and during the past 30 years in the United States and Canada as a component of both wild and caged birdseed mixes. No statistics exist as to the size of this market, but it is apparent that at least 20,000 tons of U.S. and Canadian safflower seed enters the birdseed market in some years. Sixty million people in the United States are estimated to be engaged in the feeding of wild birds (1). Safflower appears to be a preferred product for incorporation in caged bird mixes aimed at parakeets and parrots.

Ornamental Uses Because of its tough, fibrous nature, parts of the safflower plant have been used as decorative material for centuries. Claassen commented that at the turn of the century Mediterranean and Russian emigrants to the United States planted safflower in their farmstead gardens to use both as cut flowers and as a source of food coloring. They were preceded by others dating back to the Spanish conquest. In the late 1940s, Judge Max Watson of San Jose, California, was very interested in growing safflower as an ornamental and interested a number of nurseries and flower shops in carrying spineless red-flowered safflower plants that he had dried. He operated in this business for several years, eventually supplying wholesale flower merchants across the United States. The basic technique used was to plant spineless

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safflower at a high planting rate to force the plants to hear most of their flowers at the very top of the plant. The plants would be cut by hand very close to the ground at the time of full flower and gathered into loose bundles tied with a stout cord. These bundles would be hung upside down from the rafters of a darkened building and allowed to dry slowly. When treated this way, the leaves and bracts of the plant would remain intact and retain a green color; the florets would retain their color, drying to a dull red shade. Once dried, these plants were very stable and could be employed in dried flower arrangements with straw flowers and other dried ornamental material. A display placed in a sheltered area of a room could remain intact for at least 20 years. A variation of this technique was to plant some safflower at a very low seeding rate causing it to branch profusely. These plants were cut and dried in the same manner and sold for use in a display in which the safflower plant was the central object of attention. Some dried safflower was also sprayed with silver or gold paint and sold as an autumn display item in that form. In recent years, the Peralta Brothers of Richmond, California, have gone one step further in marketing safflower for floral displays. They planted a carefully tended nursery of orange-red flowered spineless safflower, taking care to prevent the plants from any stress so the leaves remained green. The Peraltas were not sure of the origin of the variety they were planting, but I would guess it was UC-26, a release of the University of California (2). They were planted with a high plant population in order to minimize branching. Just when the plants approached full flower they were cut near the ground, gathered into small bunches of about 10–20 heads, wrapped with cellophane and put into water. These were offered throughout the San Francisco Bay Area grocery stores and florists for $5.95–6.95/bunch. They would come to full flower in 1–2 weeks and then would last for a long time as a dried decoration. After marketing this product for three seasons, the Peraltas gave it up in 1993, finding that their labor costs allowed them no profit margin. Perhaps an importer will be able to find cheaper productions outside the United States and renew this method. Safflower has never been widely used as a horticultural plant, although some have planted it as a garden border plant to protect other flowers from children or animals. SeedTec had two short lines in their 1993 breeding nursery that would appear to make interesting garden plants, but no attempt has been made to commercialize these.

Roghan In India, Weiss reported that roghan made from safflower oil has been used for decades in the preservation of leather, as a glass cement, as a fixing material for stones and tiles, and as a waterproofing material for cloth (3). It is prepared in two ways depending on the end use. If usead as a cement or fixing material, the oil is heated for 2 hr to approximately and 300°C, and the hot oil is then poured into cold water, producing a gelatinous cement. For employment for waterproofing or as a preservative, it is polymerized for 2 hr at 307–310°C and then dissolved in turpentine (4). The process is also used to

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produce intricate designs on cloth by workers repeatedly dipping a sharp stone or a metal stylus into the hot mixture and drawing out fine threads of the polymer onto the fabric being coated (3). References 1. Lilleboe, D., The Sunflower 20: 12 (1994). 2. Knowles, P.F., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 52: 374 (1975). 3. Weiss, E.A., Castor, Sesame, and Safflower, Barnes & Noble Inc., New York, 1971, p. 728. 4. Chavan, V.M., Niger and Safflower, Indian Central Oilseeds Committee, Examiner Press, Bombay, India, 1961, 150 pp.

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Chapter 13

The Rise and Fall of PVO: Part I

In Chapters 4 and 5, we reviewed the loss of PVO’s monopoly in safflower, the emergence of many competitors, and the transition of safflower oil’s primary role from industrial products to food use. For all of the problems it was facing in the early 1960s, PVO was still operating from a position of strength in many fields, and Rocca Jr. tried his best to keep the company growing and strong.

Expanding Production Horizons Rocca Jr. had concluded that PVO was going to be faced with more and more competition in acquiring safflower in Arizona and the San Joaquin Valley, and he therefore needed to promote production elsewhere. The first steps had been taken with the expansion into the Great Plains and Mexico. Now he decided to look overseas. In 1957, POI had begun work in the Republic of South Africa with Walter Boley of Alberdingk & Boley of Krefeld-Verdingen, West Germany, to promote production of castors in SAF using POI hybrids. On May 27, 1957, the POI South African ventures led to the formation of Oilseeds Development Corporation (Pty.) Ltd. (ODC), a corporation wholly owned by POI, at Bethal, Transvall, for the production of hybrid castors and sorghum. This operation was managed by John McOnie. Oilseeds Development Corporation prospered over the years (becoming the largest producer of hybrid sorghum seed in South Africa) under the able direction and farming abilities of McOnie and the perception of its attorney and Director A.E.G. Trollip. The Boley relationship produced a 15-year Technical Assistance Agreement between PVO and Boley, signed on January 4, 1965, in which PVO gave Boley exclusive rights in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to PVO’s know-how relating to safflower oil special product, in turn Boley agreed to pay PVO royalties of $15/MT for all safflower oil consumed or marketed for use in special safflower oil products, and to buy all of its requirements for safflower oil from PVO for 3 years. For many years, PVOC had marketed industrial oils in Australia through its Sydney agents, A.C. Hatrick. As Australia became more interested in safflower through the pioneering research of Pugsley and Winter and others, Indian safflower oil began to be imported, and PVO had found a ready market where it could offer safflower oil competitively. Rocca had received a visit from Gordon Tod of Queensland, a member of the Queensland Grain Growers Association (QGGA), who informed him of agricultural work on safflower that was going on in Australia. In 1960, Claassen was heading to 303

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Germany and on to the Republic of South Africa by way of Sudan and Southern Rhodesia to meet with Boley. Rocca asked Claassen to change routes and return to the United States by way of Australia to ascertain if PVO could begin safflower production there. Claassen flew to Brisbane, rented a car, and drove to Toowoomba, Queensland (1). Claassen had no appointment with the President of QGGA, S.O. Cowlishaw, who was away on business, but was able to meet with the General Secretary. Claassen pointed out that PVO felt Japan needed additional safflower seed that could provide a market for the production from 60,000 acres at a price of £45/MT for local delivery. Claassen also visited the Agricultural Station at nearby Biloella, and Stevens, the head of the station, suggested that Claassen consider hiring Pieter Johan Christiaan Brauns, who worked at the station, because Brauns had a strong commercial bent. Claassen was impressed with Brauns, and he soon became POI’s representative. The Queensland Grain Growers Association soon agreed to represent PVO in contracting, and Claassen next visited Harold Meggitt Ltd. in Sydney along with PVO’s representative in Australia, Peter Lawrence Leech of A.C Hatrick, to inquire about processing the future crop. Improving the state of planting seed available was of primary concern to Claassen. The Queensland Grain Growers Association tried to get an import permit to bring in Gila from POI in the United States, but the Australian government would not allow it. Claassen returned to Australia in 6 weeks, taking with him a copy of PVO’s film, The Safflower Story. After showing the film to Commonwealth Agriculture officials in Canberra, he was able to get permission to import 20 lbs of Gila seed to begin an increase program. Soon Tod had become President of QGGA, and Claassen discussed alternative ways of increasing the seed. One way was to have QGGA do it; another was to form a new organization to follow up on this work. Claassen decided to form a branch of POI in 1962 with Brauns as manager, and property was soon acquired to build a small seed storage and processing plant. By May, 1963, when Rocca Jr. visited Australia to return Tod’s earlier visit, 14,000 acres of Gila were being produced. He had already begun to put together PVO’s usual Assistance Agreements. Pacific Seeds could not be named Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., (Australia) because A.D. Robertson of Alexandria, N.S.W., had laid prior claim to the name. Pacific Oil Seed Pty., Ltd., He also claimed the name Pacific Vegetable Oil and PVO and planned to use the names for a planned oil mill at Dalby, Queensland. We believe that his main hope was to sell the names to PVO, but PVO decided to ignore him. Claassen retained QGGA to acquire safflower seed for a fee of $2.00/MT. On November 28, 1962, PVO and A.C. Hatrick announced that they were forming a joint venture company, and Pacific Safflower (Australia) Pty., Ltd., (PSA) was incorporated April 16, 1963, with PVO’s Paveocor and A.C. Hatrick, Ltd., each holding equal shares. The parties agreed to provide operating capital by means of seasonal noninterest-bearing advances from the two owners, matched by loans from the Commonwealth Trading Bank. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation put forth $150,000 the first season. Leech was elected to be the General Manager (and a Director of PSA). Other Directors were Archibald Clarke Hatrick, Claassen, Rocca Jr., and Geoffrey P. Strong.

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The primary purpose of the company was to manage the acquisition and toll processing of safflower seed through an arrangement with Harold Meggitt, Ltd., (called “little Meggitt” to distinguish it from the nearby Meggitt Ltd., Australia’s largest oil miller). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, in turn, charged PSA a fee of 1% on PSA’s sales of oil and meal under a PVO Technical Assistance Agreement (January 1, 1964). On June 24, 1964, Pacific Seeds (Australia) Pty., Ltd., was incorporated at Hatrick’s offices in Botany, N.S.W. as a 100% subsidiary of POI, to be located at Biloella. Leech was made Secretary, and Brauns was Manager. Following this, on September 23, 1964, PSA made a 5-year technical assistance agreement with Pacific Seeds for Pacific Seeds to act as PSA’s exclusive agent for developing safflower acreage and obtaining safflower seed for all operations undertaken by PSA in Australia. Pacific Seeds was allowed to appoint subagents, and they appointed QGGA in this capacity. Under the arrangement, Pacific Seeds received compensation of A$3.00/MT on the first 15,000 MT purchased and A$2.00 thereafter, with one-half of these funds going to QGGA. In addition, paralleling POI’s deal with PVO, Pacific Seeds was to receive a premium of A$0.75/MT on the first 15,000 MT and A$0.50 on the next 5,000 MT as a premium for oil and protein content improvements. Pacific Seeds earned £562 its first year (June 30, 1964), £13,403 its second year, and approximately U.S. $100,000 its third season. Estimating that the 1966/67 seaties could produce $200,000 in profits on an estimated crush of 20,000 MT, the parties elected to acquire Harold Meggitt, Ltd., and expand its annual capacity from 12,000 to 25,000 MT. Meggitt was purchased by PSA in March of 1966 for approximately $300,000, and with the addition of an extractor and desolventizer became the first extraction facility in Australia. Meggitt’s flaxseed-processing business was also acquired, since this contributed annual gross profits of approximately $35,000 to the picture. Pacific Seeds’ capitalization was increased to £50,000 with each side receiving 24,500 voting shares and 1,000 shares of nonvoting stock to be held by the Australians to allow them to file consolidated income tax returns under Australian law. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation obtained the new shares plus the 251 shares previously held by Paveocor; the Australian shares were held by Australian Chemical Holdings Limited (Hatrick’s parental holding company). In addition to the plant acquisition cost, the group committed $220,000 toward the plant’s reconstruction (with $60,000 of this being contributed from PVO surplus equipment) and $100,000 toward construction of country warehousing to accumulate safflower seed. In July 1966, PVO granted a 10-year Technical Assistance License to Halmeg Pty., Ltd., of Gladesville, N.S.W. Halmeg, a wholly owned subsidiary of PSA, had been formed to provide a new name for the newly acquired Meggitt plant. The agreement provided for PVO to furnish processing and construction knowledge to upgrade the Meggitt mill with Halmeg paying PVO a royalty of $1.20/MT, clean basis, for all seed processed in Halmeg’s facilities. Ed Hill was dispatched to Sidney to inspect the Meggitt plant and to determine what steps were needed to convert it to a prepress/solvent-extraction operation. Hans Nissen, a superintendent at PVO’s

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Richmond plant, subsequently went to Gladesville and directed the installation of the needed solvent-extraction equipment and assisted the local crew in starting up the new plant. Pacific Seeds’ initial production efforts were primarily in the nearby Darling Downs area, but yields were erratic and not competitive with other crops, so the main production efforts were moved to Queensland’s Central Highlands. In 1965, PSA purchased a 240-acre irrigated farm near Bitoella to establish a research station for work not only on safflower but also on hybrid sorghum (2). During the mid-1960s, John Ranken joined PSA when Leech became occupied with more and more responsibilities in Hatrick. He later joined Meggitt when they acquired PVO’s interests, and subsequently he became Executive Director of the New South Wales Oilseed Marketing Board during the 1970s and early 1980s. By 1968, PSA was doing 95% of Australia’s safflower oil business. To keep that business going, PSA was forced to import safflower seed from PVO when a terrible drought decimated production in 1968, and its profits dropped. Almost in parallel with the ventures in Australia, PVO looked to Spain as well. Living in Madrid, in 1962, was Francisco Gonzalez Avila who had been PVO’s Manager in Manila. Gonzalez, a Spaniard who had run away to Manila at 13 and become a success in the Philippines before joining PVO, had been accused of a conflict of interest by PVO Manila underlings. Rocca Sr. investigated and found that Gonzalez, as was customary for many Philippine executives, was operating a second business on the side, one that involved selling copra bags. Although Gonzalez sold the bags at prices less than the market price to PVO, Gonzalez and Rocca Sr. were still in conflict, and Gonzalez had resigned. Now Rocca Jr. was hiring him back and Gonzalez, always a dynamo, took the challenge. Gonzalez arranged for trials to be planted in several locations around Spain. In the summer of 1962, POI’s Don Smith and PVO’s Hill journeyed to Spain; Smith to review the trial plantings, Hill to survey possible oil-milling arrangements for safflower seed. Tests in the Central Plain of Spain were disappointing, but the ones in the Sevilla area looked promising. Another trial planted near Valencia (nor observed by Smith) failed when attacked by safflower fly. Later that fall, Claassen and Rocca Jr. returned to Spain. While Rocca Jr. was in Valencia with the local farmers who wished to handle plantings for PVO in the future, Claassen met a party in Madrid who warned him about the Valencia grower. Claassen spoke to Gonzalez about the need for a scientist with a commercial bent to represent POI, and Gonzalez introduced Claassen to Rafael Carrascosa, a young wheat breeder. Claassen decided to hire him, a salary was arranged, and Carrascosa went right to work planning and then planting a series of tests near Sevilla in early 1963. Claassen continued to supervise Carrascosa’s efforts until 1964, when Smith took over active direction of these efforts. Gonzalez introduced Rocca to a group of friends interested in a safflower venture. In due time, a subsidiary, Safflor, S.A., was formed by Paveocor (50%) and by Gonzalez and his associates (50%) for a total of $100,000 paid in capital to develop the Spanish safflower industry. Incorporation took place on March 21, 1964. On August 29, 1964, Semillas Pacifico, S.A. (Sepasa) was formed as a 100% subsidiatry

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of POI with Claassen and Smith of POI, and Hill of PVO as Directors, Claassen as President, and Carrascosa as Secretary. An agreement was worked out in which Sepasa was employed to contract safflower seed for Safflor, and Safflor paid an oil premium to Sepasa for improvements in varieties that Sepasa would sell to its contracted farmers. While Sepasa was increasing the crop size, Safflor began to import safflower oil from PVO and started by selling oil to the Spanish ink industry. Safflower was profitable from the start, but within a year it became apparent that Safflor’s Spanish partners could not carry the financial load of an increase in volume. Gonzalez Avila began a search for stronger partners and brought the Eximtrade, S.A. group to the table. An arrangement was established whereby Francisco Gonzalez Blazquez, representing the Eximtrade Group, and Gonzalez Avila, representing Paveocor, would jointly manage the strengthened company. Eximtrade was a small grain-trading and oil-milling conglomerate and had a concession from the Spanish government to construct a vegetable oil complex (called “Pole”) in the Sevilla area, Eximtrade took over the other Spaniard’s interests in Safflor, in the process pushing Gonzalez Avila to a very minor ownership position and brought PVO, with its technical expertise, into Pole. Although Gonzalez Avila went along with this in order not to upset the applecart for PVO, as years passed both he and Gonzalez Blazquez began to have doubts about some Eximtrade executives. Gonzalez Blazquez, as Eximtrade’s representative, was placed in some especially difficult positions. Hill made a survey of available Spanish crushing facilities. He recommended that the olive-processing plant at Herrera (Prograsa), an Eximtrade subsidiary, have expellers added and be used to toll process safflower seed for the venture until better facilities could be built. The “Pole” project called for a 120 million peseta (PTA), then about $2 million, investment with Eximtrade, each to provide 20 million PTA, with 50 million PTA from the Spanish National Bank, and balance from other arranged financing. Plans called for construction of storage and a prepress solvent-extraction mill to be built in a suburb of Sevilla. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation would provide knowledge through its technical assistance program, Safflor would handle the purchase of seed and marketing of the products, and Eximtrade would be the managing partner. The technical assistance agreement was signed July 10, 1965 and called for PVO to provide knowledge for 10 years in exchange for 85 PTA/MT royalty fees for all safflower seed processed plus 60 PTA for safflower meal and 30 PTA for sunflower seed processed (PVO had granted technical assistance to Tranquisa, a Barcelona chemical industry the previous year to handle safflower oil special products, but bothing ever came of this). Safflor was granted a 5-year license in August, 1966, to manufacture and distribute Saffola salad and cooking oil, mayonnaise, salad dressings, and margarine in Spain, the Canary Islands, and Spanish possessions in North Africa in exchange for 1% of the selling price of oil and 3% for other products. A new corporation, Industria de Production y Envasadode Aceites de Sevilla, S.A. (Ipeasa) was formed on August 30, 1966, Rocca Jr., Gonzalez Avila, and Arturo Harper (formerly from PVO del Sur in San Francisco) represented PVO: Jose Victor de Francisco Gracia, Blazquez, and Ivan Luis Fernandez Otero represented the Eximtrade Group; and two were designated from a cotton cooperative interested in

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producing seed for the mill. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was never to put more than $50,000 into the operation; all of its capital requirements were provided our of surplus caused by Safflor’s very successful operations. Ipeasa subsequently added additional storage, increased its processing facilities by adding a second extraction unit, and finally built a modern bottling and packaging unit during the 1970s. The plant was always the pride and joy of Gonzalez Avila and its manager, “Josefino,” who became the dean of Spanish oil milling superintendents. Subsequently, Eximtrade brought a third subsidiary mill at Badajoz, near the Portuguese border, into its operation with PVO. As sunflower became of much more importance, safflower processing reverted to the smaller Prograsa plant that had been converted to prepress/solvent extraction. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was to suffer a series of problems with the Spanish operations in the 1970s. The first problem was in finding ways to recapture the very substantial earnings from these operations without incurring huge tax consequences, since very little had been invested. This at least was a problem bred by too much success. The other problem was much more serious. Trying to keep Eximtrade and safflower from being entangled in events that eventually led to a huge financial scandal in Spain that involved Eximtrade’s Letasa shipping group became a full-time problem. Eventually, lpeasa was to be sold off and became part of the Cargill empire during the Cartwright era (see Chapter 14), and Gonzalez Blazquez’s brother Julio was to devote a number of years after his brother’s death expertly handling the eventual liquidation of Prograsa for the benefit of its minority shareholders. Claassen and Fred Van Dyke of PVO made a journey to survey the potential for safflower production in Argentina during this period. Although both marveled at the abundance of deep, rich soil in Central Argentina, Claassen’s opinion was that them available P-1 variety would be very susceptible to fusarium problems, and that it would be difficult for PVO to enforce contracts controlling production in that country. Claassen had spent 2 months in Venezuela working on a UN mission in 1948 He toyed with the idea of recommending that PVO go ahead in the Orinoco Valley, where he thought that drier weather and less competition could make for success. In the end, however, PVO and Claassen opted to stay out of South America.

A Change in Pricing As competition began to grow in the 1960s, PVO’s traditional price basis for contracted safflower seed had to change. During most of the 1950s, PVO’s contract offered so many dollars/ST delivered to the buyer’s mill. It was the responsibilit of the farmer to deliver his own seed, and naturally, farmers who were farther from the mill received a lower net value on their farm. There were several reasons to change this basis. As PVO’s business began to grow, the need to accumulate and store safflower at various designated “receiving points,” or country elevators, increased. Each year, PVO would publish a list of diferentials for the various designated receiving points. The grower could chose whether to deliver to a local receiving point or to send his seed directly to PVO’s Richmond plant.

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At first, PVO charged the full freight rate it had to pay from the local receiving point to the Richmond mill, reasoning that the convenience of delivering locally would make this an attractive alternative to the grower. For small growers using their own 5-ton capacity “bobtail” truck, this was probably true, but as safflower acreage grew, this became less of a factor as larger individual growers proliferated. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation needed to encourage growers to fill the local storage; there was not enough storage at the Richmond plant to store the entire crop at once. The pricing of differentials at designated receiving points therefore became a game of calculating a value that would encourage enough growers to deliver to each point. Another reason for change was that in order to gain more production as demand increased, it was necessary to pay a better price to the more distant grower who would otherwise calculate that the net price after paying freight to Richmond was too low to produce safflower versus some other crop. Therefore, PVO had to begin subsidizing the more distant growers in order to gain acreage. This was done initially by adjusting the differential for designated receiving points. For example, at times the differential for delivery to Stockton Elevators was reduced to zero. When multiple competitors had appeared, PVO had to face a different dilemma. Competitors’ mills or elevators were located all over the state. A grower near Fresno. California, would much prefer to deliver to a mill located in Fresno and pay a freight cost of only $3/ST versus hauling his seed to Richmond for $15/ST or to PVO’s designated local receiving point where he might be charged a differential of $10/ST. Initially, PVO adjusted its differentials in certain areas to face these threats: eventually the present system of buying safflower seed FOB ranch became more sensible for two reasons. First, using the differential method required guessing what growers would do. It became more and more difficult to predict whether one would be able to fill the storage bins at a particular designated country elevator. By buying on a FOB ranch basis, the buyer controlled the trucking of the seed and could desingnate when that seed would be delivered. Storage commitments could more easily be fulfilled. Secondly, buying on an FOB ranch basis removed the competitive freight advantage enjoyed by a mill located nearer to a particular grower. So today, each safflower buyer makes a calculation within the price offered growers for the average cost of freight and elevation, and offers a flat price FOB ranch.

The Safflower Council At the NIOP Annual Meeting at Ojai, January 26, 1962, Rocca Jr. announced that the directors had formed a Safflower Committee to help formulate trading rules, and sampling and analysis procedures. Rocca Jr., who was retiring as President of NIOP, was elected chairman of the Committee (3). The Committee was his idea as a means to generate publicity, have a group that could respond quickly to good or bad events, and not concidentially, help PVO’s Saffola program grow. By the following summer the Committee expanded into the Safflower Council and included all members of NIOP interested in safflower (16 initially). Rocca Jr. was elected Chairman of the Council’s Executive Committee. Bert Hochman of Lever Brothers was named head of a Public Relations Committee, and Farley Manning and

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Associates were employed to perform the day-to-day work of preparing press released and generating a favorable press for safflower and the polyunsaturated oil story. In 1963, the Council distributed a film, “Diet and Your Heart,” and began to support medical research on the subject (4). Larry Kinsell’s Institute of Metabolic Research, received the first grant and he was appointed Medical Advisor for the Council. Kinsell addressed the 1964 NIOP convention at Ojai, California. It was announced that the Council would sponsor a symposium on Diet and Heart Disease in San Francisco in the Fall of 1964 with Dick Hauer of Durkee Famous Foods in charge (5). In 1964, the American Heart Association announced a recommendation to the general public advocating substitution of polyunsaturated fats for saturated fats in the diet as a means of reducing heart attacks and strokes. This took some of the sting out of the FDA’s prior announcement ordering PVO and others to discontinue advertisements on the basis of polyunsaturation (6). Initially about $50,000 was raised from the membership to support its dual programs of public relations and medical research, but in early 1964 the Council voted to begin a checkoff program asking growers to contribute $0.10/ST from settlements for the 1964 crop. The checkoff system was not a roaring success. By 1965, the Council was forced to generate funds by asking its members to contribute $0.05/ST of safflower seed crushed or handled, and $0.10/ST of oil refined (7). As usual some growers and even some members of the Council complained that the Council’s efforts were primarily for the benefit of those like PVO that had a consumer program, but in the long run they agreed that this still helped everyone by helping to expand the market for safflower. Eleven of the Council’s then 15 members complied. In 1966 the Council changed its name to the “National Safflower Council,” and adopted more formal bylaws as the first Council to be affiliated with the NIOP. Council suspended its public relations campaign but continued to support medical research under Kinsell, to provide guidance for additional rule changes, and to present recommendations on labeling to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (6,8). The Council began to sponsor research into 42% safflower meal and passed a special $0.10/ST assessment to fund this work. The Annual Report of the National Safflower Council reflected the woes faced by the industry in 1967: “This has been a difficult year for the safflower industry. Growers were beset by adverse growing conditions, exporters had to face for the first time severe competition from Mexican safflower seed and Russian sunflower seed; crushers have to cope with badly depressed prices for both safflower meal and safflower oil” (9).

Although couched in language about the entire industry, these words applied specifically to PVO.

Hard Times for PVO In November, 1962, PVO moved from its original location at 62 Townsend Street in San Francisco to new headquarters offices in San Francisco’s World Trade Center in the Ferry Building. The company’s Export Division, which had been located at

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25 California Street, the long-time headquarters of Rocca-Cuvi and PVO del Sur, was also consolidated into the World Trade Center offices. Rocca Sr. opposed the move, believing that companies usually make a mistake moving to fancier offices since the only thing they gain is a reduced profit. As it turned out he was right, although not for the right reason. As a backdrop to all of these safflower operations, we should remember that PVO’s principal business had been the trade and manufacture of copra and coconut oil products. When Gonzalez Avila left as PVO’s manager in Manila, he was replaced by a series of managers that failed in their attempts to operate this business on an even keel. Gonzalez’s so-called conflict of interest was nothing compared to the series of problems caused by the next four managers. The Philippines was going through a period of internal economic pressures that forced many companies to deal in so-called undershipping and overshipping operations to take advantage of foreign exchange profits, avoid duties, and generally avoid government controls. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation tried to stay away from all of this, but found sooner (or usually later) that its managers were mired in the middle of it, and that a new replacement had to be put in place. This problem was finally solved when Charles Hultberg was transferred from PVO’s Accounting Department to serve as Philippine Manager. When Rocca, Jr. wrote his letter to shareholders in October 1963 (10), he could be cautiously optimistic about the company recovering from the disasters of the previous season. How could he know that President Kennedy would be assassinated a month later and on the same day of Kennedy’s death. Tino De Angelis would go under in the biggest financial scandal of the century (11). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had avoided trading with De Angelis’s Allied Crude Vegetable Oil Refinery Corporation for months because Rocca, Jr. suspected something was wrong. Because of these suspicions, he had placed heavy market orders on the New York and Chicago commodity exchanges opposite to the positions De Angelis was taking on the market. The Allied failure sent commodity prices into a free fall. The Allied failure ruined several stock brokerage firms and, except for the extra time gained because of the period of mourning for Kennedy, the New York Stock Exchange could have failed as well. Enough time was gained to get help for the Exchange in Europe. The De Angelis scandal shook the banking community to its foundations. Warehouse receipts, which before this had been treated much like gold, became a problem in the eyes of many, and trading in vegetable oils received a black eye. Although PVO had received little direct damage from the Allied bankruptcy, PVO’s bankers would look at it through even colder eyes than before. Even though PVO had taken the correct position on the Commodity Exchanges, it was hurt by the Commodity Exchange’s decision to close out all trading accounts during the Allied crists, which stopped the company’s hedges from reaching full values. Markets for soybean oil were driven down to unbelievable levels and this very much affected the safflower oil market as well. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had cut back its safflower plantings, yet PVO found its competitors producing and offering more safflower oil with no place to go. As related in a previous chapter, Rocca Jr, became enraged and convinced that Anderson, Clayton Co. was

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purposely trying to drive PVO from the safflower business by selling at prices that were obviously below its cost. Therefore, PVO engaged in a bitter suit against Anderson, Clayton Co. that was finally dropped by both sides in 1967. All of the low prices, gyrating markets, and the terrible fear generated by the Allied failure cut drastically into PVO’s profit margins, forcing the company to pare back on Saffola expansion. Saffola sales were increasing more slowly than expected because of the FDA’s constant attacks. Prentis Hale, an unofficial representative of PVO’s banks on PVO’s Board of Directors, encouraged the company to retain McKinsey and Company to conduct an audit of the company’s management and organization. They suggested that we create more intermediate management to prevent so many managers from reporting to the President, and to set up a system for paying bonuses based on budgets and goals instead of the more subjective system used before. The new bonus system mostly created more controversy and did little to generate more enthusiasm. It was changed often after the initial system was deemed a failure. In October of 1964, PVO and its subsidiaries reported to its shareholders a loss of $1,426,943 on sales of $127,333,352. In addition, the company’s working capital had fallen to $2,690,000, one-half the level achieved only 2 years before. What was not reported to PVO’s shareholders, but was reported to PVO’s banks and directors, was that while the parent company had suffered a loss of $1,971,000, its Philippine subsidiary (Unifood Manufacturing, Inc.) suffered an additional $465,800 loss, and the company’s auditors, Arthur Andersen & Co., were forced to issue a qualified auditors’ opinion because they were unable to find $348,000 in inventory and/or verify $285,000 of accounts receivable of Unifood. In addition, the auditors’ report stated that the company had six violations of various covenants in its Line of Credit Agreement with the Bank of America. The most serious of these constituted a promise never to allow working capital to fall below $2,000,000. The big loss as reported included $1,030,000 in unallocated manufacturing costs (12). Executives at the Bank of America and the Bank of California panicked and demanded serious changes. They felt that manufacturing costs must be out of control when actually the $1,030,000 unallocated figure was simply a matter of the way costs, and particularly Research, Laboratory, Engineering, and Plant Management Costs were allocated or (in this case) were not allocated to the company’s various commodity-processing accounting centers. The banks portrayed Rocca Sr. as a “wheeler-dealer” and forced him to resign as Board Chairman in March, 1965, along with Directors C. Zook Sutton and Tom Allan; the banks put in Robert DiGiorgio, Charles S. Hobbs, C. Edward Strobel, and Sutton’s son as new Directors. Rocca Jr. was named President and CEO, and Nathan Most, formerly with Getz Bros, Co., was brought in as Vice president of Finance and Administration and Treasurer. For those of us who had been old-timers in PVO, all of this was very painful. Rocca Sr. was the antithesis of a wheeler dealer. The new Board members were successful men in their own industries, but they spent very little time trying to learn PVO’s business. To us it appeared that we were going to be managed by financial

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types instead of by people knowing production or sales. During 1966, the company’s San Francisco property was disposed of and its 50% interest in Aceites Grasas y Derivitavos SA in Mexico was sold. Carlos Cuvl resigned his Directorship in protest and was replaced by William Powell, President of Hexcel Industries. Most was elevated to Executive vice president and Director, and Robert Kwong was added as Treasurer. In the mid-1960s, the world vegetable oil field was shaken by an advance in Soviet technology, much as Sputnik had surprised the world a few years earlier. In 1960s, Soviet exports of sunflower seed were 74,000 MT; by 1966 this figure doubled, and only 2 years later had reached 361,000 MT. Imports of sunflower seed jumped to 160,000 MT in Western Europe in 1966 and for 1967 it climbed to 219,000 MT. For Japan the imports climbed to 96,000 MT versus 3,000 MT for the previous year (13). Not only were these new supplies devastating, but they were cheap and made cheaper by subsidized Soviet shippers willing to carry cargoes at less than one-half the going rate. In the space of 4 years, the Soviet Union would stop shipping sunflower seeds and switch to exporting sunflower oil instead. Bulgarian, Rumanian, and Yugoslavian shippers added to the totals. By 1969, Western Europe was importing 496,000 MT of sunflower oil versus only 51,000 in 1960 (13). U.S. safflower seed exports reached their peak in 1963, by 1966 they had collapsed to only 36,000 ST (see Table A.19). All of this tended to further frighten PVO’s new Directors and the banks they represented. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s midwestern safflower plants were also suffering problems for new reasons. During the first 5 years of operation, the plants at Culbertson and Sidney had both operated in the midst of an areawide drought. Now a rainy cycle commenced, bringing on alternaria head rot that caused widespread yield problems and grower disillusionment, particularly in Nebraska. To help eliminate downtime costs, PVO entered into an agreement at the Sidney plant to extract a beer-making essence from hops for Charles Phizer & Co. Let us review PVO’s processing situation during this period. In 1963, PVO installed a system at the Richmond plant. This system, developed by George Kopas and Merton Boomer, was able to produce 42% protein safflower meal (see Chapter 9). This enabled PVO to gain more income from each ton of seed processed since the 42% protein meal sold for a substantial premium over 20–25% protein meal. A modification of this system was subsequently installed in the Culbertson plant as well. At Richmond, the tail-end decortication system could be rigged to produce a very low protein (6%) hull fraction in addition to the 42 and 20% fractions. The Culberston plant was capable of producing only 20 and 42% meal. Although PVO did a great deal of work trying to develop markets for safflower hulls (see Chapter 10), the hulls only found a ready market in Japan, and there only for a few years. Although PVO obtained a patent on the tail-end decortication process, both J.G. Boswell and Producers Cotton Oil installed nearly identical systems. The attorneys for PVO were unwilling to fight the necessary battle to enforce the patent. High protein meal continued to be marketed by some well into the 1980s, until the increasing costs for the energy needed to power the grinding equipment absorbed more income than was gained from the higher sales value of the 42% protein fraction.

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In 1966, PVO introduced the Saffola 161 line of safflower planting seed with great hopes. Saffola 161 was a thin-hulled hybrid developed by Smith of POI. Although the line displayed an oil content 20% above normal seeds, and PVO offered a premium to growers who would plant it, it failed to prove popular with California farmers. Unfortunately, the premium that PVO offered was not enough to encourage growers to stay with the new type because of lower acre yields. The seed was quite fragile and tended to break up badly in the combine harvesters available at that time. This resulted in higher dockage losses for the farmer and much poorer residual oil analyses in the mill. After 2 years of trying, PVO and POI went back to working with the more conventional types. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation disposed of its interest in the Long Beach plant in 1966. I had made a mistake in encouraging the company to lease the facility because almost as soon as we leased it, the U.S. Congress voted to allow more coconut oil into the country duty-free, making copra crushing in Long Beach less competitive. Our attempts to improve the small terminal elevator at Long Beach ran into cost overruns and little throughput. Closing our Los Angeles facility and moving its kettle-bodying equipment to Long Beach did not result in hoped-for savings. Some of our Long Beach milling equipment was shipped to Australia as part of PVO’s contribution toward the upgrade and expansion of PSA’s Harold Meggitt plant. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation was able to retain a fair position of dominance in sales to the industrial oil market and new products, Saff White, PVO 440, and particularly 122 G conjugated oil. General Mills dropped out of the Sidney joint venture; from the beginning its efforts had only been halfhearted. General Mills continued to market its “Betty Crocker” brand of safflower salad oil for several years, but chose to buy its safflower oil needs from its former partner’s competitors. As sunflower seed and oil supplies became more plentiful from the U.S.S.R. and other Eastern Bloc countries in the 1960s, Unilever made a strategic decision to base a number of its margarine formulations on sunflower oil, guaranteeing a high level of polyunsaturation in some. This was to provide a continuous market for safflower oil for the next 25 years, since the genes controlling linoleic fatty acid production in sunflower were capable of great variation when exposed to high levels of heat and light. Unilever consequently became a fairly steady buyer of safflower oil and used the product to blend sunflower up to the required linoleic level. Lever Brothers, Unilever’s U.S. subsidiary and a marketer of safflower margarine in its own right did purchasing on behalf of Unilever. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, considered a competitor because of the Saffola brand, was usually not chosen as a supplier. Still, Unilever’s activity helped stimulate the broader market for safflower oil. The Saffola division was forced to withdraw from the Midwest and East Coast markets because of a lack of funding for advertising and the failure of these markets to grow as rapidly as hoped. In addition, Warren Overlid, the Saffola Brand Manager, began to suffer serious health problems and after professional help failed, we were forced to replace him. Kingsburg Cotton; J.G. Boswell; Cal/West Seeds; Anderson, Clayton Co., and Cargill all became more aggressive sellers of safflower seed to Japan. Toshoku Ltd. was particularly successful in competing with PVO, since it had no requirements

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contract restrictions and consequently could consistently offer seed at a lower price that PVO’s Japanese clients. Working through Marwood, a large San Francisco commodity broker, Toshoku could reach all U.S. sellers daily and when Mexico decided to become a safflower seed seller in 1965, Marwood was able to introduce Toshoku to Pancho Obregon of Sonora, Mexico, who arranged for the necessary seed and export permits. Marwood’s strength in safflower had been enhanced when Don McLeod left PVO to join Marwood in 1959, McLeod had joined PVO in 1951 as an economist but desired to become a trader. When McLeod joined them, Marwood already had a long relationship in cottonseed oil with Toshoku, and his experience with PVO helped him expand Marwood’s foothold in safflower. This developed into a lasting relationship for McLeod with Toshouku that he carried with him when he left Marwood in 1977 to form his own firm. More bad luck followed in November 1966, when the San Pablo copra plant in the Philippines, that had been operating profitably under Hultberg’s direction, was destroyed in a fire. It was quickly rebuilt and began running again in March of 1967. Although insurance covered the plant reconstruction costs, the downtime cut earning that had been doing very well under Hultberg. In 1967, PVO’s Polytron subsidiary was sold, and Stockton Elevators entered into a 40-year lease of the San Francisco Grain Terminal at Islais Creek to act as a topping-off point for business out of Stockton. Jim Taylor, head of PVO’s seed and meal trading, left to form his own brokerage company. In December, 1967, I was able to negotiate a deal with Anderson, Clayton Co.’s Jim Wilkerson to purchase all of their remaining inventory of safflower seed (over 10,000 ST) that was stored in a huge warehouse building in Wilmington, California, operated by L.A. Harbor Grain Co. The deal was made at the gate in Los Angeles International Airport 2 min before the Anderson, Clayton Co. people had to leave for their Phoenix headquarters. I rushed from the airport to inspect the seed, agreed we could take it, and soon found out we had bought into a tough problem. Someone tipped of the FDA about the seed, and upon their inspection the entire pile was “red tagged,” meaning that we could not move it. The seed contained weevils, and upon inspection under ultraviolet light, the FDA found evidence of rat urine and bird droppings. We eventually worked out a program with the FDA in which we agreed to move the seed out of the country after first skimming off evidence of weevil webbing, sealing the building from bird entry, conducting a campaign to exterminate rats and mice, and treating the entire pile with phostoxin to kill the weevils. In the purchase, we had paid Anderson, Clayton Co. more than we felt the seed was worth in order to eliminate a big unsold inventory from hanging over the market and effectively removed this from the safflower game. Anderson, Clayton Co. had agreed to a price lower than they thought was fair and lower than their cost in order to move it quickly, before the market could realize their plight and drive prices even lower. We were eventually able to export all of the seed in first-class condition and made a sizable profit in the transaction. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s suit against Anderson, Clayton Co. was formally dropped soon afterward. Because of PVO’s problems in the 1964–66 period, and an operating loss in the 1966 fiscal year, the Directors elected Jack Harley President at their meeting in June,

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1967, and moved Rocca Jr. to chairman, which had been vacant since his father retired. Also in 1967, the company negotiated a $3,000,000 long-term loan with John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, which increased working capital to $7,500,000, but bad news continued.

Internal Conflicts Harley began a program of disposing of the company’s unprofitable diversification efforts of the 1960s, in other words, the Sidney and Culbertson safflower plants that were definitely struggling because of poor crops. He embarked on a program of cutting costs, but more profoundly started cutting out so-called unprofitable trading operations that reduced volume in commodity trading by $31,000,000 and ultimately reduced net income by $115,000 for 1968 (although operating income before income tax improved by $450,000). One such move was to sell the company’s tallow-trading department to Jacob Stern & Sons, Inc. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s Henk Peters became a Stern Vice president in the deal and went on to a fine career with that firm. Rocca Jr. was appalled by management’s recommendation to the Finance Committee of the Board to dissolve the company’s Engineering, Purchasing, Field Crops, and Insurance departments and to eliminate research other than product development work that would be immediately saleable. Twenty-two people were terminated in January, 1968, but he did not act. Soon more left voluntarily, and he was spurred into action when he learned that negotiations to merge the company with others was being recommended. In February, 1968, Rocca Jr. made a report to the PVO Board of Directors (14) citing the contributions that safflower had made to PVO’s overhead and profit during the past years. In this report, he was trying to identify the positive results safflower had produced that were otherwise obscured when combined with overall results of the company. As can be seen in addition to carrying 43% of the company’s overhead, safflower operations were consistently profitable compared to the overall business (Table 13.1). Nevertheless, the company continued on a course of blindly de-emphasizing its safflower business and opening the way for new competition to step in. It became apparent to Rocca Jr. that PVO was headed toward becoming an elevator and storage company and that much of its heritage was to be abandoned. This was too much for Rocca Jr., and he threw in with a vocal group of dissident shareholders headed by Frederick Cartwright, who had been complaining about lack of dividends and poor earnings. Cartwright was head of a small Wall Street firm, Cartwright and Parmelee, and he had extensive experience in joining boards of troubled companies and goading them into improved earnings. By September 13, 1968, when the company issued its Annual Report describing the above actions, I had left PVO to start Agricom International with Kopas and Easler. Rocca Jr. had resigned as Board Chairman to head a proxy battle, Rocca Sr. had replaced his son as Board Chairman and the Board had added Robert Chambers (replacing Most).

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TABLE 13.1 Comparison of Safflower Profits and Overhead to Overall PVO Operations 1963 Grower contracts Purchased from others United States Mexico Total Crush Export Planting seed Carryover Total

1965

1966

Tonnage handled (1,000 ST) 133 142 121

162 27 189

25 36 158

54 130 5 189 1963

Disposition (1,000 ST) 94 82 94 60 70 74 4 3 3 158 155 176 1964 1965 1966

Type of Sale Paveocor Seed PVO seed (201,000)a PVO oil Crude/NB Export Edible Saffola Paveocor Oil Meal Hedging Earning before overhead 1,027,000b PVO overhead 43% Paveocor overhead 5% Net contribution to corporate overhead & profit PVO total Profit/Loss before taxesc

1964

784,300 88,600

487,607

1967 97

13

19

55

155

176

152

Eamings ($) 582,000 35,000

88 67 2 152 1967

395,000 270,000

(210,000)

372,000 365,000 (220,000) 417,000 147,000 283,000 3,000 124,000 120,000 241,000 313,000 (185,000) 1,235,900 2,234,000

506,000 13,000 613,000 248,000 (41,000) 260,000 (52,000) 2,212,000

737,000 518,000 133,000 115,000 165,000

(710,000) (23,000)

(776,000) (29,000)

(825,000) (24,000)

(833,000) (26,000)

502,900

1,429,000

1,359,000 168,000a

(1,224,083) 1,339,565

1,822,470

(98,685)

aAfter reserve of $570,000 against 1967–68 crop safflower seed. b$539,000 included in Gross for 1967. cNot shown in Rocca report, but added here for emphasis.

On July 11, 1968, Dudley Miller, PVO’s long-time counsel, put out a notice of a special meeting to be held on July 31, 1968, proposing to: 1. Change the name of the company to PVO Corporation to reflect the fact that the corporation was in other businesses besides the oil business; 2. Issue 500,000 shares of a new class of no par preferred stock; and 3. Authorize increasing the number of shares of common stock from 1,000,000 shares to 1,500,000 shares to accommodate future conversion of the preferred stock. The notice stated that the company should capitalize on its grain elevators and rice mills plus some vegetable oil elements; that it should sell off other elements that were

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deemed unprofitable and plan to buy grain warehouses and ocean terminals, and improve its vegetable oil processing and distribution business. Proxies of shareholders to support the management were solicited, stating that Rocca Jr. had resigned in protest of this plan on June 28, 1968, but that the other eight Directors supported it. A dividend of $0.20 was voted by the Directors in an attempt to entice shareholders’ votes. On July 15, the Pacific Oil Independent Stockholders’ Committee distributed a statement to shareholders asking them to vote against the management’s request. The Committee consisted of Rocca Jr.; Marybelle Dole, his sister; Stuart Dole, his brother-in-law; Cartwright; and two of Cartwright’s associates. A second mailing pointed out that shareholders should not support the present Board of Directors because: 1. The Directors had shown no improvement in the company profits in their 4-year tenure; 2. President Harley had produced poorer results during his term in office; 3. Ignoring these results, the Directors had voted 25,000 shares of stock options to its own members, four of whom were not employees of the Company; and 4. In 1966 after declaring it unwise to pay a dividend, the Board had voted bonuses of $171,130 to certain employees. On July 23, management sent out another solicitation and on July 25, Rocca Jr. sent a personal letter outlining why he had objected and pointing out that the management’s proposals had been made only after Cartwright had notified the Board of his intention to oppose the management slate of Directors at the next Annual Meetin. Charges and countercharges were mailed back and forth over the next weeks, and the newspapers feasted on the spectacle of Rocca Jr. and Marybelle Dole on one side, and being opposed Rocca Sr. and Curt Rocca on the side of management (15). The Shareholders’ Meeting on August 1, 1968, was joined by Rocca Jr. and erupted into 3 1/2 hours of name calling by the opposing sides’ attorneys, Harley, Director Hobbs, and Cartwright. The meeting was forced to adjourn to August 5 to complete the proxy count. At the meeting, the management’s proposals for a company name change and to create a new class of preferred stock was defeated. But neither side was able to gain a majority and led to forecasts of further battles prior to the company’s Annual Meeting scheduled for November. The papers loved it (16–20). At the meeting, Cartwright charged that C. Brewer & Co. of Honolulu had showed interest in acquiring PVO, but that Harley’s battle had driven them off. Harley claimed that Brewer’ offer had been too low but that other undisclosed firms were taking a look (23). The management subsequently solicited shareholders to vote for a new sale of five Directors (Rocca Sr., Curt Rocca, Harley, Miller, and Most) who would exercise majority control of a nine-seat Board under cumulative voting. The proposed meeting was to take place on January 30, 1969, instead of the normal date of November 21, 1968. The Committee refused to recognize a new date for the meeting, issued its own slate of Director candidates (21), and subsequently obtained a court ruling that the meeting should be held on the normal November date when management tried to enjoin its being held. The dissidents had also kicked off their drive to gain control of the company when Sidney Hoffman, former Chairman of Elgin Watch Company and a friend of Cartwright, offered to buy 75,000 shares of

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PVO stock at $17/share (22). Harley quickly advised shareholders not to rush to sell. After much more posturing and letter writing, the management gave up further legal action and encouraged shareholders to attend a November 21st meeting. At the meeting, two-thirds of the votes were cast in favor of the Stockholders’ committee and the following were elected Directors: Cartwright, Stuart Dole, A. Leland Glidden, Hoffman, Cameron I. Kay, Richard L. McKee, Harley, and the three Roccas. At the meeting, Rocca Jr. was elected Chairman and CEO, Harley was continued as President, and Dole was continued as Secretary and General Counsel. On December 19, Harley resigned as President, and Rocca became President as well (23). Effective December 31, Miller and Kwong also resigned. The Board subsequently brought in Lawrence Apple as vice president of finance and treasurer, and Harry Curtis as vice president for marketing and development. Rocca Jr. was back where he wanted to be. His father was back with him as Chairman Emeritus. However, the employees were demoralized, and at his side was an executive who had helped to unseat him, but whom he blindly chose to leave in place. The Directors whom Bank of America had sent to provide guidance had quit and run in the midst of the proxy fight. His only friends on the Board were his father, Dole, and a brother. Hoffman, who was now the largest single shareholder in PVO and who had supported, but not joined, the Shareholder’s Committee, was a Board member. Rocca Jr. was soon to find out that the others had their own interests at heart. By January of 1969, Rocca was announcing that operating earnings were up but net income was cut by the heavy expenses involved in the proxy contests. Harold Brez, an old friend of Dick Hammond, Don Baker, and Rocca, Jr., were hired to head a new Industrial Chemicals Department aimed at marketing titanium chloride and other materials. But more importantly Rocca Jr. announced that the Directors proposed issuance of a new $3,500,000 series of subordinated convertible debentures in order to increase the company’s working capital (B.T. Rocca, Jr. letter to stockholders, Jan. 27, 1969). He included an optimistic letter to shareholders with a copy of Time magazine story in which Time urged the government to reconsider its restrictions on labeling of foods to show levels of polyunsaturation (24). Rocca Jr.’s optimism was also buoyed up by the start-up in April 1969 of a new hydrogenation facility at Richmond and of the new Ipeasa oil mill near Seville. Nobody commented that the new subordinated convertible debenture plan varied little in effect from the preferred stock issue proposed by the old management, and that no plan was in place stating what would be done with the money raised. By April 18, 1969, Rocca was to advise shareholders that the amount of the debenture issue had been raised to $4,000,000 if passed at a special meeting of the PVO shareholders called for on May 22, 1969 (24). After the meeting, when the debentures were overwhelmingly approved, Charles L. Allen, a noted financier at the time, was elected to the Board. Prior to the company’s Annual Meeting of November 20, 1969, Rocca was to announce the hiring of Robert M. Beeby to the position of executive vice president (B.T. Rocca, Jr., Letter to Our Stockholders, November 6, 1969), too late to appear in the Annual Report dated September 11. Forbes magazine, in its analysis of the proxy fight had got it right,

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“Things are not necessarily apple-smooth within the dissident camp. Barney Rocca, Jr. and Cartwright may well not have the same goals in mind, although neither is anxious

to discuss it. Both want control of the company, and recognize that they must team up in order to get it. . . . When Cartwright runs down the company management, he is in large part criticizing Rocca, Jr., his partner in the current proxy fight” (26).

Although Rocca announced in the report that Saffola sales were up 11% for the year and highlighted the introduction of a new Saffola soft margarine package, dark clouds were gathering for PVO and for Rocca. References 1. Toowoomba Chronicle, December 14, 1960. 2. Queensland Grower, August 4, 1965. 3. Roccu, B.T., Jr., Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the NIOP, Ojai, California, January 25–27, 1962. 4. Rocca, B.T., Jr., Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the NIOP, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, January 24–26, 1963. 5. Rocca, B.T., Jr., Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the NIOP, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, January 22–23, 1964. 6. Rocca, B.T., Jr., Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the NIOP, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, Calif., January 27–30, 1956. 7. Rocca, Jr., B.T., Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the NIOP, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, January 22–29, 1966. 8. Rocca, B.T., Jr., Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the NIOP, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, January 25–28, 1967. 9. Rocca, B.T., Jr., Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the NIOP, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, February 14–17, 1968. 10. Rocca, B.T., Jr., 1963 Annual Report, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, October 1963, p. 3. 11. Miller, N.C., The Great Salad Oil Swindle, Coward McCann, Inc., New York, 1963, p. 169. 12. Arthur Anderson and Co., Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation and Subsidiary Companies, Financial Statements and Supplementary Information of June 30, 1964, Together with Auditors’ Opinion, September 3, 1964, 24 pp. 13. Mielke, S., Oil World—The Past 25 Years and Prospects for the Next 25, ISTA Mielke GmbH, Hamburg, Germany, 1983, pp. 19–24. 14. Rocca, B.T., Jr. to PVO Board of Directors, February 19, 1968. 15. “Rocca Family’s Proxy Fight,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 1, 1968. 16. “Roccas and PVO—Family Row at Climax,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 2, 1968. 17. “Pacific Vegetable Oil Dissidents Bar Passage of 2 Management Plans,” Wall Street Journal, August 6, 1968. 18. “PVO Proxy Fight—New Row Erupts,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 1968. 19. “Control Battle.” San Francisco Examiner, August 6, 1968.

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20. “Name Change, Stock Issue Plan Defeated,” Daily Commercial News, August 6, 1968. 21. Stockton, M., “PVO Rebels Chose Slate of Rival Director Candidates,” Daily Commercial News, San Francisco, California, p. 7, October 3, 1968. 22. Allen, S.P., San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, p. 40, August 28, 1968. 23. Allen, S.P. San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, p. 54, December 20, 1968. 24. “To Save the Heart: Diet by Decree?” Time, January 10, 1969. 25. Dole, S.R., “Notice of Special Meeting of Shareholders,” Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, San Francisco, April 18, 1969, 27 pp. 26. “Tricky Hand,” Forbes, pp. 56, 59, September 15, 1968.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Chapter 14

The Rise and Fall of PVO: Part II

In 1968, PVO began to sow the seeds of its own demise in the safflower business. In 1968, Agricom International was formed by former PVO employees, and PVO soon engaged in a bitter proxy battle that put the company into the hands of a dissident group of East Coast shareholders allied with Rocca Jr. and his side of the family (see Chapter 13). Over the course of the next 12 years, PVO was controlled by Frederick Cartwright, the leader of the dissident group; it went through six presidents in rapid order and finally was purchased by the Kay Corporation, ostensibly to be built up into a new trading empire but actually to be quickly sold off in pieces for twice what was paid for it.

The Start of Agricom International Agricom was formed by members-to-be of the “PVO Alumni Association.” Because of many serious disagreements a number of us had with management and new work procedures, two meetings, one in George Kopas’ rumpus room and another on my patio, were held with Jim Easler, then PVO’s Export Traffic Manager, and Kopas to talk about where PVO was going and what might be done. It was decided to form a corporation of our own, and on March 12 we asked Paul Schumann, a lawyer friend and son of Adolph Schumann, to draw up the papers. The need for the corporation was to have something started if it appeared wise to leave PVO. Originally the corporation was going to be called SKE Corporation, but a secretary in Schumann’s office suggested the name “Agricom” after asking what the corporation intended to do, and the name was quickly changed. Agricom International was incorporated on March 20, 1968. I began preparing the “Agricom International Business Plan.” It stated, “The Company will engage primarily (1) in the buying, storing, processing and marketing of certain vegetable oils, seeds and meals, acting as both principal and as agent for others, and (2) in the operation of ships for the purpose of offering specialized freight and marketing service for certain bulk commodities, grains, seeds, various high protein feedstuffs and inorganic materials between the west coast and the Orient.”

This statement reflected the belief of the three principals that PVO was throwing away important portions of a safflower business that had taken years to build, that contained a group of needy and very loyal customers, and that offered opportunity for growth and much higher profit margins than available for other oilseeds. At

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the time, PVO was the only seller of safflower oil to the industrial oil trade manufactures of paint, varnish, enamels, alkyd resins, and fatty acids. Most of the other oil milis in California and Arizona were accustomed to selling substantial quantities of cotton or coconut oil with payment on a sight draft basis. The industrial oils market involved shipping tank wagons and drum lots of oil in addition to tank car lots for payment 30 days after shipment—it was a business that depended on quick service and high quality. Only two of the other safflower processors were even aware of the industrial oil market—Liberty Vegetable Oil and Cargill, Inc. Liberty only had expellers in its mill, so it had no interest in expansion into safflower. Cargill, as was pointed out in Chapter 5, was unable to sell industrial grade safflower oils to its own alkyd resin facility because of its trading versus merchandising policy in dealing with safflower oil. Similarly, Easler was frustrated in being unable to interest PVO’s management in providing an ocean freight service for other; instead he was facing the prospect of having to abandon even the handling of safflower seed to Japan as PVO abandoned its exports. The plan listed the products and services of the company, that fell into four major categories. “ 1. The development, processing and merchandising of various domestic oilseeds and their products, particularly safflower seed and safflower oil, oleic seed and oleic oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil and linseed oil. These seeds and oils would provide the base for the Company’s sales to West Coast and overseas industrial oil market which up to now has been dominated by one factor. Domestic oilseed and oils operations would constitute approximately 50 percent of the operating revenues of the Company during its first year and would provide a base for growth in future earnings. 2. The operation of bulk carrier steamships chartered and operating for a number of clients on a service fee basis. As vessel size increases over the next few years there will be created a larger and larger gap for specialized bulk parcel service that can augment the needs of each large charterer in carrying his incremental cargo and serve the smaller trading firms or operations which do not generate enough cargo to operate charters of their own. This area of the business would generate approximetaly 30 percent of the Company’s operating revenues. 3. The purchase and crushing of safflower, oleic and sunflower seeds will provide a base upon which to base and hedge a trading operation in the sale of these seeds and their by product meals overseas. The operation of bulk carriers will also provide an opportunity to offer services to certain sellers of these and other exported commodities who would prefer to sell on an FOB basis. The Company would plan to offer to well commodities on a C&F basis from its space. The additional revenue from this type of trade should generate 20 percent of the Company’s trading revenues. 4. The development of new types of oilseeds, new processing techniques, new sources of protein (vegetable and marine) promises an expanding market which the Company plans to explore using the knowledge and technological skill available both in its own management and in certain other sources at its disposal.”

Its Pro Forma Sales Budget and Earnings Forecast turned out to be quite accurate, but conservative compared to Agricom’s actual results as outlined in the following chart.

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Commodity Years 1968/69 1669/70 1970/71 1971/72 1972/73

Safflower Oil Sunflower Oil Saf/Sun Meal Saf Seed Linseed Oil Retained Earn(Tank Cars)a (Tank Cars)a (000 MT) (000 MT)a (Tank Cars) ings/Capital ($) 100 150 200 250

exploratory 20 300 300

10 24 24 24 24

20b 20c 20c 20c 20c

15 20 30 30 30

124,400 195,348 299,433 398,546 537,764

aTank cars were units of 60,000 lbs each. bActing as brokers or principals in back-to-back purchase/sale. cActing as broker for one-half, principals for balance.

It then became necessary to consider how to raise capital for the start-up new company. I first talked to my friend Adolph Schumann, then Vice president and primary financial provider at Mai wood. He suggested trying to find certain segments of the safflower business that were solid and to try to capture these in order to build a base business—he felt that you had to have a certain “nut” of business for any venture to survive. He warned me to be careful about the shipping business, I then visited Ike Sinaico and Irwin Field of Liberty Vegetable Oil. They proposed that rather than invest in a new venture they might be able to loan money to acquire inventory that could be paid back along with a share of the profits at time of sale. This had to be thought about because at that particular time, their company had a lot of cash tied up and cash was going to be needed soon for a small expansion of Liberty’s facilities, Sinaico also said he feared the shipping business. On March 19, 1968, I met with Gerry Brewer, then Vice president of Producers Cotton Oil (PCO), and discussed an outline in which PCO would acquire a control ling interest in the new company in return for a small investment and a line of credit to acquire inventory that would be toll processed in PCO’s plant. Brewer listened carefully and enthusiastically, but decided that his company should not get into the safflower business, although it could offer help by providing toll-crushding time in his Fresno plant if it was needed. From our standpoint, all of this discussion was disappointing (no one would buy shares in the company), but it was also stimulating because all concerned felt that this was a good business that others did not fully understand. Kopas and Easier were equally frustrated in attempts to find co-venturers. As fate would have it, this was most fortunate, since it resulted in ownership remaining solely in our hands with basically no outside shares. So Agricom started with me having 40% of the company’s shares, and Kopas and Easier each receiving 30% for a total investment of $10,000, and even that small amount was not available immediately. My father loaned the company $12,000 in exchange for a 5year note; my father-in-law loaned $10,000 that was subsequently exchanged for 1,000 shares of stock. Paul Schumann was issued 250 shares in exchange for his organizational expenses; James Taylor, a meal broker, friend, and former PVO associate, bought 50 shares to offer encouragement. On this fragile financial rock Agricom was founded. We soon found that we did not need financing to make the business go, and before we knew it, we were off, never to look back, Lack of a strong financial base, however, would later come back to haunt the company.

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Meanwhile I was sent on a second trip to Japan and to Taiwan in April of 1968 by PVO. Although still convinced that PVO’s safflower export business could be solved by a minor change in trading policy, upon my return it became obvious that much of PVO’s safflower business and much of its industrial oil business would be abandoned. This convinced me that it was time to go. Finally, on May 15, 1968 I tendered my resignation to PVO. I issued a press release announcing the formation of Agricom, that was picked up on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle bussiness section (1) and several other journals (2–5). Easler’s departure received more coverage (6,7). At the time, I was President of the National Institute of Oilseed Products (NIOP), and the President must be an employee of a member firm. Agricom immediately applied for membership and the NIOP Board of Directors, in a nice gesture of kindness and understanding, declared the office of President open and did not fill it until Agricom’s application was accepted at the next Board meeting 2 months later, at which time I was reinstated as President. Agricom’s timing was even blessed by Yonetaro Ueno taking over the foodstuffs desk in Mitsubishi’s San Francisco office, where he was assisted by Kenji Yamaguchi, and by Tetsuya Satoh being posted to Toshoku Ltd’s San Francisco branch at about the same time, where he was assisted by N. Miura. All at once we had in San Francisco the two people (Ueno Satoh) who had been the chief engineers of safflower’s expansion in Japan—two very formidable competitors. Both men were very keen observers with quick minds, ready to make decisions on their own. As time went on, the feeling of trust and friendship between Smith/Kopas/Easler and Ueno/Yamaguchi/Satoh/Miura became something special. Agricom grew closer to Mitsubishi in its safflower seed and oil operations. Even though Satoh was our competitor, we still were able to do good business with him in ocean freight and alfalfa products because both sides knew they could trust the other to keep confidences when required. Ueno was backed in Tokyo by Kosaki Yoshimura, Manager of the Soybean Division of the Oil and Fats Department and unique in his Mitsubishi career in never serving in an overseas office, and his assistant, Enshiro Matsuyama. I had met both of them on my May, 1967 trip. Both gave Agricom unusual and continual backing. Yoshimura later rose to become President of Mitsubishi’s Rinoru subsidiary and now retired, and Matsuyama, at this writing, is General Managing Director of Mitsubishi Corporation. Satoh was recently elected President of Toshoku, Ltd.

The Early Days of Agricom When Agricom International was started in May, 1968, it was too late to purchase safflower seed from farmers. Several lucky breaks helped its get involved with the 1968 crop: 1. 2.

Brooks Pierce of J.G. Boswell Company gave us an exclusive offering of essentially all of Boswell’s available seed (6,000 MT). Being able to offer this immediately helped us greatly in commanding Mitsubishi’s attention; Yoshimura visited the United States in June and his favorable impression of our gave company gave Ueno a lot of backing;

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3. 4.

Safflower

PVO was very occupied its own problems, and its disinterest gave us the chance to capture Mitsubishi as a meal customer; and Kingsburg Cotton Oil’s unhappiness with Marwood essentially being a buyer only for Toshoku gave us access to good safflower supplies, information, and prices.

The principal guiding philosophy for Agricom International was for the top management to involve themselves in all phases of the company’s business. By this we meant that we did not want to be just paper traders but were interested in actually seeing how every step was handled personally. This often benefitted not only Agricom but its suppliers and customers as well. We began working hard to buy a small amount of seed from Kingsburg Cotton Oil and arranging a way of financing its crush, buying seed ex spout and reselling it C&F or brokering ex spout sales, and organizing a method for obtaining ship charters to carry the C&F sales combined with other types of cargo. Our reputations and prior experience in the business enabled us to sell or handle well over 50% of the safflower seed exports immediately, to obtain offerings of charters without posting guarantees or bonds of any type, and to start a limited crush with Producers Cotton Oil. Discussions with Boswell and ACCO produced the desire to sell to us but not to toll crush, The toll crush had three good side effects: it got Mitsubishi to start providing crushing financing in a limited way. it enabled us to reach industrial oil customers immediately (this was augmented by purchases of oil from Boswell on speculation) and made us a factor in the eyes of safflower growers for the coming season. We were also able to become a factor in the meal business because our friendship with Mitsubishi and Taylor provided a medium to take meal from resellers of PVO meal, blend it, and offer it to Japan at a small profit. Also, we attempted to handle oil from P.J. Anderson in Montana, but lost him to PVO since we could fast not sell enough this early in our history. In Agricom’s early days the handling of ocean freight was extremely important to the company’s growth. Easier was able to call upon a vast spectrum of friends able to offer good support for all phases of transportation. C.F. Wiborg Company gave unlimited support in charter negotiations as did I. Noda of Mitsubishi’s Freighting Division B, in Tokyo. Agricom’s arrival on the scene coincided with a need among safflower traders in Japan to reduce freight costs in the face of declining cargo volumes. Easler conceived of the idea of combining safflower cargoes for several Japanese traders in the same vessel, giving all the advantage of a full charter cost. On top of this, he was able to combine heavier stowage factor cargoes of aluminum silica clay clinkers, needed in Japan for firebricks in the burgeoning steel industry, in the lower holds of bulk carriers, and carrying lighter stowage factor cargoes, such as safflower seed, safflower meal, and alfala in the upper holds. This allowed Agricom to utilize both the dead weight capacity and the cubic capacity of a vessel, and produced further savings for all concerned. Further keys to the success of this service was a policy of charging all who came the same rate, whether it was a competitor or Agricom itself, and keeping each party’s plans and rates confidential until the vessel was close to arriving in Japan. Finally, since Agricom was acting as a dealer, we were able to provide cargo to fill empty space when needed.

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Kopas’ production skills could not be used during Agricom’s early days, so he quickly used his mathematical mind and became expert in helping Easler by calculating stowage plans, safflower seed sales, and freighting invoices. Easer also developed freighting and at times C and F sales for sun-cured and dehydrated alfalfa pallets, and later alfalfa hay cubes. This grew into a volume equivalent to two 15,000-ton vessels/month—dealing with Mitsubishi, Toshoku, C. Itoh, Nissho-Iwai, Mitsui, Sumitomo, Kanematsu-Gosho, Marubeni, Toyomenka, Kasho, and at times, Zenkoren. In addition, the freighting of safflower meal and various forms of fertilizer with the cargoes mentioned previously provided the largest sources of profit and cash flow during Agricom’s critical early days. As seed and oil sales volume grew, a wonderful balance evolved between freighting, brokerage, sales, and eventually, processing, demonstrating that each was dependent on, and in turn supplemental to, the others. In the 1968 crop, we crushed about 2,292 ST of seed; sold forty-eight 60,000-lb tank cars of oil to domestic customers; sold a total of 5,500 MT of meal domestically and to the Orient; and 9,000 MT of safflower seed to Japan, Formosa, and Finland. We brokered and freighted much more. We also jumped into oleic safflower production by buying Producers Cotton Oil’s production (actually toll milling it) and subsequently selling several carloads of oleic safflower oil to Emery Industries. On July 14, 1968, I published a letter on the Agricom International letterhead entitled, “The Safflower Situation,” that was mailed to a list of safflower consumers, growers, researchers, and others who might be interested in news about safflower. It received a favorable reaction, so on August 22, 1968, I wrote Volume 1, No. 1 of AGIcomments. Over the years, the letter grew to a readership that fluctuated between 400 and 500 copies, adding commentary on sunflower, and at times other minor oilseeds as well. It served a purpose by supplying what tried to be unbiased information concerning safflower and sunflower, little of which was available in printed form. For several years, the Journal of Commerce, printed excerpts from AGRIcomments on its commodity page. As the sunflower business has grown in scope and Don Lilleboe’s very fine Sunflower magazine and the National Sunflower Association’s A Newsletter became available, AGRIcomments (and its successor. OILscoop), reduced its sunflower commentary but continued to provide safflower commentary. As Agricom grew and needed more employees, associates from various parts of the PVO organization were quick to join. Bill Robbins, for a number of years PVO’s Internal Auditor was enlisted during the early Agricom days to set up and maintain a simple set of books and put the corporate records into proper order. In the San Joaquin Valley Agricom was quickly able to retain the services of Penny Newman Co. to contract safflower, since Penny Newman’s President, Frank Moradian, had been a close friend of mine and supplier to PVO for a number of years. Carlos Cuvi, President various Latin American operations, was offered the opportunity to work with us at Agricom, and he jumped at the chance. Within 6 months, he was dead of cancer. Still, in that short time, he had been able to get Agricom started in dealing with safflower meal through his associates in Mexico City. In May, 1969, Al Westerweel, President of Matches and Porton, a major Rotterdam oil and seed broker, came to San Francisco to visit prospective clients in

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the coconut and palm oil trade, Since I had just stepped down as President of NIOP, he paid a courtesy call on our office. I told Westerweel that we were looking for a way to market safflower oil in the European market. He said he had never dealt in safflower but would be happy to represent, us. This was the start of a strong business relationship and friendship. Westerweel and his associates did a marvelous job and quickly put us into position lo capture a major part of the expanding European safflower oil market. As Agricom grew into sunflower and other products, our joint business thrived. Through him we negotiated the first trade of U.S. sunflower seed to Unilever and established the basic contract terms including the limitations allowing for shipment of seed only produced north of the 38th parallel that are still used today. After reaching an agreement to work with Matthes & Porton, the following year was in London for the IASC Oil Congress and learned from Dries Soeteman, PVO’s Rotterdam manager tor many years, that he had been cast loose and would like to work with us. At the time, I felt heartsick at not being able to work with him since we did not yet know Westerweel that well, but our luck was running well and mentioned previously, Westerweel turned out to be a fine choice. Jim Taylor was a big help in getting the domestic side of Agricom’s safflower meal business going. Dick Richter, PVO’s Comptroller, joined Agricom in a similar capacity. Later, as Agricom was able to go into building its own processing operations. Merton Boomer, who worked first in the PVO subsidiary, Western Vegetable Oil, and then both as a consultant and as a superintendent for PVO, did yeoman service in the design and construction of the Agricom Grimes mill and Berkeley refinery. Assisting him was Ned Robinson, formerly PVO’s Nebraska plant manager, and retired PVO supervisor Hans Nissen; joining in hourly operations was Paul Frausto. Jerry Knick, hired originally as a maintenance worker during the construction of PVO’s Culbertson plant and who became plant manager under Anderson and Continental Grain, joined Agricom in 1970 as a safflower field buyer. Francisco Gonzalez Blasque joined Cargill and came to Minneapolis to study their methods. He quickly became homesick for Spain. We introduced him to friends in Minneapolis who eased his stay, but he returned to Madrid and subsequently formed a joint venture subsidiary, Agroex, with Agricom. Francisco Gonzalez Avila was able to assist us greatly from time to time. Don Baker, PVO’s Sales Manager, soon joined Agricom as Sales Manager, later both Wayne Wolcott and, for a time, Greg MacIntosh joined us after first having joined other firms after leaving PVO. Even employees who remained with PVO gave us considerable “unofficial” support.

Agricom Expands Its Horizons For the 1969 crop, we obtained the services of John Rutkai, formerly head of Pacific Oilseeds Inc. safflower grower relations, to become our Field Crops Manager, made buying arrangements with Penny Newman Grain and Southwest Marketing’ crop., tried to do the same with H.W. Walcott Co., but failed, and began negotiating, with Mitsubishi to get extensive financial backing for a combination export and crushing

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operation. Agricom’s initial approach was to suggest that we contract for a given amount of acreage that would be sold to Mitsubishi on a joint venture basis. We would start selling oil against it in January, checking as we went along; at the same time, seed would be sold. Profit on seed sold for export would be split 50/50; if used for oil crushing 65/35 Agricom/Mitsubishi International Corporation (MIC) (a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi). If Mitsubishi wanted to get rid of seed purchased originally, it could lay it off with us for crushing. Matsuyma in Tokyo pointed out that Mitsubishi really did not need this kind of hedging medium, and since this crossed departmental lines, it would be hard to work in their company. He suggested that we sell seed to them to the extent we felt we safely could. If we needed some of it back, up to 10–20%, we could have it for the asking. He also suggested that we should work out a crush deal with MIC in the States since they wanted to do so. So we did. We offered this on a joint venture basis or a flate commission deal. MIC-NY settled for a flat commission plus interest. The resulted in a 1% commission for the purchase price plus a 1% commission on the sale of oil based on the value of the oil sold. The agreement also allowed us to finance for oil stored in Richmond, Los Angeles, or New York for 180 days—the agreement actually was set up as MIC’s toll mill operation in order to meet MIC’s credit department’s feelings. It was my feeling after discussions in San Francisco and in Tokyo that oleic safflower seed was going to become a more important factor in Japan. I had a very good rapport with Ajinomoto since its Executive vice president, Watanabe, then Chief Oil Buyer, Ishii, and finally Purchasing Director, Yamada, had visited here and looked into oleic safflower oil as a basis for their new mayonnaise. In addition our friend, Ishida, Research Director of the leading Japanese mayonnaise manufacturer Q.P., was working hard on oleic oil. Secondly, Russ Smith of Emery industries told us that he wanted to support our acreage of oleic because they had a solid product coming along. We sold oleic seed to Ajinomoto and oleic oil to Emery at prices representing our cost from growers plus a $5–7 markup in order to br sure capture both of them. It was our philosophy to get the costomer going on oleic plans by assuring them of supply. We had been promised oleic planting seed by Claassen of POl, and therefore had crushed all of the Producers’ seed previously, but problems arose. By the time they were resolved, much contracting time was lost and we could only get acreage in the San Joaquin. We came up short when acreage was cut back by the horrible rains of 1968. We were able to wash out the contract with Emery and cover our shortage to Ajinomoto (and Showa who also sold to Ajinomoto) by buying in from Boswell and PVO. Ajinomoto was able to get started on their new product a year earlier, and thereby developed a keen interest for a much bigger than they could have otherwise. We were only able to expand our industrial oil sales Slowly due to lack of time to pursue customers. We retained. Paul Samiy, a former PVO employee, to visit most consummers in the Bay Area on a commission basis while he did not open up any new sales, he did get us more exposure. This continued until PVO hired him back. T.F. McAdam Co. of New Jersey actively began working on Safflower sales for us on the East Coast and we established setup to store oil with Hudson Tank in Weehawken. Anderson,

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Clayton Co. asked us to try to sell oil for them when they began dumping oil early in the season. We were unable to reach an agreement on a proper way to do it, but did buy some of their oil on speculation. They stopped offering it shortly thereafter, when soybean oil began racing upward. Once Baker was added to our company later in the season, he was able to bring new customers and ideas immediately. Ted Klugman, for many years President of Interstate Seed Company in Fargo, North Dakota, had a close relationship with me, dating back to the early 1950s when I first joined PVO, We had done flax planting seed business for years. The management of Klugman’s company changed at the time Agricom International was started and began lo pass into the hands of Chuck Moses. Moses was instrumental in getting Agricom into the sunflower business in the upper Plains States. Agricom’s Business Plan had anticipated that sunflower seed might become a more important factor and perhaps begin to supplant safflower in Agricom’s crushing and marketing volume. Because of a conversation I had with Klugman, we investigated the possibility of finding a Japanese market for some U.S. growers, since it was well known that Japan had been buying large quantities of sunflower seed from the U.S.S.R. and that this supply might be reduced in the future. This small development quickly led to sunflower becoming Agricom International’s main product line, and our company became the leading exporter of sunflower seed in the world (next to the U.S.S.R.) during the ensuing 4 years. We were helped greatly in these endeavors by Interstate’s early efforts, then by several country elevators that led to a strong association with Atwood Larson Company of Minneapolis, long-time friends from PVO days, and Minnesota’s largest commission house. Chris Thompson joined Agricom in 1972 to bring his professionalism in ocean shipping, dealing with Latin America, and overall trading management skill. Agricom grew in sales volume, profit, net worth, employees, and administrative costs. When Agricom had first started, we sold safflower meal on a short basis to Japan and subsequently covered our position mostly with meal from Mexico. Some of the profit made on these trades was subsequently lost by nondelivery on the part of the Mexican material due to an export embargo; the nondelivery had to be covered with U.S. meal. Freight rate increases also worked against us. Still, we were able to dominate the export meal market because we were the only C&F offerer, and Mitsubii was able to capture 90% of the Japanese meal import business. Thompson had been our competitor in the safflower meal business while he was at Balfour Guthrie. His knowledge of the Mexican suppliers greatly enhanced our chanes after he joined us, and we were soon doing good business buying U.S. and Mexican safflower meal on a 20% protein (actually 22–25%) basis, blending it with local finally ground safflower hulls and selling it on a 20% protein plus fat basis to Japan. Our friendship with Ajinomoto opened up Japan for the first time to saffoil sales; we also began selling to Australia through MSK. In October, 1969, it became apparent that Ajinomoto wanted a much larger tonnage of oleic seed from the 1970 crop. Moradian of Penny Newman Co. believed that he had a solid 4,000 acres of oleic promised; Rutkai thought that he could reach 10,000 acres if prices reached or exceeded $90/ST. We had planting seed lined up for 12,000–15,000 acres. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation began talking about a minimum 30,000 acres of

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oleic being needed for domestic markets and told their Japanese clients that they must contract by October 15 if they were to get any. We decided to keep the oleic market if we could by telling Ajinomoto that there was no need to sign up that early and mel prices being indicated by PVO for their better S-301 seed. Ajinomoto agreed to give us first preference and we worked out a sale in November for 8,000 MT (part of this through C, Itoh, since Ajinomoto wanted it this way). We sold this at relatively low prices with pretty solid knowledge in hand that the U.S.S.R. would probably not sell sunflower seed any more and that prices would probably rise. Prices being offered to growers at the time of our sale were $86/ST; I felt that we would have to pay $90/ST later, and that a selling price of $95/ST would be safe Again, it was my feeling that we should get the customer to think Agricom, even if it meant breaking even or losing a little. Our relationship with C. Itoh began to grow as well. Hiroshi Inoue, then C. Itoh’s oil section representative in San Francisco, and Toshimitsu Hagirnori, head of Itoh’s oilseeds section in Tokyo and a former member of PVO’s TYK, favored us with good si business opportunities in both safflower and alfalfa right from the start. Even though they realized we had a strong relationship with Mitsubishi, they trusted us to keep their business confidential and at times we were able to engage in separate safflower seed tures joint ventures with Mitsubishi and C. Itoh, keeping each party’s interests separate. Rutkai left us to go into business for himself in Oregon, and we hired George Meckfessel, another former Pacific Oilseeds field agent. Meckfessel worked hard but had to establish new relationships. All grower prices rose, and it became apparent that we could not attain the acreage of oleic we had hoped for. Penny Newman’s acreage was cut in half. Meckfessel was able to sign up 6,000 acres of oleic, but growers were only able to plant 4,300 because of a second year of poor weather. We contracted for some oleic acreage in Canada and obtained an option on Producers’ oleic seed in order to have enough tonnage. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s problems with Vern Anderson allowed us to make a deal (with Ueno’s verbal backing) to buy his entire oil production and to go joint venture on seed exportation from Canada with his mill as a backstop. Our offerings of Canadian seed effectively stopped other U.S. safflower sellers from consummating sales for several months. Mitsubishi agreed to provide financing for a toll mill operation of 5,000–8,000 MT of seed carried over for a full season. In order to reduce the financing load quickly, we made a combinstion sale of meal to Japan on a charter using meal from PVO and hulls from Anderson, Clayton Co. to fill in the tonnage, While our sale was at a low price in the light of subsequent events, our purchases from others were at low cost as well, so I think the fact we moved all of our material in one fell swoop was well worth it. As oil prices rose, we held off selling much longer than normal in order to prevent the competition from undercutting our price. Once selling began, we were able to quickly sell all of the oil we wanted again reaching several new customers) up to a safe level, including an early sale of crude safflower oil to Unilever. We began exploring the European safflower oil market. As Agricom began to grow, Rocca Jr. was writing to Nate Most of PVO. “We must avoid at all costs the possibility of MSK becoming a competitor of ours in this country,

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operating through Agricom.” (Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation Memorandum October 17, 1969). We at Agricom were already doing exactly that. Mitsubishi had been told by Most the previous year that PVO was going to concentrate on domestic processing, since the exporting of seed to Japan offered much less profit. Again, in an April 9, 1970, PVO memorandum (Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation Memorandum, April 9, 1970, from Marianne Helfricht to L.S. Wong with notations from B.T. Rocca, Jr.), “Such a large spread of $22,75/ST would allow our competition such as Cargill and Agricom to pay growers a very high price, putting PVO in an unfavorable position.” At Agricom, we were feeling that we could increase our prices on 5,000 ST of safflower seed and still have a margin, but for PVO to do it, they would have to raise the price for 50,000 ST of safflower seed or risk losing their growers in the future. This meant a $500,000 drop in profit off the top. For us the sheer joy of running our own show was intoxicating. Being small and fast, and with little overhead had its advantages. We could pay more than PVO, and they could not stand to give away most of their profit after overhead, which we did not have. We could offer a market for Minnesota sunflower growers well above what Cargill or Minnesota Linseed oil could give them, and for the next 5 years we could dance around the Cargills, Continentals, and ADMs, building a large export market for sunflower seed, to the chagrin of the mills. It was a period of heady expansion in trading of palm oil, alfalfa, sunflower, and ocean freight. As Agricom’s relationship with Mitsubishi grew, we experienced problems from time to time in delivery of promised cargoes. As mentioned previously, the 1969 oleic safflower seed crop produced far less than expected and we ended up 3,000 M.T short of oleic seed sold through Mitsubishi to Ajinomoto. We were eventually able to solve this by substituting regular seed shipped from Canada in January, 1970; however, this still resulted in a shortfall that was finally filled by a shipment of containers of seed. The following year we booked the brand-new 18,000-ton capacity M.V. Olympic Power to pick up several thousand MT of Texas sunflower seed sold to Mitsubishi, which granted us very lenient terms allowing us lo ship 50% plus or minus of contract quantity (the usual is 5%). Even so, we produced only 700 ST in Texas, Texas production having been decimated by the sunflower moth, which forced us to bring the vessel to the West Coast to be filled at great expense with alfalfa pellets. Several times we were either late or early with vessels calling on the West Coast for alfalfa pellet and safflower seed cargoes. Finally, I was confronted in Tokyo by Mitsubishi’s then-manager of High Oil Content Oilseeds Section, Shoji Inoue, who told me that he had become known as “Nondelivery Inoue” among his compatriots. Still, the advantages of working with Agricom outweighed the problems, and Mitsubishi pressed forward to do more business with us. In 1968, when Agricom started toll crushing with PCO, the charge to produce crude oil was $10/ST of seed, and $0.0035/lb to produce once-refined oil. In 1969. Agricom prevailed on PCO to deliver expeller oil and solvent-extracted oil separately. In 1970 PCO began producing high-protein safflower meal using their own version of a tail-end process. Processing charges began creeping upward—in 1969, $11/ST seed for seed processing and $0.005/lb for once-refined oil; the prices rose to $11.50/ST, $13.00/ST, and $13.50/ST for 1970, 1971, and 1972, respectively. Producers Cotton

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Oil Company’s personnel acted slowly in regard, to the separation process, and their daily tonnage and yields suffered accordingly. In 1971, PCO notified Agricom that they would not be able to toll process in the 1972 or ensuing seasons. At first it appeared that they needed the extra time for extended cottonseed processing, but we subsequently learned that they had made an arrangement to produce and sell all of their production to Lever Brothers that allowed them a processing margin of $20/ST. Concurrently with the PCO processing, Agricom had begun toll processing with PVO late in the 1970 crop season. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s management suggusted that Agricom concentrate all of its crushing with PVO, and if necessary they would expand their crushing capacity to accomplish this. Agricom entered into an agreement covering 2 crop years, and it was jointly planned to expand this to 5 years. However, PVO later decided that it could not commit itself in advance to toll milling for us after the 1973 season. Day-to-day cooperation with PVO personnel deteriorated during the last year. Agricom had reached a crossroads. During PCO processing times, the relationship was always friendly because Agricom’s sale of oil to industrial customers did not infringe on PCO’s interests. As Agricom made inroads into the industrial field, scheduling meal shipments or oleic seed crushes to fit PVO’s own crushing schedule was always difficult. While PVO had not said it would not crush for us in the future, only that they could not commit themselves in advance, this gave us no chance to plan. We consulted Mitsubishi. By this time, Ueno had been replaced in MIC’s San Francisco office, by S. Furusawa. Arizona Cotton Oil Company’s plant was available for sale, but there was only limited safflower seed available in range and of this plant and we would have to enter the cottonseed crushing game in order to make profitable. Mitsubishi suggested we try to buy PVO and if they would not sell, then we should look into building a plant jointly.

The Grimes plant We discussed a purchase of PVO with PVO’s President, Larry Apple, but after some initial promising prospects, this gambit was rebuffed. We therefore began a study of the cost to build a mill and where best to locate a new facility. I prepared a report that summarized the results of this effort (Safflower Oil Mill Proposal and Location Study, October 12, 1973). In this report, copies of which were given to various Mitsubishi personnel and subsequently to the Bank of Tokyo in San Francisco, Agricom recited the history of safflower in the United States, Agricom’s own brief history, and compared the election and long-term operating costs at 11 potential sites in California. The report recommended building a plant at Grimes, California, for a cost of $1,250,000 and proposed two methods for financing the construction and operation of such a plant.

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The locations rejected were 1.

Bakersfield, adjacent to the Tenneco almond-processing facility, rejected because Tenneco was not prepared to invest in a mill and little safflower was being produced in that end of the San Joaquin valley. 2. Chowchilla, Anderson, Clayton Co. had been trying to dispose of its Western Cotton Oil plant located at Chowchilla, but withdrew from the market with the resurgence of cottonseed oil demand. 3. Colusa, the county seat of Colusa County was rejected because rail service was being phased out. 4. Fore Terminal, Alaimeda, had only two acres available for a plant, which was not enough to allow for the erection of a plant and the necessary seed storage, and sufferd from high labor and land costs and potential pollution control problems were severe. 5. Knights Landing, south of Grimes, was rejected because rail service had been abandoned. 6. Liberty Vegetable Oil’s Santa Fe Springs site offered an already existing expeller mill, but the crowded conditions and worries about future pollution and labor problems plus the long distance from sources of safflower seed caused it to be dropped from consideration. 7. Lindsay was ruled out although a surplus refinery on a large site was available, because seed costs would be pushed higher because of already existing competition for safflower seed from the three other mills in the area. 8. Petromark Terminal, Richmond, offered land for flat seed storage adjacent to boilers and oil storage on deep water, but this site was rejected because of future pollution control worries, high labor costs, and distance from safflower seed production. 9. Some private sites near but not on deep water were available in the Port of Sacramento. Although these sites were close to major sources of safflower seed, we dropped the sites from consideration because labor costs were escalating and pollution control problems could be a threat with a large city nearby. Finally, no nearby storage existed, as it did at Grimes. 10. Sites were available in Stockton next to Stockton Elevators and to the Diamond Walnut Growers’ mill. We believed PVO would not allow Stockton Elevators to cooperate in this way with a competitor, and the Diamond site was rejected for being off deep water. All of the sites were compared in an economic model considering an estimated cost of obtaining and delivering 25,000 ST of safflower seed to the proposed mill locations plus taxes on inventory, transportation of products, and by operating cost with erection cost at each location considered. Each site was also evaluated from the standpoint of environmental control problems, since we felt this would become very important in years to come. In both types of rating, the Grimes location was rated highest. The Grimes location also offered the site with the lowest cost needed to build an operating unit in the minimum amount of time. Additionally, the Grimes location had several other advantages:

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It was the only Sacramento Valley location short of the Port of Sacramento that was on rail and adjacent to water transportation. Grimes was in the center of the valley’s safflower production area and therefore close to a majority low-cost seed. No competitive mill was within 150 miles. Labor was available and cheap; union activity was low. The political and environmental climate was good. Being adjacent to a cooperative storage elevator allowed for economies in cost and seed-holding capacity existed in case the completion of the mill was delayed prior to harvest. Building in that location would offer definite advantages in contracting with local growers.

The Grimes location did have disadvantages: 1. 2. 3.

It was not on deep water. It was far removed from the majority of oil and meal consumers. All services would necessarily have to come from a distance.

Finally, in my mind the Grimes location offered insurance against lack of supplies. In years when safflower production would be cut back for economic reasons, Grimes was one of the two locations in the state that would continue to have a core of safflower production around it because of rotation with rice. Negotiation with Mitsubishi went well at first. Furusawa in San Francisco and Aoki in Planning Department gave approval. Even Sakabe, by then Manager of Mitsubishi’s Produce Department, appeared to be in favor, but then a rival plan surfaced. Mitsubishi’s associates at Koppel Elevators floated a plan to build an oil mill at Long Beach, adjacent to the Long Beach Elevator, aimed at processing safflower and soybeans. It was not too well thought out economically, but Furusawa and I were forced to make a hurried trip to Tokyo to overcome it. Finally, after much discussion, decisions were reached. It was agreed that a new company, Agricom Oilseeds, Inc. (AOI) would be formed to handle all of Agricom’s safflower business. This company would build the new mill at Grimes under a loan from of Tokyo, guaranteed by Mitsubishi International Corp. In return. Mitsubishi would be granted 10% of the stock and entered into a 50–50 joint venture sharing profits and losses for a period of 10 years, at which time Agricom International would have the option to buy out Mitsubishi’s interest on a formula based on the then net worth of their share. Additionally, Mitsubishi agreed to provide additional inventory financing and agreed to remain as a silent partner so as not to disturb Agricom International’s business with other Japanese companies. We hired Boomer to design and supervise construction of the plant. He agreed with our concept of using a mixture of new and used equipment to vastly reduce cost at no sacrifice salfety or efficiency. Mitsubishi and the Bank of Tokyo also were cooperative in this vein; too many banks require a fully designed set of blueprints showing the location of every last bolt, the use of only new equipment, and

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certification by a fancy engineering company—all of this can add 25–50% more to a plant’s cost. Boomer produced drawings where needed as we built. The basic plant was built on a I-acre site purchased from and immediately adjacent to Sacramento River Warehouse, plus a small easement obtained to allow a yard and safety fence to be erected around the solvent-extraction building, plus a few acres of land leased along the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. A 10-year storage agreement was negotiated with Sacramento River Warehouse to ensure reasonable rates of storage for a minimum/maximum quantity of seed each year. We erected a Crown Iron Works Extractor although we had originally planned to build a 14-foot Rotocel Extractor. We had to forgo using the Rotocel because Blaw Knox, the Rotocel’s builder, could not offer the necessary delivery schedule and erection of the Crown would be much faster since it would be delivered on site in several precontracted components versus the requirement to construct the Rotocel on site. Boomer designed and subcontracted evaporator and condenser units that were added with a French desolventizer toaster. We were able to obtain two used Super Duo Duplex Anderson expellers from the dismantled Cargill plant in San Francisco and two more from the Anderson Clayton mill in Mexicali. Kopas and Boomer were able to find many used items of equipment: boilers, storage tanks, conveyers, among other things, that helped to reduce the final cost. Beginning with a bare site that had to be filled to bring it to proper grade above potential flood stage, the plant was put on stream in February 1975 and was fully operational the following summer. It had a processing capacity of 150 ST of safflower seed/day, could store 700 ST of safflower meal and 8,000 ST of safflower oil. The only fault in the plant was the used twin screen conveyor from the extractor to the desolventizer toaster; this failed often and was replaced later by a simpler stainless steel unit. One of the reasons for building the Grimes plant disappeared before the plant could be completed. Grain barge service on the Sacramento River was suspended. Grain barges were self-unloading units capable of carrying 900–1,000 ST of safflower. They were towed by a tugboat, but labor disputes caused River Line of California to sell its barges to a company on the Columbia river and abandon the business. We purchased the two storage tanks from the Grimes barge-loading station and installed them in the Grimes mill prior to completion of construction. In a few years the Grimes location was to suffer a further problem, abandonment of rail service. Eventually the rail lines were removed, and in 1987, Oilseeds International, Ltd., by then successor operator of the Grimes facility, was able to purchase the leased land and railway right-of-way from Southern Pacific’s real estate unit. Loss of these two modes of transportation did not cause much disruption for the plant. All seed produced in California was delivered by hopper-bottomed trucks, and all meal left the same way. Most oil shipped to California customers was requested in 50,000-lb tank wagons, and what little oil was shipped out of state, in the refined state, was in jumbo tank cars requiring transit to Berkeley or Fresno for refining. The Grimes plant operated profitably from the start. Soon Agricorm acquired the 6.5-acre refining property of Durkee Famous Foods in Berkeley, California. Kopas and Boomer, with the help of Nissen, and Kopas’ son, Chris, were able to use portions of the very old plant, purchase a used deodorizer shell, and build a very

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efficient refinery and deodorizer operated by a minimum crew, that also profitably refined safflower oil.

Problems for Agricom In an attempt to become more integrated in the safflower business, in 1975 Agricom began to provide the primary financial backing for Wade Parkey’s Agronomic Research & Marketing, Inc. (ARMI). Agronomic Research & Marketing, Inc.’s function was to produce a new line of planting seeds should our competition cut off or restrict our supply. In addition we marketed an oleic variety, M-1, that was simply a selection out of S-304. Parkey had previously worked with Caltana and then with J.G. Boswell for a number of years. With the latter company, he had produced the B-54 variety that was employed on the Boswell farm for many years. Prior to starting ARMI, Parkey also had worked for a short time with Producers Cotton Oil Company. He brought 10 lines of safflower with him. We entered into the ARMI arrangement with great hopes of being of able to introduce some new lines of safflower planting and produce a substantial profit from the business of producing the seed, but Parkey’s tests of his new lines showed no improvement over existing lines. We eventually parted company in late 1977. Agricom was soon to face another problem related to the safflower business. In 1973/74, commodity prices in general surged tremendously during and after the first petroleum “shock,” and safflower seed prices were carried up as well in order to compete with other crop prices. This carried oil prices above $0.50/lb and when the commodity market collapsed during the 1975/76 season, it put a lot of pressure on safflower; for the first time many safflower oil consumers found it necessary to curtail their usage of safflower. Since safflower oil could not be sold for awhile at any price, we let we must institute a hedging program to protect ourselves from a tremendous inventory loss. In 1975, Agricom International’s sunflower, alfalfa pellet, ocean freighting, and miscellaneous trading operations had grown to a volume of $29 million of sales (not including freight on which only profit was booked) compared to $12 million for AOI. In June 1974, net worth of the consolidated company had exceeded $1 million for the first time, and reached $1,426,940 in June of 1975 when AOI was 1 year old. Bank of America agreed to handle commodity financing for Agricom International in 1975, while Bank of Tokyo continued inventory financing for Agricom Oilseeds, Inc. Bank of America’s George Hickman and Diane Evans provided a revolving line of credit combined with a hedging line that relieved pressure on Agricom for awhile, but this could not used to hedge the perilous safflower situation. Agricom began putting hedges on safflower by entering into future contracts for the sale of soybeans and soybean oil. As long as the market declined, we were okay. but we had little cash to cover margin calls should the market rebound during this volatile time. Bank of Tokyo was not interested in hedging; one of their chairman viewed hedging as a speculative venture. We called on Mitsubishi to provide their half of any margin required, and to our surprise found that they refused.

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Mitsubishi’s oil trading section agreed with us, but first the Food Department and then the company’s Administrative Department did not agree. At first the Food Department tried to argue that our agreement covering AOI was not a joint venture but only a profit-sharing agreement (not profit and loss). Finally after much argument, they agreed it was a joint venture. It was then argued that the managing partner was responsible for providing all hedging funds. We won this argument as well, but in the meantime we had lost the war Much of the opportunity to hedge was gone and AOI was facing a huge loss in our inventory balance with new saffower seed prices down to $200/ST from a high the previous season of $434. Concurrent with its problems with AOI, Mitsubishi was facing problems of its own. During the first half of the 1970s, its Food Department entered into a score of other ventures around the world in addition to the Grimes plant, in the belief that the world was facing a monumental food shortage. In October, 1971, Agricom International formed a subsidiary, Chef’s Delight, with part ownership and financing from Mitsubishi. Chef’s Delight was a fresh mushroom producing facility located at Morgan Hill, California. We hired Baker’s son, Don Baker Jr., to manage it. We operated it more or less successfully for several years, eventually selling it back to its previous owners in August, 1975. In 1972, we also attempted to buy the 60,000-ton capacity Sacramento River Warehouse (the future site of our Grimes plant) for $500.000, as a joint venture with Mitsubishi. In this instance, although Ueno led us to believe that Mitsubishi wanted to do the deal and Agricom put up the $50,000 nonrefundable option price to tie up the purchase, Mitsubishi could not make up its mind quickly enough and we lost the opportunity—and the $50,000. It should have been a lesson to us that negotiations with Japanese companies involving more than one section of the company had to be handled very carefully to avoid misunderstandings. Mitsubishi often could not find enough capable managers within its own staff to perform their everyday job of trading and also oversee new and varied ventures scattered across Indonesia, Canada, Australia, Iran, the United States, and many other countries. Therefore, Mitsubishi decided it must reduce its commitments to a manageable number. Initially, we were not pressured to end our arrangement with Mitsubishi, but it was apparent that they would welcome our finding another partner to replace them in AOI. Although we at Agricom were genuinely trying to help Mitsubishi by attempting to find a buyer to replace them, relations between our two companies quickly deteriorated. Mitsubishi dispatched Norman Makino to San Francisco to handle negotiations with us. This was a wise move since he knew our business well, we trusted him, and he had the trust of his Tokyo superiors who were worried that Furusawa had not provided enough control over our operation. Our problems were certainly not Furusawa’s fault, but were the result of our own lack of proper fiscal controls, budgeting, and forecasting; and of Mitsubishi’s lack of hedging help. Mitsubishi assured us that they wanted to find a way to continue working with Agricom in the future and to ensure our continued operations, but they wished to withdraw from the joint venture. After telling Mitsubishi that we would try to find a new partner, we consulted with officers of the Bank of America and others asking for suggestions. We made a

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list of likely prospects, primarily of people in the business, prepared a prospectus of our ugly situation, and began to solicit potential partners. Balfour Guthrie, Hurley Zook of Continental Grain, Sam Coblentz and Ken Groefsmema of Newhall Land Company, and Cal/West all considered the matter, but by April, we still had no firm prospect and harvest was approaching. Diane Evans had suggested that we talk to Pacific International Rice Mills, Inc. (PIRMI), a company for which she was also account executive, but I had felt we would get nowhere with Curt Rocca, President of PIRMI, since I had always sided with his brother, Rocca Jr., in various disputes within PVO over the years. However, a conversation with my good friends and sunflower clients, Charles and W.L Coble of Levelland Cotton Oil, Levelland, Texas changed my mind. At their suggestion, I called the office of David Bintliff, a Houston financier. I had originally met the Gobles in 1954 when PVO was purchasing linseed oil from their company, Brazos Valley Cotton Oil in Waco. After that time they had become involved with Bintliff who had put together an operation in Guatemala using their old equipment. They had subsequently bought Bintliff out of their operation. The Gobles indicated that Bintliff was the kind of a guy who might take a chance on something that had a good prior record and that only needed a financial hand to keep going. More importantly, he was now a 50% owner of PIRMI, a fact that we had not realized before. Bintliff got interested because of his past experience with the Gobles in the vegetable oil business and because he had a share in PIRMI with Curt Rocca as his partner Pacific International Rice Mills’ Treasurer, Hugh Nichol expressed interest in looking into our figures. Nichol had been instrumental in helping Curt Rocca purchase PIRMI from PVO. Nichol and Palmer Traynham had supplied the down payment that Rocca had required when he teamed with Bintliff to buy PIRMI. Within a year, Curt Rocca was able to repay Bintliff to claint his 50% share, and return the funds to Nichol and Traynham. Nichol analyzed the figures we showed him and realized that Agricom would produce a profit within months if PIRMI produced a line of credit that solved our shortterm cash flow problems, got Mitsubishi to accept its share of the loss, and negotiated with Atwood Larson to write off a large portion of the funds owed by Agricom International for sunflower seed, that they could recover as a tax loss. Upon his return, Curt Rocca saw the advantage to PIRMI in this transaction, and we began a complex series of negotiations. While negotiating with PIRMI we continued to talk to others. Later in April, 1976, I spent a week in London and Paris with Sam Bamieh pursuing Adnan Khassogi. Bamieh, a Palestinian residing in Palo Alto, California, had become Agricom’s agent in alfalfa pellet dealings with Saudi Arabia. He was related to Khassogi, who in those days was the world’s premier deal maker. Bamieh and I had presented a proposal for Khassogi to replace Mitsubishi in Agricom, an idea that interested Bob Shaheen, Khassogi’s right hand man and President of his Triad Corporation. The problem was finding Khassogi to give his approval. In those days he was constantly on the move. Finally, he said no; the deal sounded fine but at the moment he was short of cash. He suggested we build a refinery for some friends in Saudi Arabia who might also be interested in buying Agricom, but it soon became apparent that our approach was with PIRMI.

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We put the deal together for PIRMI to take over control of Agricom, for Mitsubishi to assume one-half of the loss of AOI and to continue guaranteeing the Bank of Tokyo loan on the Grimes plant, and for Atwood Larson to take a tax writeoff of the funds that had been promised to have been transferred from AOI to cover Agricom International obligations but had not been transferred. I then left on May 30, 1976, on a scheduled trip that started with the IASC Congress in Monte Carlo, proceeding to Prague to attend the United States/Czechoslovakian Economic Council meeting, and then to the U.S.S.R. eventually arriving at the 7th International Sunflower Conference in Krasnadar. When we reached Carcasome on the way across France, I received a call from the office—Bob Bolton, President of Atwood Larson, was refusing to sign off on the deal. I was needed urgently in a meeting in San Francisco the next day. When I arrived, we patched the deal together with help from Diane Evans of Bank of America, who took a very positive stand in trying to make the deal work. The patched-up deal involved not only giving PIRMI control of Agricom but 80% of the stock, temporary personal warranties by the existing shareholders, and resulted in the exit of Richter as our Accountant. In turn, Mitsubishi gave up trying to recapture its share of the joint venture loss since it would no longer be financially involved (except for guaranteeing the Bank of Tokyo Grimes loan). Atwood Larson was paid off to the extent it could not recover from tax write-offs (accepting an $800,000 note in part), and all growers were paid on time. Within less than a year, Agricom had returned to profitability, and the previous shareholders were released from their personal guarantees.

Turmoil in PVO While the previously mentioned events had been taking place, PVO had been reorganizing itself. After the proxy battle recounted at the end of Chapter 13, PVO’s safflower policy was in divided hands. Rocca Jr. had been reinstated as President as a result of the battle, but by the end of November, 1969, he had been replaced by Robert H. Beeby as President and Chief Executive Officer. Don Baker Sr. joined Agricom, and Most left PVO in 1970. Shortly after that Beeby was replaced by Apple, who was succeeded by Lowell Hoskins, and then Hoskins was replaced by Robert H. Davidson in September, 1973, while Cartwright named himself Chief Executive Officer and elected James W. Shannon as executive vice president, and president of PVO West, the company’s largest operating division. By May, 1976, Shannon had become President and was involved in a PVO suit against Rocca Jr. for trying to overturn actions of the Directors. In May of 1978, Shannon replaced Cartwright as CEO, but soon Shannon found himself replaced by John R. Hungerford. Finally, in January of 1980, Kay Corporation purchased nearly 100% of PVO’s shares. When Rocca Jr. was reinstalled as President during 1969, he tried to turn the company’s interest toward doing better in its trade with Japan, correctly sensing that PVO had lost momentum in that market. Most wrote long memoranda outlining how the company should accomplish this, particularly by trying to sell to safflower seed crushers serving Japan’s industrial sector, but these efforts were not very successful.

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Initially, sales in the new PVO were placed under Harry Curtis, vice president of Marketing and Development. Reporting directly to him was R.C. Oliver as Marketing with Manager, with Oric Colyer, Jim Karson, and MacIntosh as Managers under Oliver. (PVO memorandum and organization chart, H.W. Curtis to R.H. Beeby, February 18, 1971). Curtis was not interested in the nuts and bolts of daily selling and was soon transferred into administrative sales functions. Beeby had brought J.R. Morris with him from Campbell Soup with the avowed purpose of “transforming the purchasing function from a trading activity into professional procurement” (8). But Morris, in addition to purchasing, quickly began to manage sales, which was divided into four departments. Within 2 months, Morris placed Sales under himself (PVO Memorandum and Organizational Chart, J.R. Morris, April 21, 1971) with MacIntosh as Sales Manager for Industrial Oils, Karson as Sales Manager of Edible Oils, and others in charge of Specialty Products and in Sales Order Management. Oliver was named Manager of Grocery Products Sales and Marketing. By September things had changed again (PVO Memorandum and Organizational chart, Roy Kelly for J.R. Morris, September 29, 1971). Karson had been moved to General Sales Manager with MacIntosh in charge of Industrial Oils, Kelly in charge of Specialties, and others in charge of sales to the southern region. MacIntosh decided to join Hain Pure Foods, an advantageous move as it turned out. For awhile, contracting for safflower seed was placed under L.S. Wong, Director of Procurement, with assistance from Dave Johnson. Once seed procurement was coordinated under Karson it began to make some headway, and the brilliant allowed to concentrate on his strength in analyzing and acting on commodity markets. For the next 10 years, Karson and Wong basically managed PVO’s vegetable oil operations. On January 4, 1971, Cartwright completed the purchase of three divisions of Drew Chemical Corporation. Robert van Tuyle, President of the Slick Corporation (Drew’s owner), and Beeby, then President of PVO, had announced on November 13, 1970, that PVO would pay Slick approximately $10,000,000 in cash and $5,000,000 in long-term notes to acquire the Foods, International Chemical, and Catalyst Division of Drew. The acquisition involved two plants, a 565,000-ft2 facility in Boonton, New Jersey, and a 180,000-ft2 plant in St. Louis, Missouri. The Boonton facility in refined and processed vegetable oils and manufactured food products for institutions, food processors, and consumer lines in the Northeastern United States. The Catalyst Division, which produced nickel catalysts for oil hydrogenation and chemical processing was located in Boonton as well. At St. Louis, the plant, served the Midwest market with refined and hydrogenated oils, margarines, and specialty fat products (9). The move doubled the size of the company, increased many products into which safflower might be incorporated, but saddled PVO with many production units that were past their prime. Karson was soon forced to terminate Ed Cody, his counterpart in the Drew organization, since two Sales Managers were not required. Cody joined Francis Mustoe Food Brokers. By 1972, after the Drew acquisition, Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s name was changed to PVO International, Inc., to “reflect more accurately the company’s

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present diversification of its business and areas of operation” (10). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s internationalism was being diminished, however, as the loyal staff of the TYK subsidiary in Tokyo were let go in the same year. Soon to follow was the sale of the always profitable PIRMI on February 15, 1972, to Bintliff and Curt Rocca; a move characterized as “eliminating a high risk commodity business” (11). In 1972, PVO was forced to close Drew’s fatty acid facility. On April 11. 1973, PVO sold its interest in Pacific Safflower (Australia) Pty. Ltd., ending its involvement in Australian safflower since it soon sold its interest in Pacific Seeds Australia Ply. Ltd., its planting seed subsidiary. The Salvadorian subsidiary was also sold. A positive move was the creation of a joint venture company, Pacific Anchor Chemical Corporation, with the Anchor Chemical Company of England. This company was to market and manufacture epoxide curing agents at PVO’s Los Angeles plant. Each year, more Drew units were shut down, but still top management would not admit that it had made a mistake in acquiring the firm. In 1975, PVO closed down the food processing-operations at its Boonton (Drew), New Jersey plant, resulting in a $3 million shutdown cost. In 1976, the Australian and Spanish operations were gone. The company sold its interest in its Ipeasa and Safflor subsidiaries in Spain, and was the cause of Rocca Jr.’s action against the company. The company did not use this time just to divest. In 1979, Pacific Scott Bader Inc. was formed to market acrylic latex products. The Saffola branch of PVO under Oliver managed to survive through the entire period, and periodically tried to expand into new markets without success. However it continued to show a profit for the company, and provided PVO with a steady outlet for 8,000,000–10,000,000 lbs of refined oil annually. PVO International, Inc.’s sales of safflower in Europe were the responsibility of A. Jaeggi, Manager of Paveocor in Rotterdam. In the mid-1970s, Jaeggi uncovered a buyer eager to purchase oleic safflower oil, a product that PVO had been unable to sell to others in any large quantities. This buyer turned out to be Ramon Azria of France Huile, who wanted to buy 1,000 MT of oleic oil—price not being an object. Karson met Azria periodically over the next 2 years, and several thousand MT of oil changed hands. Cart wright, and more importantly, Sidney Hoffman, were tiring of trying to run PVO profitably. They realized that the Drew acquisition had been a failure. Along with Barney Rocca Jr., they organized a Shareholders’ Committee to deal with possible buyers for PVO shares. Several times over the past years Hoffman had held discussions on his own with various officers of the Kay Corporation, which eventually had accumulated about a 4% holding of PVO shares. Rebuffed in a request to Cartwright for a seal on PVO’s Board, Kay’s President, Antonie Van Ekris, published an offer in the Wall Street Journal of October 22, 1980, to purchase all of PVO’s shares and outstanding debentures at a price of $24 and $2,750, respectively (12). The offer was to expire on October 29 unless extended. The Committee met with Van Ekris, and offer was extended. at a somewhat higher price, pending further negotiations. During the same period, a French group (called Le Club) approached Karson through Azria about PVO’s interest in selling, and Karson passed the interest along

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to his top management. Le Club was a group put together by Azria, by now President of Frahuil, a Marseilles-based trading firm. No one knew how Frahuil was financed or what its exact relationship was with many other European companies that few people had heard of. Yet Azria was probably the world’s leading dealer in olive oil. In those days, Azria was constantly on the move from his Marseilles base to destinations throughout the world, yet kept control of his network of ventures very much in his own hands. Le Club was a partnership between Azria’s Frahuil, Philippe Prouvost of sodishuil (a French trading firm specializing in oils from the former French Africa colonies), Credit Agricole (a large French bank), Louis Dreyfus, one of the world’s leading trading firms, and Star (an Italian olive oil marketer). Le Club was interested in gaining entry into the U.S. market, and PVO appeared to offer a number of avenues that they could use. After extended negotiation with the Committee, a purchase price about $3 million higher than Kay’s last offer was agreed upon with the full assent of PVO’s banks. But the French needed a few days to get the French government to approve the transfer of that much foreign exchange. At this point, enter Van Ekris and the Kay Corporation again. Sensing an opportunity, he reached Hoffman with a proposal to do the deal for less but with immediate payment. He offered approximately $26 million but needed an answer right away. The deal was agreed upon. Soon after, Van Ekris sold off much of the company. By late 1981, Van Ekris had sold the Saffola label to Wilsey Foods for over $4 million; disposed of SeedTec’s South African subsidiary; sold the physical assets of Stockton Elevators to a private investor first leasing the use of the elevator’s assets to Continental Grain company next 20 years; and except for a small land holding, sold its New Jersey refinery. In August, 1984, SeedTec’s Spanish subsidiary, Semillas Pacifico, was sold to a Cargill Spanish subsidiary after negotiations with Lubrizol fell through. The sale of the St. Louis and Richmond plants had gone through, and then only SeedTec would remain in Kay’s hands until a share in its sunflower business was sold to Rhone-Poulenc. Subsequently the entire firm was traded to Mitsubishi. But by that time Kay itself had come on hard times (13). The Paveocor operations had been combined into Balfour McLean, another Kay acquisition. Today very little remains of the original Kay empire. Rocca Jr. formed his own trading company, B.T. Rocca, Jr. and Company, specializing in palm kernel, and coconut oils. He is free of administrative worries and able to apply his talents to study and to act on the markets. His firm has become the leading market in the previously mentioned products and has handled annual volumes equal to PVO in its best years. Table 14.1 displays my estimate of PVO’s safflower contracting operations from the period covered in Table 4.3 up to the time of the sale of the Richmond plant which is discussed in Chapter 17.

PIRMI Attempts to Sell Aericom When PIRMI made its deal to take over control Agricom in 1976, that company returned to Profitability within months; by 1979, it had regained a net worth of

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172,000 110,000 129,000 123,421 123,000 118,000 49,600 90,000 85,000 76,100 65,000 46,000 50,000 28,500 21,100 36,370 54,500 16,800 26,000 35,000

Year 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982

Production (ST)

3,307 — 2,200

12,000

66,760 2,900 12,000h — 8,800 5,500 14,000

130,000 60,000 70,000 34,850f

Arizona Acres Production Planted (ST) Exports

See Table 4.1 14,000 17,500 128,716 7,746 112,108 1,150 132,900d — — 121,350 — —e 85,675 12,000g (3,000) 54,150 (2,500) 300 300 (7,000) 88,000 (8,400) 3,800 (8,000) 73,000 (8,000) 3,500 (15,000) 73,630 (15,000) (6,000) 65,000i (5,000) 4,000 4,400 (10,000) 40,600 (6,300) 3,800 4,400 50,000 (6,000) 41,600 (8,000) 13,000 17,200 (1,500) 20,250 (1,300) 47,828 3,700 5,000 (2,500) 63,000 (2,500) 5,200 5,200 (3,500) 40,500 (2,950) 4,000 3,000 (3,850) 20,320 (3,100) 22,000 (3,750) 1,500 1,750 32,000

California

(1,000) (4,400) (5,600) (2,900) —

54,000 93,819 53,500 92,175 87,715 49,250 76,000 72,500 73,050 79,450 45,550 62,000 45,000 20,000 56,609 64,426 49,622 36,036 24,140

Crush

(3,100)

(8,000)

(9,200) (1,800) (5,800)

(2,300) (7,200)

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Source: PVO, unpublished data, and J. Smith, personal records.

iPVO purchased an additional 15,600 ST.

hIncludes 1,700 MT exported to Finland.

gPaveocor purchased 26,225 ST from Arizona and exported 12,000 ST; supplied 77,000 ST to PVO for crushing in addition to PVO total shown.

fPaveocor also exported 30,000 MT to Japan from Mexico.

ePaveocor exported 6,075 ST from Arizona.

dPaveocor purchased an additional 13,500 ST.

cPlanting seed supplied to POI or SeedTec for resale.

bValues in parentheses are for oleic safflower.

aDisposition totals do not always equal production totals because of carryover, or the effects of other domestic purchase/sales not shown.

Acres Planted

2,500 800

5,000 4,000 2,500 2,900 3,125 2,000 3,800 500 750 2,000 2,000 (200) (300) (500)

(300) (200)

Disposition (st) Planting Seedc

TABLE 14.1 PVO California and Arizona Safflower Acreage, Production, Disposition, and Price Paid to Farmerssa,b

80 80 99.75 90 90 87 85 95 110 127 250 380 300 243 246 230 255 280 360 325

Price $/ST

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$1.5 million by dominating the trade in U.S. sunflower seed to Mexico and effective buying of safflower seed through good agents in California and the Great Plains. However, Agricom’s majority owner, PIRMI, was getting overextended by providing guarantees for too many operations in relation to its net worth. Pacific International Rice Mills, Inc.’s principal bank, Bank of America, put pressure on PIRMI to either put in more equity or sell some operations so its debt-to-equity ratio would be lower. Pacific International Rice Mills, Inc., chose to try to sell Agricom, which was profitable but was not closely related to PIRMI’s core rice business. I initially visited Bud Morrison, Executive vice president of Congra in his Omaha office in mid-1979 with a proposal to sell PIRMI’s shares in Agricom. Morrison was very interested in our proposal, since Agricom could give them much more leverage in sunflower production. He was clearly unimpressed with our offering price. I pursued Balfour Guthrie, Wilbur Ellis, and many others in our field but was without luck. At the same time, I was trying to sell the services of Smith, Kopas, Easler, and our other employees to a new owner without having employment contracts or extended compensation agreements in hand. I knew that others would accept them if they were already in force, but they would only complicate a negotiation if we tried to get a new buyer to add them to the package. We had the dilemma of wanting to sell Agricom to a new owner at a low price in order to make our future performance look good, whereas PIRMI wanted as high a price as possible. Between 1979 and 1981, I was to spend 75% of my time trying to sell Agricom International—naturally our business suffered from lack of control. Between November 15, 1979, and February 4, 1980, we held meetings with Ken Groefsema and others of the Newhall Land & Fanning Company to renew investigation of a purchase of PIRMI’s shares in Agricom. Curt Rocca finally indicated a firm selling price of $1.5 million, but Newhall became concerned about hedging opportunities and was unable to make a counterproposal. By this time, I became aware of the failed attempt by Le Club to acquire PVO and through our friend, Fabien Bismuth of Montenay, Paris, arranged to meet Azria in late February in Bismuth’s apartment in Paris. I sent Azria a letter on March 7, 1980, containing details about Agricom and proposed that Frahull and its, friends agree to buy PIRMI’s Agricom stock through Smith, Kopas, and Easler. We proposed doing this purchase in our names since we felt that telling PIRMI that another outsider was interested would only cause them to increase their price ideas again. In turn, we also proposed that the three of us, together with the other minority shareholders, hold their 20% of the shares in a new company and have the option to obtain 30% more to be held in escrow until all the things we warranted were proved. This would then be a real partnership. We would try to expand our sunflower business through Elevator M in Duluth, to get involved in a Midwest sunflower processing plant, expand groundnut and corn oil origination for Frahuil, try to purchase and combine SeedTec and Interstate Seed Company, and investigate the installation of a consumer products packing line at the Berkeley property. The big kicker in the deal was the hidden value of the 6.5 acres of Berkeley property plus the large tax loss carry forward that could only be used by Agricom business. In addition. Azria wished to deal in oleic safflower oil with Agricom outside of his partnership agreement.

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It is Fair to say that Azria and I probably understood our original conversation about putting together a combination quite well, but when both of us consulted partners after the meeting, the deal started evolving in slightly different directions. In any event, we were able to get an option from Curt Rocca to purchase PIRMI’s share for $1,500,000 in exchange for a nonrefundable deposit of 10%. We were soon visited by Jacques Siegrist, the number two man in Sodishuil, which we were to learn was one of Azria’s partners. It appeared that he was receiving quite different instructions from his boss, Prouvost, as to the nature of the transaction. After many phone calls with Azria and Roger Haddad, his assistant. I flew to France for a series of meetings with Azria. but primarily with Le Club. Eventually, a deal was worked out after long discussion, and a deposit of $150,000 was made in May, 1980. It was decided that the deal would allow us to retain a significant share in Agricom, and that Christian Penaud from Frahuil and Marc Prouvost of Sodishuil (son of Prouvost) would be sent to live in San Francisco and begin working in our office until the deal could be closed. When the deal could not be closed by the June deadline, an extension to July was obtained from PIRMI in exchange for an additional nonrefundable deposit. We sold 1,500 MT of oleic safflower to a joint venture with Frahuil for future delivery, but Azria found that he would have difficulty taking delivery and delayed giving shipping instructions. We agreed to allow him to delay further in return for carrying charges. This was a highly charged and frustrating period since we were still owned by PIRMI but were taking instructions from Le Club. Agricom fortunes began to deteriorate in the spring of 1980. I could foresee some of this, but was spending too much time negotiating and could not spend sufficient time personally directing trading. We decided to reverse the position in the sunflower market that had been dictated by Le Club, but were not forceful enough in acting, and the market moved up before we were able to fully accomplish our goal. This brought down our projected earnings substantially, and caused Prouvost to suggest changing our share because of the company’s lowered net worth. Eventually, no agreement was reached, and the deal did not go through. This upset PIRMI and Bank of America. Pacific International Rice Mills, Inc., then decided to close out all positions fixing losses in the fiscal year ending in 1981, whereas sticking with the positions might have produced a small profit. The company entered into wheat hedges against the 1981 safflower crop to be harvested in fiscal 1982. Normally these hedges would have been dropped in November, but it was jointly decided to leave them in force as a speculation. Then market collapsed when the U.S.S.R. threatened to march into Poland in December. 1980. This resulted in another large loss. After the breakdown of the Le Club negotiations, I took proposals to J.G. Boswell, Delta Industries of California, Grain Facility Design of Minneapolis, Unimills in Hamburg. The Pillsbury company, ACLI of London, and PVO International. In August, 1980, I was approached by members of the All Sun group. My first contact with members of the All Sun group had been on May 9, 1979, when I was asked by Atwood Larson Company to give a talk about sunflower markets at a group meeting at Sisseton, South Dakota, organized by John Wenschlag, manager of the local elevator from whom we purchased sunflower seed through Atwood Larson. Because I had

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ethical concerns regarding promoters who were also scheduled to talk, I was unable to participate in Wenschlag’s meetings. I did say, however, that we would be interested in working with the All Sun group to construct and operate a plant for a fee plus part of the profits involved if the operation was successful. Concurrently with this, we in Agricom had made our own investigation for building a Midwest sunflower-processing plant, and had picked a site in West Fargo, North Dakota after investigating several others. The exact site was later purchased by Cargill to erect their present large sunflower mill. We made a proposal to the Agricom Board of Directors who turned it down as being too risky unless we could find alternative means of financing. At this time, Kopas, Boomer, and I visited the Simsa and Prograsa oil mills in Spain to obtain state-of-the-art information on dealing with safflower hulls. In 1979 and 1980, Agricom also had engaged in a joint venture with Simsa to begin producing oleic safflower oil in Spain. This venture involved selling oleic safflower oil to a company, that we had been introduced to by PVO’s Francisco Gonzalez, that was willing to buy oleic safflower oil at 80% of the price of olive oil plus a share in their marketing of the oil. We reasoned that producing the oil within Spain produced the best logistics and the least problems with government import controls. We enlisted the aid of Simsa to produce a test quantity using S-317 planting seed imported from the United States and crushing the test seed produced in Simsa’s oil mill at Santander. The field test worked fine, as did the extraction trial, but we were stymied by being unable to import Saffola 317 in quantity into Spain since it was not a registered line with the Spanish government. SeedTec’s subsidiary, Sepasa, had registered S-317 in Spain as Sepasa 317. No Sepasa 317 was available. We decided that it was best to wait to start the project, and again we were very lucky. If we had gone ahead, we could have been involved by association in the scandal that soon erupted in Spain, in which unscrupulous dealers blended contaminated rapeseed oil into olive oil and caused hundreds of deaths and injuries. When next I heard from the All Sun group, they had raised capital from 37 local citizens including Wenschlag; Bob Schuler, an elevator-owner friend at Breckenridge, Minnesota, and founder of Sigco Research; Harold Fenske, another sunflower elevatoroperator friend in Hankinson, North Dakota; Gary Scheffler in Hankinson, who had provided some land for the proposed plant; and Roger Slotten of Wahpeton, North Dakota, who was elected President. Slotten’s brother, an operator in the CIA, had introduced him to a financial consultant, Tom Mulcahy. On August 25, 1980, a group of All Sun investors, together with Mulcahy, visited us in San Francisco. Mulcahy proposed that Agricom hire him as a consultant as well, since he felt a purchase of PIRMI’s share in Agricom could be easily funded because of our good record. After additional discussions, it appeared that All Sun would offer the best choice as a purchaser of Agricom, as well as for retaining the services of Smith, Kopas, and Easler. We therefore signed an agreement committing ourselves to joining All Sun as employees on August 1, 1981, should PIRMI have not found a purchaser by that time. I also considered leaving Agricom in September of 1980, but stayed after a rescue plan through Bank of America was proposed. When PIRMI learned of our agreement, we were dismissed.

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All Sun responded immediately and placed us all on their staff (in Oilseeds International, Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary) and offered to protect us from any threatened legal actions. Chris Thompson and John Gyulai left Agricom on their own volition and joined us almost immediately. We were able to operate in some temporary headquarters provided by Bill Crosby and Lynn Craig of Pacific Coast Commodities and McLeod & Massey, and by April had moved to quarters at 407 Jackson Street, only a block from Agricom’s headquarters. All Sun, Inc., was engaged in pursuing the financing and construction of a sunflower-processing plant. We were granted minority shares in All Sun and employed to manage All Sun once the new plant was constructed. We were promised excellent salaries, benefits, and incentives by All Sun’s shareholders, but both they and we were misled as to the financing available for the operation. Promised capital investment in oilseeds of $250,000 failed to materialize and promised guaranteed salaries were also missing. We voluntarily reduced our compensation to help out. Many financial interests were pursued, including Lewis & Peat, Societé General, FMHA, and many banks in increasingly twisted forms of financing, but the basic problem remained—the shareholders of the company could not provide enough equity to attract other investors or lenders to join them. In the summer of 1981, we signed an agreement with PIRMI in which I agreed not to actively engage in the safflower business for 1 year in exchange for dropping of all legal claims by all sides against each other. Still, I was able to help J.G. Boswell begin selling oleic safflower oil to Wyeth and C. Itoh and to provide general advice to Cal/West Seeds as time went on (see Chapter 17). By February 1982, PIRMI approached Mulcahy about the sale of Agricom to All Sun, since it turned out that Mulcahy had been trying to raise capital for PIRMI as well. Pacific International Rice Mills, Inc.’s own troubles had compounded because of further escalation of its Mississippi costs; also, Bintliff forced Curt Rocca to surrender his stock in return for Bintliff providing guarantees to keep PIRMI alive. Agricom’s new management had accumulated large inventories of oleic safflower, that were contaminated by that time; had made large sales of linoleic safflower salad oil to Hain and Saffola at several cents/lb under the market rate; and continued to be burdened by a large staff that no longer was dealing in the sunflower seed it had been hired to deal with. We were informed by Mulcahy and Scheffler that they wished us to return to Agricom as management and minority shareholders, but by May of 1982, relations between Mulcahy and I were strained. We had invited Cal/West Seeds to become part of a financing package designed by Mulcahy to purchase Agricom, that called for Cal/West to provide the major portion of the seed to be processed in the future by Agricom as part of a profit-sharing arrangement. We also tried to encourage Penny Newman Grain Company, which acted as the largest supplier of safflower seed for Agricom, by buying safflower from growers and reselling it in their name to Agricom, to remain agreeable to such a future arrangement. Cal/West decided in July that entering the proposed financing combination as a purchaser of 1981/82 inventory was too risky, would use an inordinate amount of their credit lines for insufficient gain, and could create problems with their membership if they helped to bail out growers that might otherwise not be paid and that were

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not members of the co-op. They withdrew from that phase, stating that they would be happy to try to work with us in the future (and as potential customers for toll processing of seed if Agricom came under our management). It appeared to us that with Cal/West’s withdrawal, a real gap would exist in the funds and that in its projection Agricom was several million dollars short of being able to pay Penny Newman and other growers as 1982 safflower seed was delivered, and suggested that Mulcahy prepare a projected balance sheet, cash flow, and profit and loss statement before All Sun took the steps to purchase Agricom. Numerous balance sheets were prepared, and we first saw copies of these in early August. We again pointed out that there seemed to be a serious gap in funds necessary to pay growers and that no cash flow or profit and loss statements were made. Mulcahy said he could not prepare a cash flow/profit loss projection that we could be comfortable with and agreed that the deal as being discussed could leave them short of being able to pay growers. We were told that discussions were held with other investigating parties to try to raise equity, but these appeared to have failed. In August of 1982, an arrangement was made in which All Sun would put up $500,000 by October 16 (guaranteed by four directors, two of whom had no assets); Bintliff, Mulcahy, and Scheffler would guarantee an $11.6 million bank line of credit; and General Electric Credit Corporation would finance inventories and receiv-ables if the $500,000 deposit and the bank line was approved by October 16. Then Bintliff would cancel a $9.2 million loan to Agricom and leave $3.2 million of sub-ordinated debt in Agricom together with a new G.E. $2 million loan against the plants. But it turned out this would still require Penny Newman or its growers to wait a year or more for payment of $4–6 million. On August 18, we were informed that Mulcahy, Scheffler, Slotten, and Kopas were elected Directors of Agricom and that Mulcahy was to be President with Kopas as Executive vice president. Kopas soon resigned, and Don Baker Sr. was elected in his place. Kopas, Easler, and I threatened to sue Mulcahy for conversion since we had hired him in February 1981 to help us buy Agricom, and instead he had manipulated the deal for himself. In order to settle our disputes we offered to withdraw from All Sun and Agricom and forget all claims for back wages, benefits, and expenses in exchange for being granted 100% of the shares of Oilseeds International, Ltd. With the acceptance of the offer, we were free to operate Oilseeds on our own. Operations had been very slow back in 1981 when we left Agricom. John Gyulai’s attempt to operate our Sun Pro brokerage subsidiary was not initially successful, because trading volume in sunflower seed for export was declining rapidly. With the addition of Leif Anderson and his activities with palm olein and stearin, palm oil and coconut brokerage on a profit-sharing basis, we were able to generate profits that sub-sequently led to his friendly departure to join Wardcom in 1985. Easler was soon able to generate a number of freighting deals, many of them involving nonoilseed cargoes, but all profitable. Thompson and I tried to generate new business in malting barley to Mexico, as well as all types of sunflower activity. Kopas had found business initially in trading corn germ to Korea, then in toll refining for my friend, Al Smith at Procter & Gamble. Kopas really was brought back to life when Allied Vegetable Oils, the Australians that I had visited at the suggestion of

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Morse Cavender, let us know in April, 1982, that they wanted to find a way to expand their business into the much larger U.S. market. At that moment, Allied was the dominant player in the Australian margarine, shortening, and salad oil market and could not afford to grow larger without creating adverse government reactions, but the U.S. market offered a much wider place to grow—or to stumble. We were employed to help them find the right people to gain information, but more importantly for us, this led to a refining venue to warm the cockles of Kopas’ heart. Kopas had learned that Anderson, Clayton Co. was trying to dispose of their Fresno refinery and packaging plant. Allied had decided to produce a new margarine for the West Coast market. The surplus plant fit their plan logistically, but they did not need a refinery. It was more economical to import large quantities of soybean oil and margarine oil from the large Midwestern plants. We were given a sweetheart lease to the unnecessary refinery in lieu of a finder’s fee, and we only paid rent if we had products to run. The refinery’s capability and storage tanks fit perfectly when we made our agreements to market safflower exclusively for Producers Cotton Oil. In turn, the Producers agreement and our subsequent contract to guide Lubrizol’s entry into the oleic sunflower game provided an everyday income to sustain Oilseeds and allowed it to survive and grow. In July, 1984, Agricom International declared bankruptcy, a sorry end for the employees who had stayed to see their hospitalization terminated and their insurance plans plundered. Mulcahy declared bankruptcy as well. Table 14.2 portrays the safflower acreage and production of Agricom during its 16 tumultuous years. The Berkeley refinery property was operated for a while by Scheffler as a truck-washing facility, but today the property is the site of a business office complex. The Grimes plant continues on today in the hands of Oilseeds, since in 1985 we were able to acquire it in a bankruptcy sale, along with equipment from the Berkeley, refinery (see Chapter 17).

Safflower Production and Market Trends During This Period An illustration of the downward trend in safflower activity during this period can be seen in the actions of the National Safflower Council. In August, 1968, the National Safflower Council began several research projects on the feeding of high-protein safflower meal under the direction of James Wilkerson of Anderson, Clayton Co. In the first study, H.J. Almquist found that metabolizable energy values for decorticated safflower meal was 900–1,000 Kcal/lb, 17–30% higher than the previously accepted figures of 770 Kcal/lb. The other studies continued into 1969 and were financed by a levy on participating crushers and exporters of $0.05/ST of seed handled. The National Institute of Oilseed Products also authorized the Council to begin a campaign to obtain changes in Food and Drug Administration regulations, concerning the advertising or promotion of polyunsaturated products. Stanford Splitter was employed as a consultant in those efforts in 1969. In 1970, a Conference on Food Labeling—Fats and Oils was held under the joint auspices of the Department of Nutritional Sciences of the University of California, the California Heart Association

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TABLE 14.2 Agricom International/Agricom Oilseeds Inc. Safflower Operationsa Crop Year 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983

Acreage purchased Arizona Montana/North Dakota Texas

California 2,500 3,970 5,300 30,400 17,500 39,098 48,000 21,600 34,306 35,000 17,594 15,092 21,300 24,000 7,000

(1,900) (4,500) (8,265) (8,350) (10,150) (1,732) (16,500) (4,700) (8,208) (19,500) (18,243) (15,525) (8,000) (12,000) (2,000)

3,850 23,500 250 50 2,000 2,800

(3,500)

(8,800)

7,600 38,000 (700) (800) 25,000

10,000 28,000

(3,850)

(3,450)

2,300 12,346 (520) (500) 7,500

2,540 8,500

Production (ST) 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983

2,400 4,300 5,775 25,100 14,300 37,448 40,000 21,100 34,800 29,000 15,560 18,909 21,000 5,000 5,000

(2,000) (3,600) (8,390) (7,200) (5,500) (1,742) (12,000) (3,900) (7,750) (14,740) (15,257) (15,690) (8,500) (14,000) (900)

4,000 – 21,150 300 60 2,800 2,830

Seed Processing

Year

Seed Crushedb,c (ST)

Oil Soldb 000 lbs

Meal Sold (ST)

Seed Exportedb (MT)

1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983

2,297 5,000 10,798 12,840 20,100 16,000 25,761 41,832 19,660 36,553 39,050 13,000 17,000 27,670 25,309 7,000

2,880 4,080 14,000 18,240 18,752 18,000 26,000 37,000 26,146 26,830 36,440 NA NA 19,200 19,600

5,500 10,000 10,000 12,000 8,000 20,000 13,000 12,000 19,000 19,000 NA NA NA NA NA

9,000 15,000 12,000 21,300 17,100 25,500 19,000 40,000 – 15,392 27,990 NA NA NA NA

aValues in parentheses are for oleic safflower. bIncludes oleic safflower.

cIncludes toil milling in the United States and Europe. Abbreviation: NA, Not available. Source: Agricom, unpublished data; and All Sun, Inc., unpublished data.

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and the National Safflower Council. After this well-attended conference, the FDA relented and announced that it was considering the adoption of regulations patterned on the recommendations developed at the Conference. In 1970, the FDA did, in fact, announce that new regulations were being considered at the highest levels of the FDA. Curtis of PVO was appointed to chair a committee to recommend a course of action once the regulations were announced. By 1972, the FDA still had taken no action, the Council’s meal studies were completed with no further helpful findings, and Rocca Jr. stepped down as Chairman of the National Safflower Council. I was elected to replace him with the under standing that I would serve only 1 year because of the activity of Agricom’s business at the time. In April, 1972, Roslyn Alfin-Slater was retained as Medical Consultant to the Council after the resignation of Splitter. In early 1973, she prepared a very useful update of the medical literature for the Council. During the same period, the FDA announced regulations on diet and fat labeling that basically ignored the entire chollesterol controversy it had created. The Council also reviewed a problem concerning the fungus, Sclerotinia sclerotorium. Agricom had made two shipments of California safflower seed to Japan via Stockton Elevators, in which sclerotinia were found. In one instance, Agricom was forced to return an entire cargo to California for unloading: in the other instance, we were able to divert the offending cargo to Taiwan, where regulations concerning the fungus were not as severe. As Chairman I was authorized to meet with Japanese plant inspection authorities, and determine appropriate responses. Sclerotinia had never been observed in California before. Upon investigation, we found that Stockton Elevators had imported a small amount of safflower seed from Montana, where scleroinia was prevalent, and it had inadvertently found its way into the California seed. It did not happen again. In 1973, Sam Evans of Producers Cotton Oil Company was elected Chairman and carried the investigation of the sclerotia matter further. Basically, it was found that the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service would inspect and issue phytosanitary certificates to protect against exports containing sclerotia if the exporter requested them. In the ensuing years, the members of the Council felt that there were no further problems to be solved at the time, and the Council was allowed to cease functioning for lack of interest. In a sense, this reflected a maturing of the safflower market for the time being. In a similar way, the West Coast Oilseed Research Development Committee, which had become a Council of NIOP and had sponsored the four Safflower Research Conferences and the First International Safflower Conference in years past, suspended operations for lack of interest toward the end of the 1980s. Production of safflower seed reached its zenith in California in 1966. There were two reasons for this. The first was the increasing success of new, short, Mexican varieties of wheat in California. Table 14.3 shows the acreage yield, production, and value of wheat produced by California farmers. As yield/acre of wheat steadily increased (while safflower yields remained stable), it meant that safflower prices had to increase to compete for a given farmer’s acreage. Inevitably this meant

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TABLE 14.3 Comparison of California Wheat versus Safflower Production Acreage Planted, Yield, Price, and Gross Return

Year 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

Wheat Planted Grower Gross Acres Yield Price Return (000) (ST/A) ($/ST) ($/A) 696 675 703 626 488 439 421 306 397 390 387 376 327 327 345 313 295 399 449 444 670 610 556 627 816 1075 1150 890 715 840 1235 1420 1150 810 870 885 730 620 590 731 680 483

0.630 0.510 0.630 0.570 0.585 0.630 0.639 0.675 0.672 0.747 0.702 0.777 1.053 0.819 0.918 0.798 0.828 1.005 1.005 1.140 1.359 1.407 1.437 1.620 1.500 1.836 1.905 1.935 1.926 2.118 2.229 2.355 2.154 2.055 2.367 2.490 2.289 2.322 2.529 2.337 2.334 2.454

68.00 42.84 74.33 37.91 73.67 46.41 70.67 4.28 67.00 39.19 68.67 43.26 67.00 42.81 70.33 47.48 61.33 41.22 60.00 44.82 61.00 42.82 65.33 50.76 67.33 70.90 63.33 51.87 48.67 44.68 48.67 38.84 50.33 41.68 48.33 48.58 45.33 45.56 48.33 55.10 47.67 64.78 54.33 76.45 60.00 86.22 104.00 168.48 125.67 188.50 111.33 204.41 117.67 224.16 90.67 175.44 107.00 206.08 134.33 284.52 142.33 317.26 141.67 333.63 125.33 269.97 134.67 276.74 123.67 292.72 114.33 284.69 97.33 222.80 96.67 224.46 127.33 322.03 127.33 297.58 110.33 257.52 108.33 2.65.85

Planted Acres (000) 23 17 42 46 32 54 86 76 87 148 176 211 274 314 264 288 352 311 170 228 214 248 241 151 160 147 55 135 180 150 106 75 105 75 111 91 130 107 119 147 187a 90

Safflower Grower Gross Yield Price Return (ST/A) ($/A) ($/A) 0.70 0.50 0.58 0.58 0.58 0.68 0.85 0.77 0.70 0.88 0.81 0.72 1.06 1.01 1.04 1.06 1.00 0.93 1.09 1.00 0.94 0.98 0.86 0.85 0.98 1.11 1.07 1.07 0.76 0.83 1.20 1.22 1.12 0.77 1.03 1.07 0.96 1.15 1.18 1.08 1.22 1.03

69 97 93 77 74 74 76 76 76 76 81 91 90 80 79 87 98 87 82 85 95 104 113 166 354 243 243 246 230 255 280 360 298 252 264 251 219 221 250 312 275 250

48.30 48.50 53.47 44.66 42.92 42.92 64.22 58.52 53.20 66.50 65.64 65.07 94.95 80.40 81.77 91.79 98.00 80.48 88.97 85.00 88.83 101.87 96.61 140.85 345.15 269.61 260.98 262.97 175.84 211.01 336.00 439.92 334.51 193.54 271.79 267.69 210.35 254.17 295.00 236.96 335.50 257.50

aIncludes 74,000 acres planted but not harvested under a fracudulent insurance scheme; those acres were not used in the yield calculation.

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that prices for safflower seed (and hence safflower oil) were forced higher. No longer would safflower oil be able to be sold at prices competitive with soybean oil delivered to the West Coast. This not only made it harder to sell safflower oil as an industrial oil, it also removed the opportunity for buyers and sellers to hedge safflower oil by using the Chicago Board of Trade soybean option and made the business riskier. The second cause for the decline of safflower production was the development of Perodovick and Stnetna varieties of sunflower seed in the U.S.S.R. The introduction of these varieties produced a revolution in sunflower production and the desire of the U.S.S.R. to generate foreign exchange initially by selling sunflower seed and, eventually, sunflower oil to the rest of the world. This created a new competitor for all vegetable oils. Safflower oil use in Japan and Europe was primarily as an edible oil; the sudden introduction of another edible oil that was quite highly polyunsaturated and much cheaper put intense and direct pressure on safflower. Sunflower production became even more competitive during the 1970s, when U.S. and French breeders released high-yielding, disease resistant hybrid planting seeds. Hybrids soon captured most of the markets from Russian and Rumanian inbreeds and were the driving force in the huge increase in sunflower production and consumption that took place in the United States and other parts of the world during this period. As mentioned previously, safflower oil’s decline as an industrial oil had alrealdy begun—all vegetable oils faced the common problem of meeting competition from cheaply produced, easier to use water-based paints. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s development of safflower 44-0, a formulation that married safflower oil and water-based technology could not stem this tide. With the price of safflower forced to compete with increasing wheat values, safflower oil was unable to compete any longer with soybean or linseed oils for a place in the paint market, and only applications that could afford the premium price remained. By 1980, safflower oil had completely reversed the ratio of edible to industrial oil applications that we found in the 1950s. In the latter period, < 5% of safflower oil reached edible applications. By 1980, < 5% was employed in the coatings market. Now safflower oil’s niche in the edible field was being forced to change, too. Here too, cost was driving force. By the beginning of the 1980s, a consumer of safflower oil purchased the product because of safflower’s unique physical or chemical characteristics; high prices had eliminated buyers that just needed an oily liquid. The market for safflower oil during this period is well characterized by a memo that PVO’s Frans Letschert wrote to his boss, Karson (PVO memorandum on Safflower Marketing Strategy, Letschert to Karson, March 25, 1975): “Once more we have a new year with a new challenge in marketing safflower oil, Our competition, Agricom, now have their own plant in Grimes, Liberty Vegetable oil has a (new) deodorizer and CPC’s deodorizer in Santa Fe (Springs, California) seems to have excess time. The trend, as seen presently, is downward in consumption due to the high prices and in the industrial areas we may have lost out to synthetics and water-based paints. Kelly-Moore, for example uses 80% water-based paints and only 20% oil-based paints. In the edible field, the consumption is downward also, as has been seen. So out predictions have become factual.”

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

The Rise and Fall of PVO: Part II

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In the United States, the food-processing conglomerates that had rushed into the market with safflower-based products during the polyunsaturated boom of the 1960s, had all withdrawn their safflower products from the market. Lever Brothers’ “Promise” had become a sunflower margarine, General Mills had stopped marketing “Betty Crocker Safflower Salad Oil,” and Anderson, Clayton Co.’s “Chiffon Margarine” had become a soy-based product. In the strangest case of all, Kraft Foods decided to suspend marketing of its “Kraft 100% Safflower Margarine” and “Kraft safflower Salad Oil,” although the products were generating profits, because carrying them was causing overcrowding in its computer printouts. Kraft did not try to sell its market share to another refiner, but simply announced to its distribution system that the products would no longer be available after a certain date. Hain Pure Foods dispatched salespeople to all of the affected distributors around the country and said that they would be happy to keep safflower products on the shelf. Almost overnight they were able to double their safflower volume to levels exceeding 30,000,000 lbs of oil annually. Most buyers of oil meal were determining their rations by computer-driven programs: safflower meal had come to be looked at mainly as a filler competing with whichever food product was the cheapest. High energy costs had stopped the production of safflower hulls and 42% protein meal. Plentiful supplies of oil meal produced domestically or cheap oil meal from China had ended Japanese imports of safflower meal and hulls from the United States or Mexico. Safflower oil’s popularity with Japanese consumers is difficult to understand. Consumption of safflower oil in paints or automotive finishes had ended in Japan as well, but distribution of safflower oil in that country’s gift-pack market was continuing to grow. By 1980, consolidations in the Japanese oil milling industry left only two mills (Rinoru and Summitt) extracting safflower oil. But many Japanese refiners found safflower oil increasing in popularity as a gift item compared to corn, cotion seed, or sunflower oils. Safflower was an ancient crop in Japan, so the symbol of the flower is well known, although few Japanese have ever seen the plant. Safflower has been very heavily advertised in Japan since it first became available in quantity, and for whatever reason it continued to gain in popularity as a health oil. By 1980, U.S. consumption of linoleic safflower oil would hover around 60,000,000 lbs annually with Hain Pure Foods and PVO’s Saffola being the dominant factor in the market. In Europe, the market for a health-promoting oil began to grow, as an oil marketed through health food channels and later as a grocery store product, particularly in Germany. All consumers using safflower oil were able to absorb relatively large fluctuations in price for a year or so without losing market share, but the only areas where overall consumption was growing were in Japan and, to a lesser extent, in Europe. Therefore, a sudden increase in supply would either need to be carried over for a year or be dumped at prices amounting to one-half of cost of production. This was not a situation that would attract many new producers in the United States. As we shall see in Chapter 17, once other countries began to produce surpluses of safflower oil, trying to forecast a safe course in the safflower market became more difficult in the next decade.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

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The next two chapters will cover the parallel development of oleic safflower (see Chapter 15) that had begun in the period just covered, and then a review of safflower’s development in other countries producing quantities of safflower (see Chapter 16) and how they are becoming more important to safflower’s fate in the United States. Chapter 17 discusses the final 2 years of Agricom’s life, and then returns to our central narrative to bring us up to the present-day situation. References 1. “Agricom Chief”, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, p. 58, May 23, 1968. 2. “Smith of PVO in New Export Firm,” Arizona Farmer-Ranchman. Phoenix, Arizona, p. 17, July 6, 1968. 3. “Former PVO Aides Establish New Vegetable Oil Firm,” Daily Commercial News, San Francisco, California, p. 3, May 23, 1968. 4. “Bulk Parcel Service to Orient,” Pacific Shipper, San Francisco, California, p. 17, May 27, 1968. 5. “Los Altos Man to Head Agricom,” Palo Alto Times, Palo Alto, California, p. 7, May 28, 1968. 6. “Easler Joins Agricom as Vice President”, Amer. Paint J. 29 (1968). 7. “Easler Joins Agricom Intl.,” Trade News Service, p. 1, June 12, 1968. 8. PVO Annual Report, p. 4, September, 1970. 9. News release, Slick Corporation, Nov. 13, 1970 10. PVO Annual Report, p. 3, October 1972. 11. PVO Annual Report, p. 5, October 1972. 12. “Offer to Purchase for Cash Any and All Shares of Capital Stock and Any and All Convertible Subordinated 7 1/2% Debentures Due 1989 of PVO International Inc.,” Wall Street Journal, pp. 32–33, Oct. 22, 1979. 13. Ginsberg, S., Forbes, p. 94, March 30, 1981.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Chapter 15

Oleic Safflower Early Research with Oleic Safflower The discovery and domestication of oleic safflower was told in a romantic chapter of a book by G.S. Wells (1). Oleic seeds are indistinguishable from normal safflower seeds, mandating very careful handling (see Chapter 7). Although the two oils are very different, the by-product meal from either type of seed is identical. In early September 1957, Joe Ruckman, a chemist at the University of California at Davis, was busily analyzing safflower seed samples for Paul Knowles. Knowles was increasing seeds that he had introduced from all over the world. Knowles had Ruckman measure the oil and protein contents, iodine value, and other chemical components of interest, for each sample and had him doing this for years. Ruckman came to Knowles at one point and reported that the analysis of four introductions from India seemed strange. Knowles looked at the results, agreed, and asked Ruckman to run them again. Ruckman got the same results again—the samples all had iodine values well below 100. Knowles decided to check the values on a gas chromatograph and was shocked at the result. The oleic fatty acid distribution was the opposite of that displayed by normal safflower oil. Instead of the usual 75–80% linoleic and 12–17% oleic fatty acid ratio in the oil, the seeds contained 77–81% oleic and 10–15% linoleic fatty acids. Shortly there-after, Knowles found reports in the literature that the Australian scientists, Horowitz and Winter, had also observed this phenomenon (2). Later he was to find another paper from Pakistan with reports of similar seed being produced by local farmers (3). Up to this time, safflower oil’s main markets had been in alkyd resin production and in the newly increasing edible market as an anticholesterol agent. Knowles called John Kneeland, Research Director of PVO, and asked him what he thought of this discovery. Kneeland believed that another edible oil was not needed. Others gave similar answers, and the project might have been squelched. Sometime later, I was attending an oil seminar at UC Davis in which various researchers in the Agronomy Department would review their projects for the State’s Extension Farm Advisors, and some invited guests from industry. When I heard Knowles mention this finding, I encouraged him to try to develop a variety. To me, its resemblance to olive oil in chemical structure sounded like something that might find a new market niche. Subsequently, Brooks Pierce of J.G. Boswell expressed a similar opinion to Knowles. Knowles encouraged his graduate students, Ahmed Mutwakil and Barney Hill, to look further into the background of this strange mutant. Mutwakil found that a single

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gene was responsible for this phenomenon. Hill charted the timing of the formation of oleic fatty acids. Knowles embarked on his first overseas collection trip in March of 1958 and upon his return in October began to follow up on the earlier efforts. By back-crossing the oleic mutants with N-10, a standard variety at that time, he was able to come up with a reasonably stable line, UC-1. Knowles and his associates published reports on their joint efforts (4–8). UC-1 was released to breeders in 1965 and as a certified variety in 1966 (9,10). Knowles sent 2 tons of UC-1 to the USDA Utilization Laboratory at Albany, California, for extraction and experimentation. The stability of the new oil excited Fuller, Kohler, and Applewhite of the Albany facility, and they published various reports praising the new mutant (11–13). They compared the oxidative stability of oleic safflower oil against commercial grades of safflower, soybean, and cottonseed oils and a commercial hydrogenated frying oil by measuring viscosity and polymerization (185°C air bubbled at 200 mL/min for 18 hours). They found oleic safflower polymerized less than all other test products, showed no significant increase in viscosity, and remained lightest in color after the test. In a second test, in which olive and oleic safflower oils were epoxidized (13), oleic safflower oil demonstrated better yields and lower colored epoxides (see Table 15.1). The participants speculated that epoxidized oleic safflower oil could find markets as plasticizers and stabilizers. In another study, very satisfactory plasticizers for homoand co-polymers of vinyl chloride were produced by Magne, Mod, and Sumrell from oleic safflower oil (14). Dimethyl amides (N,N-dimethyl and N,N-dibutylamides) of oleic esters performed well when compared to commercially available amide plasticizers; the dibutyl form showed better temperature and volatility characteristics. Once UC-1 was released, Kneeland became very enthusiastic about oleic safflower, and the Research Laboratory got very busy exploring applications for oleic safflower. Dick Purdy and Barbara Campbell of PVO’s laboratory published a paper in 1967 outlining work performed the previous year that clearly showed oleic TABLE 15.1 Epoxidation of Olive Oil and High Oleic Safflower Oil Starting Material

Hydrogen pero- Catalystb xide conc.a(%) (%)

Olive oil Olive oil High oleic safflower oil High oleic safflower oil High oleic safflower oil High oleic safflower oil High oleic safflower oil

Time (hr)

Gardner Color

30 50

2 2

7 7

77 76

76 79

4.6 2.4

3 1

30

20

2.5

100

45

36.6

3

30

20

6

67

54

30.3

2

30

2

7

79

87

2.9

0

30

20

7

82

81

1.6

2

50

2

7

77

81

0.4

0

aMolar ratio of peroxide; double bonds = 1.7. bIn all cases the catalyst was Dowex-50 ion exchange resin. cPercentage of original double bonds converted to epoxide. Source: Fuller et al. (13).

Temp. Conversion (°C) to (%) I.V.

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TABLE 15.2 Characteristics of Frying Oils Characteristicsa

Safflower

High Oleic

Corn

HVO

0.5 10 144 – 0

0.5 35 91 – 13

3 19 125 – 3

2 40 82 92 –

Color, Lovibond red AOM stability, hr Iodine value, Wijs Wiley melting point, °F Flow point, °F

aOfficial Method of the American Oil Chemists’ Society. Abbreviation: HVO, hydrogenated vegetable oil. Source: Fuller et al. (15).

safflower oil’s fine properties as a medium for commercial frying (15). Based on its composition, they reasoned that it would show much greater stability against oxidative deterioration than other seed oils, and products fried in oleic safflower oil should have increased resistance to rancidity during storage. They demonstrated this in the laboratory by measuring crusting (varnishing) of the oil during frying compared to normal safflower oil, corn oil, and a commercial hydrogenated frying oil (based on cottonseed oil) and comparing relative stability of potato chips fried in the different oils in a Schaal oven procedure. As we can see in Tables 15.2 and 15.3, oleic safflower showed an Active Oxygen Method (AOM) stability 3 1/2 times that of safflower oil. It had a higher flow point than safflower or corn oils, but the flow point was similar to cottonseed or soybean oils. While safflower oil produced heavy crusting in a laboratory test of 8 hours, oleic safflower oil showed less varnishing and double the stability of corn oil. Oleic safflower produced chips that were comparable in stability to those fried in a hydrogenated product. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation soon began to market its oleic safflower oils under brand names, choosing to call the oleic oil that it marketed to the food trade PVO 181 Oil (a food-grade glycerol trioleate) and Oleinate 288 to the cosmetic field, pointing out in the latter case that Oleinate 288 had a “GRAS” status with the FDA. A PVO 191 Oil was added to the line in the early 1970s, that incorporated methyl silicone for TABLE 15.3 Relative Stability of Frying Oil and Potato Chips under Standard Laboratory Conditions Test

Safflower

High Oleic

Corn

HVO

4 6 10

1 2 3

0 1 4

0 1 2

5 4

36 34

20 19

25 34

Oil, varnish, gradea 3 hr frying 5 hr frying 8 hr frying Chips, Schaal ovenb 3 hr frying 8 hr frying

aScored on a scale of 0–10, grade 10 represents crusting. bDays to incipient rancidity at 60°C. Abbreviation: HVO = hydrogenated vegetable oil. Source: Fuller et al. (15).

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antifoaming purposes, and tertiary butyl hydroxyquinone (TBHQ) as an antioxidant. Data from PVO and Oilseeds International, Ltd., bulletins on general composition and characteristics of commercial oleic safflower oil are shown in Table 15.4. At a later date, USDA scientists Fuller, Guadagni, et al. (16) carried Purdy and Campbell’s work further, showing that chips fried in oleic safflower oil and exposed to accelerated storage conditions under fluorescent light were more stable than chips fried in cottonseed oil and equal to those fried in a commercial hydrogenated frying oil. To measure rancidity, Fuller’s group used a trained panel to compare odors of chips fried in different oils under differing conditions. They found that odor comparison was TABLE 15.4

Characteristics of Oleic Safflower Oil Typical

Color Crude 8–9 Gardner Once-refined Edible (5 1/4” Tintometer) 10y/1.0 r Iodine value, Wijs 92 Refractive index, 25°C 1,4683 Free fatty acid, % oleic Crude 0.15–0.6 Once-refined Edible 0.03 AOM stability, hr 40 Peroxide value, edible 0.1 Flavor and odor Saponification value 191 Density, 25°C 0.91 Cold test O°C, hr Refined unlimited Cloud point, °F ASTM 4 Pour point, °F ASTM -10 Viscosity C.P., 25°C 70 Unsaponifiables, % 0.5 Insoluble impurities, % Crude 0.1 Moisture and volatiles Crude nil Moisture and impurities, % Refined nil Smoke point, edible, °F 470 Principal fatty acids, % of total fatty acids Palmitic 4.5 Stearic 1.5 Oleic 75–80 Linoleic 16–20 Linolenic nil

Minimum

Maximum

25 y/2.5 r

85 1,467

95 1,469

0.1 0.05

188 0.89 24 0 -5 65

0.5 Bland 194 0.93

8 -15 75 0.7 0.3 0.8 0.1

450

75

Sources: Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporatioin, unpublished data; Oilseeds International, Ltd., unpublished data; NIOP Rule 6.12.

Oleic Safflower

TABLE 15.5

361

Odor Comparison of Chips Fried in Different Oils Total rank sumsa Light intensity = 13

Light intensity = 100

13 days

12 days

HVO (dark, N2) Oleic safflower HVO Cottonseed Commercial chips

25b 49 47 80b 99b

24b 49 49 82b 96b

HVO (dark, N2 Oleic safflower Oleic safflower w/antioxidant HVO w/antioxidant Cottonseed w/antioxidant

22b 62

23b 62

62 60 96b

53 63 99b

21 days 22b 80b 69 77b

21 days 24b 78b 55 85b

51

63

Oil

HVO (dark N2) HVO HVO w/antioxidant Oleic safflower Oleic safflower w/antioxidant aLower numbers represent fresher odor. bSignificant at P < 0.01.

Abbreviation: HVO, hydrogenated vegetable oil. Source: Fuller et al. (16).

a much more sensitive evaluation method than trying to measure pentane or hexanol headspace gases by GLC (17–19). Antioxidants added to some of the tests produced negligible differences (Table 15.5). Earlier, Bratcher, Kemmerer, and Rubis studied why oleic safflower was so stable. They concluded that the high oleic to linoleic ratio was more probably the reason for the high stability of the oil than the tocopherol level of the oil (20).

Various Uses for Oleic Safflower The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation did extensive work trying to promote the idea of oleic safflower oil to various buyers, but initially we could not find too much interest. A breakthrough occurred in September, 1967, during a visit from Bunzo Watanabe, executive vice president of Ajinomoto. He became quite excited about oleic safflower and took a trip with me to the countryside to see exactly what the oleic crop looked like. Upon his return to Japan, he put his researchers to work and soon we began to get orders from Ajinomoto for drum samples of the oil and to begin planning on exporting oleic safflower seed to Japan for crushing in Ajinomoto’s oil mill. Ajinomoto was beginning to look into marketing a mayonnaise to compete with

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Japan’s leading mayonnaise manufacturer, Q.P. Corporation. I also visited Q.P. several times in 1967 and 1968. Q.P’s Research Director, Kazuo Oshida, was very interested in oleic safflower oil, although he felt that its flavor might be too bland for Japanese taste, and his management did not like the cost. They were in the process of converting their traditional formula from cottonseed oil to soybean and rapeseed oils, which were beginning to show improved taste characteristics at that time. Several other interests began to surface. J.G. Boswell found that Frito Lay was extremely interested, and within a short time all of Frito Lay’s western chip-making plants had converted to using oleic safflower oil in place of peanut oil. Procter & Gamble began a project that involved considering oleic safflower oil for some special product (never revealed) that had the promise of consuming tens of thousands of tons of oil. It never happened, but each year Procter & Gamble surveyed oleic production potential with U.S. suppliers. Roy Kelly, a marketing consultant (later to become a PVO sales executive), introduced PVO to potential consumers interested in incorporating oleic safflower oil into infant formula. Eventually, Agricom was able to capture the business with Wyeth Pharmaceutical’s needs for infant formula when PVO faltered about increasing oleic safflower production when Wyeth wished to jump ahead. The UC-1 Variety was lower in oil content and lower in yield than available normal types. Because the UC-1 variety was new and yielded poorly in tests, PVO and others were forced to pay a premium over regular types of safflower to induce farmers to grow oleic safflower. The higher seed cost combined with lower oil yields forced millers to offer oleic safflower oil at a premium over normal safflower oil. Pacific Oilseeds worked hard to produce a better type and were able to release one in 1969 (Saffola 304). UC Davis released UC-84 in 1970 (21). Subsequently, Lee Urie was able to release a better public variety—Oleic Leed (22). In 1978, Saffola 317 began to be used in commercial quantities and replaced the earlier UC-1, S-301, and S-304 types. Since that time, S-317 (succeeded by S-517 and S-518) has been a hard variety to supplant because of its good yielding characteristics over a wide range of environments. In many cases it betters linoleic types in yield. Perhaps the most important results of Knowles’ early work with the oleic safflower mutant is the inspiration provided for future important discoveries. He was driven to search for these and other sources of germ plasm on extensive plant collection explorations throughout the world. Second, and even more importantly, it inspired him, and eventually others, to look into the entire spectrum of fat modification through plant breeding. It is probable that Downey’s amazing work on producing canola from rapeseed was influenced by Knowles’ publications on modification. While all of these events were promising, the basic cost of contracting all safflower seeds (including oleic types) with farmers was escalating. This soon raised the cost of oleic safflower oil to the point where Frito Lay could no longer employ it as a competitive frying medium and by the mid-1970s, Japanese buyers were forced to drop it as well. Buyers for oleic safflower oil began to appear in Europe, both for imports from the United States and also encouraging production of seed and oil within Spain. Soon it became obvious that their shipments were ending up with olive oil producers that apparently were blending it into some of their end-products. Over the next

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15 years, the volume of this strange business fluctuated as the Spanish and Italian governments engaged in a technological battle aimed at controlling the blending by olive dealers. Oleic safflower oil and its use in olive oil blending was the product that indirectly led the French Le Club group to almost purchase PVO, and later attempt to purchase Agricom International. Until 1969, “the mixture of any edible oil with olive oil to resemble olive oil” was specifically prohibited in the California Health and Safety Code (23). On August 6, 1969, an amendment introduced by Assemblyman Knox (24) from PVO’s home district was passed “to allow blending of olive oil with other edible oils ... if such blend is not labeled as olive oil or imitation olive oil, is clearly labeled as a blended vegetable oil, and if the contents and preparations of such blend are prominently displayed on the label.” Prior to that time, it had been impossible for olive oil producers in California to allow even samples of other vegetable oils on their premises. Olive oil blends had been successfully marketed on the U.S. East Coast for some time, and in early 1970, Purdy began to investigate the feasibility of blending normal or oleic safflower oils with olive oil. In fact, PVO trademarked the name Saffoliva, in the event that such a development should take place. Purdy reported the following results: Domestic Blend Brand Name

Composition

Flavor

Performance

Casanova

95% CSO, peanut Olive odor and flavor No olive odor on heatindg; 5% olive not apparent or imparted to cooked food Pope 90% soy, peanut, Very slight olive No olive odor on heating; and CSO 10% olive flavor, mostly peanut slight flavor imparted to food Caruso 88% soy and peanut, Very slight olive flavor, No olive odor on heating; none 12% olive mostly peanut imparted to cooked food Gem 90% CSO, corn, and Good strong olive Strong olive odor when heated; soy; 10% olive odor and flavor imparts definite olive flavor to food Comparisons with safflower and oleic: Blends of “green” olive oil (Consolidated Olive Growers) and deodorized safflower oil or oleic oils were compared with the competitive blends described above and the following brands of pure olive oil: Villa d’Oro (blend of refined and virgin green domestic oils), Pompeiian, Star, Bertolli, and Delicious. 1.Minimum levels for oleic and safflower oils were set at 10% and 7%, respectively. 2.Performance at these levels was equal to or better than the Eastern blends and equal to the Villa d’Oro and Bertolli brands. 3.At the 10% level of green oil, the safflower blend was equal to most of the pure brands, Gem, and superior to all other brands. 4.Although oleic required greater quantities of the green oil to equal the flavor and odor qualities of the safflower blends, a closer approximation of the physical characteristics of pure olive oil was achieved. Source: PVO memorandum, R. H. Purdy to Roy Kelly, October 20, 1971.

He recommended further study, since flavor and intensity of olive oils vary greatly from year to year and between sources, plus evaluation of blends with “black” (late winter) oils as well. No further action resulted. Oleic safflower oil has been sold to blenders in both California and the East Coast from 1970–93, but no attempt at a national market has ever materialized.

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The market for oleic safflower oil has advanced and retreated numerous times in the 30 years since UC-1 was released. Products and markets that seemed sure to expand have instead withered away, only to be replaced by new directions. U.S. production has risen and fallen corresponding to the many changes in consumption as can be seen in Table A.12. Now oleic production is again increasing; the primary reason for the latest gain in volume is based on the pioneering work of Mattson and Grundy in 1985 (25). They showed that patients on a liquid diet that contained either palm oil, linoleic safflower, or oleic safflower oil benefited most from oleic safflower. The high-oleic diet seemed to lower low-density lipoproteins much the same as the other oils. Apparently, high-density lipoproteins were affected less by oleic safflower than by the other constituents. Grundy has since written additional papers that reinforce this view (26,27). This book is not intended to reference all of the research, but more evidence seems to be accumulating that monounsaturated oils, such as oleic safflower oil, have a valid place in a diet aimed at reducing arteriosclerosis. To date monounsaturation has not become quite the household word that polyunsaturation had become in the 1960s. Marketing oleic safflower oil as a stand-alone bottled oil has been the dream of several manufacturers, particularly since Grundy’s work was published. Producers Cotton Oil Company toyed with the idea in the 1980s, and produced a label for oil samples that it sent to its shareholders (Figure 15.1) but negotiations to work with an experienced marketing group failed, and this project never proceeded. Bottled oleic safflower oil has been marketed in the U.S. health-food trade, but the most extensive distribution to date has been by Saffola Quality Foods in the marketing of their “Grown Without Pesticides” Saffola salad oil. Saffola bottles normally contain linoleic safflower oil, but for this project Saffola chose to use oleic safflower oil without making an issue of it. They reasoned that a monounsaturated oil may well replace polyunsaturated types in the minds of future consumers. However, at the time their product was introduced in 1990, they believed that explaining why a monounsaturated oil was good would only cause confusion. The oil for this project had been processed in the Oilseeds International, Ltd. mill at Grimes, California, and refined at Liberty Vegetable Oil near Los Angeles. Saffola has established its own protocol for defining what “Grown Without Pesticides” means, choosing not to adopt the “organic” labeling. Organic labeling laws are defined by governments and have been subject to change. Saffola wanted to have a definition that would be adhered to without modification. Farmers growing seed for this product are required to sign statements that they have not used pesticides on the crop, and that no chemicals were applied since a previous crop was harvested. In addition, Saffola auditors test each field at or prior to planting time to determine that there are no unsafe levels of chemicals in the soil. Farmers are allowed to use normal fertilizers, since Saffola reasons that nitrogen and phosphorus are natural products. Treatment of planting seeds is not allowed. Audits are also made of all pesticide applications in surrounding fields, and a paper trail of good practices is established from the time of planting until final delivery of the harvested seed into approved storage. To date, the “Grown Without Pesticide” oil has been marketed in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington with heavy introductory advertising. The product has

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Figure 15.1. Sample label for oil samples that PCO sent to its shareholders. obtained an increased market share, and Saffola has received compliments from customers on the quality of the oil. Therefore, it appears that oleic safflower oil is well accepted by users, even if they are unaware of the product differences. A much more extensive campaign to use oleic safflower oil in consumer packages is underway in Japan. Ajinomoto introduced safflower oil as a gift-pack item in 1990 and has achieved an increased market share with both an elaborate gift-pack bottle featuring a blend of normal and oleic safflower oils labeled as “New Safflower Oil”, plus a similar product offered in a simpler package in supermarkets for everyday use. Ajinomoto’s competitors have been trying different strategies. Nisshin Oil Mills, Ltd., is making bottles or tins of pure oleic safflower oil packaged with other types of salad oil in its gift packs, while Rinoru Oil Mills Co., Ltd., is marketing their oleic branch through a subsidiary company under a different brand name, perhaps reasoning that they do not want to risk damaging the image of their very successful Rinoru Safflower Salad Oil. Consumption of oleic oil via these products has been escalating in Japan. The upsurge occurring at the present time in Japan is leading to one-half of California’s production of safflower types being planted with oleic varieties. It may be too early to say what will be the final result of these new gambits. Japan has been a leader in the use of oleic safflower oil. Prior to the use of gift packs, in the late 1970s a new use appeared in Japan, and C. Itoh became a buyer for

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increasing amounts of oleic safflower oil. For several years C. Itoh was not allowed by its consumer to reveal the identity of the buyer, or how oleic safflower oil was being used. Finally, in December of 1980, Etusuya Shinohara of C. Itoh and his customer, Iwao Sunagawa, told us that their customer was Fuji Oil Co., Ltd. Later we learned that the product was a cocoa butter equivalent (CBE) used in producing artificial chocolate. We had begun supplying this use while we were at Agricom, and introduced Boswell to C. Itoh as a new supplier when we left Agricom. We then recaptured some of this business when we began to represent Producers Cotton Oil Company in 1982. Fuji’s use of oleic safflower oil in producing CBE continued to increase during the early 1980s, as Fuji’s sales of the end-product continued to grow. Oilseeds International introduced Fuji to oleic sunflower oil in the mid-1980s, and Fuji apparently found that the 80% plus oleic levels increased yields of CBE. In a relatively short time, oleic sunflower replaced oleic safflower oil in this market. Similar forecasts were made about oleic sunflower oil being able to replace oleic safflower oil in the production of infant formulas. In these markets, longterm testing of this product with oleic sunflower oil replacing oleic safflower oil was obviously required to ensure that no adverse reactions were experienced in feeding babies. In addition, the higher oleic fatty acid levels in oleic sunflower offered no advantage in these applications. Replacement finally began to occur during the 1990s after testing was completed and the price of oleic sunflower oil began to be much lower than that of oleic safflower oil. In addition to their work on the positive aspects of oleic safflower oil in frying. Diamond and Fuller of the USDA also examined the production of high-purity oleic acid by urea fractionation. This production method had produced a better than 70% yield of oleic acid having a purity in excess of 93%. They also produced very light-colored aldehyde oils under ozonolysis that had higher carbonyl levels when compared to soy, cottonseed, and olive oils, as well as excellent yields of azelaic-pelargonic esters that could be generated directly from the ozonolysis reaction without prior fractionation and with less foaming. They reasoned that these could be used as excellent plasticizers and lubricants (28). Some other possible uses of oleic safflower oil have appeared in the literature. In 1974, Petrucci, Canata, et al. published two interesting studies on the use of methyl oleate to spray Thompson seedless grapes on the vine to accelerate drying for the production of raisins. They found that dried-on-the-vine raisins could cost $25–35 less/acre than the cost of making natural sun-dried raisins. This also decreased the risk of rain damage because the total drying time was reduced. Finally, the raisins produced were of an acceptable and pleasing lighter color (29,30). Unfortunately this market has not grown. Because of its relative cost, an unlikely market for oleic safflower oil is as a replacement for diesel fuel. During the Carter Administration, some of the search for alternative sources of fuel concentrated on various vegetable oils, including oleic safflower oil. The papers by University of Idaho staff summarize the findings of a number of symposia and meetings held during the period (31–33). They found that vegetable oils produced thermal efficiencies 1.8–2.8% higher than diesel fuel with an equivalent power output. The major problems were higher viscosities and a ten-

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dency to polymerize within the cylinders. Oleic safflower produced slightly fewer deposits than the more highly unsaturated oils, but still more than diesel fuel. Some other verbal reports have indicated that high oleic oils demonstrate slightly better flame characteristics upon ignition, both in the oil and ester forms. But no one recommended serious use of oleic safflower oil in this application, since soybean or canola oil were much cheaper and more readily available. Table 15.6 lists prices for oleic safflower since 1968. The greatest beneficiary of these endeavors has been Jerald Bergman at Montana State University Sidney Research Station. The State of Montana Department of Resources and Conservation has awarded substantial grants during the past decade to the Sidney Station to fund Bergman’s work on oleic safflower for fuel. Additional grants from the Agricultural Research Service have added to this work. Bergman’s work has involved extensive screening of Knowles’ collection and other sources of safflower germ plasm looking for improvements in fatty acid structure, better color characteristics, improved amino acid and oil contents, among other useful traits. Little is known of the recent results of this work, except for the release of two oleic varieties and two regular safflower varieties, because an additional grantor was given first access and control over publication of any of this publicly funded data. The world-renowned biochemist P.K. Stumpf was a friend and fellow faculty member at U.C. Davis with Knowles. Stumpf has written on the properties and activities of fatty acid synthetase enzymes that are part of the key to Knowles’ modifications (34). He has also written on how palmitic and oleic acids are formed in oleic safflower by the fatty acid synthetase enzymes (35). The Italians, Conte, Zullo, and Capilla did basic work to determine if the composition of oleic safflower was affected by sowing date. It was not, but it was affected by cultivar and locality. In the sterols of oleic safflower oil, only D-stigmasterol showed wide variation, and it appeared to be negatively correlated with oleic levels (36). Hashimoto and Dayton published a report that could be related to the previously mentioned Fuji market for oleic sunflower (37). In this study, rats were fed oleic safflower or cocoa butter and simulated Acyl-CoA: cholesterolacyl transferase was observed. Finally, it is important to remember that while the same variety of oleic safflower seed varies by only 1–3% in oleic fatty acid when grown in the San Joaquin Valley of California (77–80%) or in Montana (74–77%), the planting seed must be carefully screened each year to ensure that its oleic fatty acid is being maintained. In 1971, PVO began to realize that the fatty acid distribution of its oleic safflower oil had been changing, and for the past several years, the percentage of linoleic fatty acids had been creeping upward. (Agricom International had made similar observations.) Questions were raised as to whether the newer varieties of safflower seed produced by POI had deteriorated from the original UC-1 variety, or if contamination was occurring. There was no question that AOM levels had declined, and problems were occurring in hydrogenated liquid oil products. Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., reacted defensively, initially blaming this on mechanical mixtures by seed-cleaning facilities. As time went on, they agreed that more attention needed to be paid to maintaining line purity and that the foundation seed must be reproduced every 3–4 years to prevent fatty acid drift.

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TABLE 15.6 Prices for Oleic Safflower Oil ¢/lb FOB West Coast Mill/Refinery Crop Year

Crude Oil

Refined Oil

1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

11–12.5 13 15 16 15 21 5.3 40–58 32.5–39 37.5–38.5 40 42 49–51 49 43.5 39–42 42–50 40–43.8 40.8 44 45 48 44 42–47 46–62 41–55 49

60 47–65 39–46 38–46 46 48 55 54 47 47–52 48.5–54 46.5–55 39.5–46 42–55 53–58.75 46–60 47.5–52 48–53 52–69 47–61 55.5–56.5

Source: Unpublished Records of PVO, Agricom Internatioinal, Oilseeds International, Ltd., unpublished data.

References 1. Wells, G.S., A Garden in the West, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1969, pp. 155–171. 2. Horowitz, B., and G. Winter, Nature 179: 582 (1957). 3. Qudrat-I-Kluda, M., H.C. Das, and H.A. Khan, Pakistan, J. Sci. Ind. Res. 2: 241 (1959). 4. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 14: 263 (1960). 5. Knowles, P.F., and A. Mutwakil, Econ. Bot. 17: 139 (1963). 6. Knowles, P.F., and A.B. Hill, Crop Sci. 4: 406 (1964). 7. Knowles, P.F., A.B. Hill, and J.E. Ruckman, Cal. Agr. 19: 15 (1965). 8. Knowles, P.F., Econ. Bot. 19: 53 (1965). 9. Knowles, P.F., Crop Sci. 5: 641 (1968). 10. Knowles, P.F., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 46: 130 (1969). 11. Applewhite, T.H., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 406 (1966). 12. Fuller, G., G. Kohler, and T.H. Applewhite, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 477 (1966). 13. Fuller, G., M.J. Diamond, and T.H. Applewhite, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 44: 264 (1967). 14. Magne, F.C., R.R. Mod, and G. Sumrell, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 48: 387 (1971). 15. Purdy, R.H., and B.J. Campbell, Food Techn. 21: 31A (1967).

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16. Fuller, G., D.G. Guadagni, M.L. Weaver, G. Notter, and R.J. Horvat, J. Food Sci. 36: 43 (1971). 17. Buttery, R.C., C.E. Hendel, and M.M. Boggs, J. Agr. Food Chem. 9: 245 (1961). 18. Scholz, C.D., G.R. List, R.L. Hoffman, and H.A. Moser, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 43: 596 (1966). 19. Evans, C.D., G.R. List, R.L. Hoffman, and H.A. Moser, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 46: 501 (1969). 20. Bratcher, S.S., A.R. Kemmerer, and D.D. Rubis, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 46: 173 (1969). 21. Knowles, P.F., J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 49: 27 (1972). 22. Urie, A.L., Crop Sci. 19: 747 (1979). 23. “Laws Relating to Olive Oil,” California Health and Safety Code, Division 21, Chapter 9, Sections 28475–28488, September 1962. 24. Knox, J., Assembly Bill 2067, California Legislature, April 8, 1969. 25. Mattson, T.H., and S.M. Grundy, J. Lipid Res. 26: 194 (1985). 26. Grundy, S.M., N. Eng. J. Med. 314: 745 (1986). 27. Grundy, S.M., Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 45: 1168 (1987). 28. Diamond, M.J., and G. Fuller, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 47: 362 (1970). 29. Petrucci, V.E., N. Canata, H.R. Bolin, G. Fuller, and A.E. Stafford, J. Am. Oil Chem. Soc. 51: 77 (1974). 30. Petrucci, V.E., N. Canata, H.R. Bolin, G. Fuller, and A.E. Stafford, Proceedings of the Fourth Safflower and Other Oilseeds Research Conference, Fresno, California, February 8, 1974. 31. Bettis, B.L., C.L. Peterson, and D.L. Auld, Abstracts of the American Society of Agronomists, American Society of Agronomy, 1981, p. 130. 32. Peterson, C.L., G.L. Wagner, and D.L. Auld, Trans. ASAE 26: 322 (1983). 33. Peterson, C.L., D.L. Auld, and R.A. Korus, Am. Soc. Agric. Engineers, Bul. 84, 3082, 1984, p. 19. 34. Stumpf, P.K., T. Shimakata, et al., Elsevier Biomedical Press, B.V., 1982, pp. 3–11. 35. Stumpf, P.K., and T. Shimakata, Am. Soc. Plant Physiologists: 1 (1983). 36. Conte, L.S., C. Zullo, and P. Capella, Rivista Italiana delle Sostanze Grasse 62: 609 (1985). 37. Hashimoto, S., and S. Dayton, Artery 4: 224 (1978).

Chapter 16

Safflower Around the World

Argentina History and Production Safflower began to be studied seriously in Argentina in 1961. In 1962, the introduction of the N-6, N-10, Pacific, and Gila varieties by the Director of Industrial Crops of the Argentine Department of Agriculture continued serious consideration of safflower by the government. In 1964, the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) imported 5 tons of Gila and US-10. The seed was sent to the Experiment station at Anguil in the state of La Pampa for testing and to begin a selection program (1). The National Institute of Agricultural Technology continued to examine safflower during the next 25 years, but there was little incentive in Argentina during this period to search for good solutions since governmental policies did not encourage improvement in agricultural production. For many years most farmers felt that any improvement in yield or quality would merely be taxed away in some manner. The Junta de Granos (the Argentine Grain Board) established norms for the commercialization of safflower during this period (Bases Estatutarias de Girasol, Mani Descascardo, Lino y Cartamo—Resolución JNG No. 18.595). In January 1978, when I visited the Experiment Station at Las Breñas in the Chaco, the researcher in charge of safflower investigations had excellent knowledge of good cultural practices for safflower (1), but the INTA varieties then available (INTA1 and INTA2) were little different from N-10, Gila, Leed, and Rio, from which the selections had been bred (August 15, 1976, Work Plan, Amadeo J. Olivera) and displayed oil contents no better than 35% (as-is moisture). In Chaco, planting was recommended for June for harvest in December. Growers were experiencing problems with seed germination. As can be seen in the record of Argentine production in Table A.13, during the 1970s yields experienced in Argentina were similar to the results being experienced in the U.S. Great Plains. During the 1970s, Nidera dominated the trade in Argentine safflower and offered 200–500 MT of safflower oil annually through their Rotterdam office. During this period it appears that some of the safflower seed Argentina produced was simply mixed with the more plentiful sunflower and crushed to produce oil. My 1978 visit served a dual purpose; it combined introducing hybrid sunflower seed into Argentina with ascertaining if Agricom might be able to produce oleic safflower seed in Argentina. The aim of producing oleic safflower there would be to export part of the oil to Europe, with the balance marketed to oliveoil blenders in Argentina or more probably 370

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Brazil. Later in 1978, a test planting of five varieties of safflower in a few acres near Villa Dolores in Central Argentina produced typical Argentine results. Two varieties did not grow, and the three remaining lines were eaten by cows before harvest. They grew vigorously but were also attacked by large unknown varieties of green insects. Covas mentioned that green chinch bugs (Nezara viridula) and “alquiche” (Edessa meditabunda) periodically caused problems for safflower (2), but no problems of commercial consequence have been reported. Agricom concluded that quality control at such a distance would be difficult and decided to abandon the project. In 1985, Argentina began to show more interest in safflower production. One of the first to experiment in a serious way was the ranch Los Tapires (the tapirs), a large establishment owned by German and American interests. They made plantings at various dates and produced seeds that when analyzed had a 26.93% oil content, 0.24% FFA, and 78.26% linoleic fatty acid content (Abed Laboratory Analysis April 10, 1986, for Oilseeds International, Ltd.). Los Tapires obtained newer lines of safflower through Laureano Mones Cazon (who had assisted in our 1978 experiment) and tried them in 1986 with good results. At about the same time, Juan Martin Allende, who had sizable land holdings in Salta and Tucuman and operated a refractory company in Buenos Aires, began experiments with safflower that showed good results. He obtained seed through Cazon but also visited the United States and obtained a concession from SeedTec to become an agent for the introduction and production of some of their modern safflower varieties. In 1987, Saffola-400 and 541 produced 39.76% and 41.54% oil contents (on an as-is moisture basis), respectively, with FFA of 0.2%, and linoleic levels of approximately 76.5%. In 1988, in a wetter year, S-400 yielded 1,100 kg/ha with a 40% oil content, and S-541 yielded 1,400 kg/ha with a 45% oil content (oil contents on a dry basis). Prior to that time, most U.S. safflower seed breeders had refused to sell their varieties to Argentina fearing that the seed would merely be increased in Argentina after an initial sale, with little chance of legal recovery. But when Argentina adopted the standards of the U.S. Plant Variety Act, this attitude changed. Allende cut back some of his operations in the early 1990s and Cazon then began to represent SeedTec directly. The trading company, Andre, imported some varieties from Cal/West, and from Semillas Pacifico of Spain (Cargill), they obtained the variety, Alcaidin. In 1988, others reportedly imported two containers of S-208 planting seed, a SeedTec variety that had been reproduced in Montana without authority, and the seed was replicated in ensuing years. S-208 is very susceptible to alternaria and this was to cause problems in ensuing seasons. During this period, Continental Grain began to offer grower contracts to Los Tapires, Allend, and their neighbors for crushing in its Argentine mill at Rosaria; subsequently Elders and Andre (INDO) began to offer contracts as well. For the productions in the 1980s, safflower was planted in June immediately behind a soybean harvest, and it benefited from residual nitrogen. Harvest would take place in late November or early December, hopefully before the commencement of the rainy period in these far northern states. Safflower was usually purchased at a price relative to the going price for sunflower seed. For example, in 1988 safflower seed purchase contracts paid the farmer an 18%

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premium over the price of sunflower seed. For the 1989 crop, Continental bought safflower seed at a premium of 15% over the going price for sunflower seed on a basis of a 30% oil content which equaled about U.S. $320/MT—a huge profit for the farmer. During 1989, Andre contracted for perhaps 13,000 ha of safflower, Continental followed with 10,000 additional ha, and other smaller mills had 20,000 ha more. Individual farmers added 10,000 ha for a total planting of 53,000 ha, mostly in the far northern states. This resulted in a harvest of approximately 50,000 MT with Andre gaining 25,000, Continental 15,000 and Elders 10,000. Later buying during that season saw safflower prices improve to sunflower price plus 15% in addition to a 2% premium for each 1% that the oil content was over 33%. Elders, in particular, was buoyed by these prospects and began trying to offer safflower of Australian/U.S. Great Plains or Argentine origin at Elders’ option. In 1990, Argentina produced another crop of similar size, and more people became optimistic. For the crop that was to be harvested in December 1990/January 1991, plantings increased to perhaps 100,000 ha and took place in practically every state of the country. But heavy rain just prior to the start of harvest ruined much of the crop through widespread attacks of alternaria. There was a great deal of sprouting and rotting of seed as well. Several dealers had made very heavy sales of oil in anticipation of a huge harvest and many defaults occurred. Overnight, Argentine farmers switched their interest to a new wonder crop (canola) and made plans for 100,000 acres. Safflower acreage plummeted. Safflower oil prices which had been driven to $650/MT ex tank Rotterdam during the past two seasons with the flood of unsold Argentine oil quickly climbed to over $1,000/MT. Safflower Today and in the Future in Argentina Since the 1991–92 disaster, Argentine safflower production has stayed at very modest levels. For 1992, perhaps 6,000 MT of seed were produced. In 1993, plantings were reported as follows: Salta Catamarca Tucuman Santiago del Estero La Pana Total

12,000 ha 4,000 ha 1,300 ha 1,200 ha 600 ha 19,100 ha

Prices quoted were sunflower seed price plus 10%, equivalent to approximately U.S. $290/MT, delivered Buenos Aires. Currently, Argentina has the potential to produce safflower oil at a lower cost than any other country. The safflower scheme is based on huge tractors first clearing forest land, and planting soybeans immediately. The soybean harvest is followed immediately with a low tillage scheme where good safflower planting seed is disced or drilled in without further tillage, and no fertilizer, or herbicides. In fact, no other expense is incurred until harvest. Harvest must occur before the rainy season begins, so the timing of the soybean planting and harvest is critical.

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Argentine farmers and dealers believe that eventually they will be able to capture world markets, once people become satisfied with the quality of their product, because they have the lowest unit cost. However, two factors must also be considered. Argentina has no domestic market interest in safflower; basically, all of it must be exported. This leaves Argentine dealers vulnerable to the ups and downs of markets thousands of miles away. Secondly, for all of this century, Argentina has been viewed by traders as the land of opportunity for many agricultural ventures. In almost every case people’s hopes have been dashed. Argentineans like to say that their own worst enemy is themselves—until Argentina exhibits a period of steady marketing and growth instead of the wild fluctuation we have seen to date, this dream will not be realized.

Australia History Australia began to look seriously at safflower during World War II, when they became concerned about shortages of linseed oil and hoped to find local substitutes. The Waite Agricultural Research Institute of South Australia began by obtaining seeds of a single variety from the United States, subsequently identified in texts as “U.S.A. Strain.” Millington in Western Australia tested another strain, subsequently identified as the “Western Australia Strain,” and reported severe damage from lucerne fleas and red-legged earthmites (3). After testing the U.S.A. Strain for 4 years, Pugsley was able to obtain additional varieties from Canada, India, Western Australia, and the United States (4). He planted them in June 1944 and harvested them in January 1945. These trials were repeated and harvested at various locations during 1945–47. Winters showed safflower oil to be a very acceptable oil for the paint industry as a replacement for linseed oil. The results (Table 16.1) were published in Pugsley and Winters’ Report for the Australian Munitions Supply Laboratories and received worldwide attention (5). Almost all of the varieties employed up to that time in Australia were spineless and consequently of very low oil content. Australian breeders preferred to ignore the spiny types because they felt that they would damage the mouths of sheep that might graze on them. Pugsley and Winters’ work had interested the Australian paint industry, and in 1955 the first commercial production was tried in Queensland when about 100 MT was produced. (Small amounts may have been tried in 1953 and 1954.) In 1956, a price of £50/MT was offered by linseed crushers and 920 acres were planted. Table 16.2 summarizes production in Australia from 1955 to date. The Australian Linseed Crushers Association (LCA) offered the only market for safflower seed until 1961 for their member firms: Meggitt Ltd., Harold Meggitt Ltd., James Barnes & Co. (Pty.) Ltd., and Vegetable Oils (Pty.) Ltd. Prior to 1960, local crushing of safflower supplied < 5% of the total sales of safflower oil in Australia. In 1962, the LCA members were crushing 88% of the local production. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s entry into Australia with its Pacific Safflower Australia Pty., Ltd., subsidiary, accompanied by POI’s subsidiaries, Pacific Safflower

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Safflower

Australia Pty., Ltd., and Pacific Seeds Australia Pty., Ltd., changed all of this. Pacific Seeds introduced and increased Gila planting seed that proved to yield 18–25% better than the Horowitz variety used previously by LCA. Not only did Gila have a higher yield, but it produced oil contents that were about 6% higher. By 1964, PSA had captured 81% of the crush. Up to this time, production and consumption of safflower oil in Australia, which began in about 1950, had been confined to the paint- and resin-manufacturing business. Prior to 1954, Australia had imported safflower seed from India for local crushing. In 1954, India banned exports of seed, and Australia became an oil importer. Table 16.3 illustrates the ebb and flow of Australian imports and exports of safflower seed and oil. It is interesting to note that imports and exports of oil often occurred in the same season during the 1960s and 1970s. Because of the vast distances between Australia’s major cities, it was sometimes cheaper to bring oil from the United States to one city in Australia while another might have a surplus and be exporting. We have observed situations where oil was actually loaded in San Francisco for Australia while a vessel containing Australian oil arrived and began to discharge its cargo. The battle between margarine manufacturers and dairy interests became very heated and more or less coincided with PVO’s entry into the Australian production and marketing fray. Production of margarine was severely limited by a quota designed to protect butter producers. As the polyunsaturated boom began to hit Australia, the public clamor for margarine, fueled by flamboyant advertising on the part of margarine manufacturers, started to wear down dairy controls. Safflower oil’s emphasis began to shift from paint to margarine production, and secondarily salad oil. Into the 1970s table margarine production was limited to about 16,000 MT/year and other types of margarine gained about 5,000 MT/year through the 1960s, reacing 48,200 MT by the 1969–70 season. TABLE 16.1 A.T. Pugsley Testing of Safflower Year of Harvest 1945 Variety

Yield (lb/acre)

Niphad 630 852a Niphad 630 (wide spacing) U.S.A. 585a West Aust. 370a N7 N9 Pusa 7 Karrar Russian Pusa 2 Niphad Local 704a

1946

1947

Oil (%)

Yield (lb/acre)

Oil (%)

Yield (lb/acre)

Oil (%)

27.1

1586

24.3

1684 1119

22.1

23.9

854 – – – – – – – 1334

22.1

1042

22.1

25.5 26.9

859 1075 1432 1414 1315 1069a 1304

24.3 24.8 23.2 24.1 24.1 24.5 24.9

22.1

aApproximately 50 lb/acre was lost during harvest due to shattering.

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Other factors arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s that removed safflower’s chances for ascendancy in Australia. J.G. Boswell and Kern Land Co. personnel emigrated to Australia and created a revolution in northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland by producing cotton and its by-product, cottonseed. Practical sunflower hybrids became available at a time when safflower growers in Queensland were reeling from a 2-year drought that cut yields drastically in 1968 and 1969, and found their crops decimated by alternaria when Australia received several years of above-normal moisture. It became apparent that sunflower could be produced more safely under conditions that many Australian farmers faced, and the acreage of sunflower began to increase exponentially in Australia. TABLE 16.2 Area Devoted to Safflower and Production of Safflower Seed in Australia Harvest Year

Price New South /MT Wales Victoria

1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993

£ 45 £ 50 £ 53 $ 98 $ 98 $ 98 $ 98 $ 98 $ 98 $ 93 $ 94 $ 96 $ 96 $ 96 $ 94 $ 94 $103 $167 $220 $160 $260 $210 $153 $178

453A 380A 110A 1,131A 330A 10A

Area of Australian Territories (ha) QueensSouth Western land Australia Australia

6,484 19,834 18,675 5,782 1,584 5,487 6,825 4,280 10,870 32,200 39,640 7,500 17,000 5,500 20,600 14,400 17,900 17,900 38,000 18,000

20 5071 1272 555 2813 3952 3952 3698 3592 3227 1155 3400 4800 1300 3600 7000 9400

928A 1,957A 7,736A 10,519A 5,417A 8,952A 5,694A 18,141A 17,500 23,000 36,000 40,000 18,000 3,834 2,053 12,482 3,257 9,575 27,575 27,999 4,205 23,466 38,137 12,311 6,400 10,400 3,800 29,500 21,000 16,900

20000

5,500

2,000

18,700

2700

5,000

1,400

28A

170 197 74 181 363 880 528 893 1,084 580 1,100 1,200 900 1,200 1,200 3,200

487 546 1183 955 138 135 108 196 150 205

Total 1,381A 2,337A 7,874A 11,650A 5,747A 8,952A 5,694A 18,730A 19,000 24,000 38,000 42,000 20,000 10,825 27,674 33,809 10,624 12,449 36,373 39,674 12,904 38,971 74,668 53,585 18,300 33,400 11,500 54,900 44,300 47,400 35,000 46,000 33,000 28,000 32,000 22,000 (continued)

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TABLE 16.2 Continued Safflower Production (MT) Harvest Year 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993

New South Wales

Victoria

237 40 29 44 25 42

Queensland

South Australia

2,828 7,360 10,592 1,538 320 2,005 2,291 2,187 5,522 22,000 25,902 2,200 8,600 2,500 6,100 7,000 8,200

3 1,395 722 328 520 1,269 1,701 1,405 1,258 2,180 688 1,600 3,100 500 2,600 5,000 6,300

298 ST 556 ST 2,301 ST 2,714 ST 1,446 ST 1,530 1,608 4,913 11,375 9,000 22,500 15,000 10,000 1,224 371 3,461 2,126 5,928 26,949 13,406 2,202 18,540 32,619 2,837 3,300 6,900 1,700 1,300 18,000 9,700

12,000

24,000

1,900

2,600

12,500

2,400

1,500

1,600

73 81 46 82 279 582 302 783 922 487 900 1,100 600 2,000 3,500

Western Australia

109 142 541 135 10 8 182 190 205

Total 100 535 ST 595 ST 2,372 ST 2,759 ST 1,471 ST 1,512 1,608 3,732 12,453 9,814 24,451 15,613 10,150 4,164 9,350 15,398 4,173 6,860 30,510 18,163 6,286 26,308 57,721 29,974 8,100 19,600 5,300 30,600 32,000 27,700 25,000 25,000 41,000 21,000 18,000 19,000 13,000

Source: Australian Department of Primary Industry and private estimates.

Australian crushers began to lose their isolation from the world markets. Two leading forces in this regard were Morris Rassaby of Orbis Trading Company of Sydney and Ryouei Aoki, Mitsubishi’s oilseed representative in Australia during the early 1970s. Rassaby was a tireless dynamo and offered a marked contrast to most of the Australian businesspeople and brokers of his time, who were much more laid back. Consequently, he was able to capture and, in many cases, control, much of the safflower oil and meal business within Australia, as well as most of the imports and exports of safflower oil. He helped Gwydir Valley Oilseeds Pty., Ltd., at Moree, New

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South Wales, to get started in 1970 as an expeller mill and to get Continental Grain involved in helping them expand into solvent extraction in 1979. In 1973, when PVO sold its interest in Pacific Safflower to Meggitt, Ltd., Aoki was able to assist and advise Queensland Grain Growers and eventually the New South Wales Oilseed Marketing board on how to manage the international market. The exportation of safflower seed offered farmers an alternative to selling to the local mills, and safflower oil costs went up. Boswell’s business with cotton products enticed Cargill to join them then in the North West Vegetable Oils Pty., Ltd., solvent-extraction plant at Narrabri, New South Wales. TABLE 16.3 Import/Export Statistics (MT) Seed Year Ending in June of 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

Exports

Oil Imports

Exports

Imports

25 1,435 884 60 3,395 2,156 13 248 1,007 3,105

1,746 2,942 2,778 1,771 1,638 3,020 3,004 5,198 3,255 3,637 5,277 3,469 1,950 2,051 6,847 2,870 2,791 1,130 4,652 3,039 1,204 1,650 617 396 115 392 223 801 106 1,068

425

5,000 90 385 8,824 883 1,197 1,111 27,375 2,022 2,158 4,703 2,654 8,057 5,220 11,595 8,829a 5,756a 14,461a 9,019a 5,600a 11,702a 7,176a 11,702a

aExports to Japan only. Source: Bureau of Primary Industry.

829 600 709 15,954 3,947 12,374 200 6,000 16,770 3,800 300 250 200 500 209 80 103 54 64 104

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Margarine quotas were abandoned in New South Wales and South Australia in 1976. As a result, table margarine production increased from 17,600 MT in the 1971–72 year to 89,000 MT by 1980; at this point, sunflower oil and imported soybean oil were able to capture most of the increased demand for margarine oil. Safflower production began to be forced out of Queensland and moved to southern New South Wales and Victoria. Orbis was able to maintain control of most safflower markets from the late 1960s into the early 1980s while Aoki was not. With the demise of Queensland Grain Growers and Meggitt, Ltd. the overexpansion and then contraction of Elders IXL, in the 1980s, Cargill, Inc., was able to capture the bulk of Australia’s oilmilling capacity in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. By the 1980s, Allied Mills’ Vegetable Oil Pty., Ltd., had captured 80% of Australia’s margarine business and made an abortive attempt to expand into the United States (see Chapter 17). During the 1990s, safflower oil’s place in the Australian domestic market declined to perhaps 2,000 MT annually, and all of the balance produced must be used abroad. Cargill has not been interested in devoting its processing time to safflower, so the bulk of this business is being handled by Seedex and its Sumitomo partnership in South Australia and Victoria. We have not been able to find good data for consumption of safflower oil in Australia, but Table 16.4 gives an idea of the ebb and flow of this business. Australia is now looking to increase its market share in foreign markets by attempting to use lower costs than the U.S. and Mexican markets can supply. Planting Seed/Agronomy Claassen reported that he had sent material from the University of Nebraska to Pugsley in the 1940s and that B. Horowitz of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the first reporter of an oleic mutant, had developed a spineless variety named “Horowitz” from this material (C.E. Claassen, POI, letter to J. Smith, August 31, 1960). Jackson and Berthelson refer to a 1949 CSIRO report that covers evaluations first begun in 1944–45 near Rockhampton in Central Queensland (6), and that the varieties, Horowitz and Kimberley 4–1, were developed by this program and released in the early 1950s (7). TABLE 16.4 Sales/Availability of Safflower Oil in Australia (MT) Year

Amount

1957 2,191 1958 2,364 1959 2,671 1960 2,510 1961 2,379 1962 3,130 1963 2,483 1964 3,904 1965 7,429 1966 6,911 1967 13,174 1968 13,567

Year

Amount

Year

1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980

6,403 7,316 10,136 80,27 90,63 4,408 11,404 8,525 3,033 – – –

1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Amount 3,411 1,117 8,376 8,360 3,572 – – – – – –

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D.C. Allen, Department of Agriculture & Stock, Queensland, reported that Horowitz had made his selections from Nebraska 803, an Egyptian introduction grown in Nebraska by Claassen for one season (D.C. Allen, letter to C.E. Claassen, June, 1960). Allen had visited the University of Nebraska in 1951 to review safflower research. Pugsley had transferred to New South Wales and Horowitz picked up his work and did full-time research on safflower for CSIRO in New South Wales until his death in 1956. In Queensland, Allen tested seeds bred by Horowitz, particularly 23–1, 23(3–5), and (48–89), for Horowitz and for his successor C.R. Kleinig, also of CSIRO. Results of these tests were published in 1958 (8), and indicated that yields of 1,400–2,200 kg/ha had been attained in the Darling Downs and Central areas of Queensland. Gray obtained yields of 2,200 kg/ha in trials at Lawes in southeastern Queensland during 1946–51 (9). After 1958, CSIRO’s interest in safflower research waned, and their seed stocks were transferred to Queensland’s Biloella Research Station where P.J.C. Brauns did limited work on them (10). Brauns also conducted successful tests employing safflower as a green fodder for cattle (see Chapter 10). In 1960, prior to Claassen’s initial trip to Australia, Allen reported having planted a test with the varieties, Horowitz, a Horowitz strain, and Gila for harvest in January 1961. Gila had been introduced the previous season for testing in Australia, and Brauns found it to be promising (11). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s entry into Australia through its Pacific Safflower and Pacific Seeds subsidiaries generated additional enthusiasm for safflower, and Pacific Seeds continued to work at Biloella through Brauns, whom they hired as their Australian manager. First they introduced and increased Gila, a variety that Brauns demonstrated to be superior to Horowitz in both yield and oil content (11,12). They then began a program to find better cultivars that resulted in the release of Saffola G-27, a Gila variant that was 1–2% higher in oil content and matured somewhat earlier; and Saffola 2–47, a selection out of Saffola 208 (7). At that point, CSIRO contented itself with testing varietal materials developed by Pacific Seeds in various locations (13–24). After the drought of 1967–69. Queensland decided to do more cultural work. Up until that time it had been the opinion of most farmers that safflower planting should be done mainly in July, August, and September although May/June plantings had produced the highest yields. A 3-year study showed that mid-May to mid-June plantings on land capable of holding 5–6 cm of moisture for each 30 cm of depth was necessary for maximum yields. Frost at flowering time could also be avoided by not planting earlier, while rising temperatures during the growing cycle and the increased moisture requirements due to evaporation weighed against later dates (7). In recent years production has switched from Queensland where harvest occurred in December–March to southern New South Wales and Victory, pushing the harvest date to March–April. Attempts were made to introduce many new cultivars with superior oil yields (25). When grown in Australia, these varieties failed to produce the high oil contents realized in their native environment (26). With the new cultural recommendations, farmers were able to achieve their best results ever in 1974–75; they then found their hopes dashed by a severe outbreak of alternaria carthami in September of 1975 after

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a week of rain. A 50% reduction in yield occurred in Queensland, along with a total loss of grower confidence. This was the first but not the last time that an outbreak of this disease occurred on a commercial scale. This caused the emphasis in Australia safflower seed research to switch to the objective of finding resistance to alternaria and Phytophthora cryptogen as well (27–38). Irwin and others explored methods of fungal control without success (39,40). Finally in 1987, Harrigan was able to announce the release of two safflower lines resistant to alternuria and phytophthora (39,41). The first, Sironaria, was aimed at the northern areas of Australia, where the hot, humid weather could help bring on alternaria leaf blight infection. It was also tolerant to phytophthora root rot. The second, Sirothora, was recommended for use on raised bed irrigation systems, to resist phytophthora. It was not considered alternaria resistant and was therefore better suited to southern areas. Neither variety is high in oil content, however, so the search goes on for better oil types and for improved cultural practices (42,43). Some attempts to introduce oleic types into Australia are underway, but this is slow due to quarantine restrictions and reluctance of U.S. seed merchants to deal with some of the individuals involved in this project.

Canada History and Production Safflower has had a checkered career in Canada, primarily because Canada’s short growing season has made consistent production very difficult. Another reason that safflower has had difficulty is that the long history of dockworker strikes in Vancouver harbor has made export planning difficult. Safflower was first tested in Canada in 1936, and the first commercial field was produced in 1943 (44). During the early 1950s, one of the earliest safflower crushers anywhere in the western world was Coop Vegetable Oils, Ltd., at Altoona, Manitoba. They pioneered solvent extraction for safflower processing, decortication, and used safflower hulls to make “Presto Logs” to be burnt in fireplaces. An early cold spell destroyed a harvest and for the next 10 years, little safflower was planted. With encouragement from Western Canadian Seed Processors in Lethbridge, Alberta Linseed Company at Medicine Hat, and later PVO, a few growers began to try growing safflower again in the late 1950s and early 1960s (44). Again, Canadian production fell to almost zero in 1962 after a shortened growing season hurt production, and competition from California combined with the effects of the McDonnell bankruptcy incident ruined prices (44). The McDonnell bankruptcy affected much of the industry. Western Seed Processors offered $0.03/lb as an advance against a hoped-for higher price; Burdett offered $0.0275/lb only in Saskatchewan; and another buyer, Lon Kyle, offered $0.0275/lb advance price. Secretly, it was E.L. McDonnell competing with himself. McDonnell was only able to contract 14,400 acres versus his goal of 27,000 acres. He reported the Canadian total as being 18,000 acres, but the Canadian government

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estimated that Canadian farmers planted 37,000 acres in 1959. Within a year, McDonnell had declared bankruptcy, owing PVO money that it had advanced him. His brother’s companies, Washburn Wilson Company of Idaho and McDonnell Seed Company of Washington, also went under. The safflower delivered was poor in quality and higher in price than promised. Grain surpluses in the late 1960s fueled renewed interest in safflower production By 1970, acreage had risen to 40,000 acres contracted in south central Saskatchewan by R.X. Stroeter on behalf of P.J. Anderson & Sons’ Culbertson oil mill. In turn, George Arsene, then working for Anderson’s associates, Bud and Robert McNab of Milk River Grain, contracted 55,000 acres in southwestern Alberta. Hans-Hemming Mündel reported this as having been in 1971 (44), but I remember it as 1970, since most of the Saskatchewan acreage was to supply a joint venture between Anderson and Agricom International to market saffoil, while the Alberta production was to back Agricom’s seed sales to Mitsubishi and C. Itoh for shipment to Japan. In fact, my records show 30,130 acres of linoleic safflower seed had been contracted in Alberta by Agricom in addition to 7,570 acres of UC1 oleic safflower. The oleic safflower was planted at the last minute in an attempt by Agricom to overcome a shortfall in oleic acreage contracted and planted in California, ultimately destined for Ajinomoto. I made a trip to the production area on October 12–14, and found that everything looked very promising. Upon my return to San Francisco, I learned that the crop had been caught by snows, and that much of it was never harvested. The following year, a small acreage was hurt by lack of maturity and disease, and only 3,600 ha were planted in 1972 (44). Since that time, production in Canada has risen and fallen, driven primarily by the birdseed market (especially Allstate Grain, when it was owned and managed by Rick Dobranski) and by periodic contracts from the Culbertson plant. In 1985, the release of Saffire, a variety exhibiting early maturity and resistance to sclerotinia, has provided a somewhat better chance for safflower production in Canada (45). Saffire has a large, white seed, a type very suitable for birdseed, but with too low of an oil content for oilseed purposes. The variety A.C. Stirling was released in December 1991 (45). It exhibits 35% oil content and only takes 2 days longer to mature than Saffire, so some Canadians are again displaying optimism about producing safflower for oil purposes. In 1992, almost the entire Canadian crop was lost. Even though these two varieties offer shorter maturity patterns, safflower production in Canada is still a risky proposition. The 1993 harvest was severely reduced because the unseasonably cool and rainy summer weather delayed maturity, much as what happened in 1992. Canadian safflower does offer higher linoleic fatty acid levels than California or Montana production, but the demand for a very high linoleic level is quite limited. Unless short seasoned varieties can be developed that also yield 40% oil, it is doubtful Canada can sustain a large acreage of safflower to compete with California and Mexico. Mündel argues that “increasing land prices in California favor inland production, especially on dry land” (44). This argument in itself is true. Table 16.5 illustrates why Canadian farmers are interested in safflower in the 1990s. Production and milling in the prairies (United States or Canada) will produce cheaper oil than California, but not cheaper than Mexico. This oil price will still be

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TABLE 16.5 Projected 1992 Costs and Returns for Dryland Safflower Compared to Selected Other Crops

Crop

Cash Costsa ($/acre)

Stubble Safflower Canola Wheat Fallow Safflower Canaryseed Lentilc Mustard Canola Wheat

Target Yield (/acre)

Market Pricea ($)

Cash Returnsb ($/acre)

54 59 58

1050lb 22 bu 26 bu

0.12/lb 5.65/bu 2.50/bu

72 65 7

58 53 57 53 69 57

1300 lb 1100 lb 900 lb 1000 lb 26 bu 32 bu

0.12/lb 0.07/lb 0.15/lb 0.10/lb 5.65/bu 2.50/bu

98 24 78 47 78 23

aCash costs include expenses for inputs, labor, repairs, insurance, and operating costs and interest; costs and market prices are projections for 1992. bGross return – Cash costs. cLentil information extrapolated from charts for irrigated production. Note: In addition to the indicated “cash returns,” coverage under the Revenue Production Program (RPP), formerly GRIP, will be available in 1992 for safflower in Alberta and Saskatchewan, for canary seed in Saskatchewan, and coverage for canola, mustard, and wheat being available across the prairies. The RPP insurance program i specific to provinces and individual farmers. Source: Alberta Agriculture, Production Economics Branch (46).

at least $0.10/lb higher than soybean or canola oil, meaning that safflower cannot compete with these oils for volume markets. It must remain a specialty oil to survive; if it is considered to be a specialty oil, the buyers will demand certainty of production, which is something that the prairies cannot do. Table 16.6 illustrates the pattern of safflower production in Canada. One can see that it has followed a several-year cycle of slowly building production year by year until severe weather occurs. The crop failure is followed by a period of little or no production, and is then followed by a gradual increase. Research Alfred Rehbein, the farmer who did much pioneering safflower research in Montana, provided four Indian lines (Numbers 1, 6, 14, and 25) for testing in 1936 to the Cereal Division of the Central Experimental Farm at Ottawa (44). Other introductions followed. In 1941, the Canadian government began a study, similar to that of the Chemurgy Project in Nebraska, aimed at making Canada self-sufficient in wartime (44). This work showed that yields at the Norden, Manitoba; Indian Head, Saskatchew; and Lethbridge, Alberta stations were the most promising. During the next two decades. both federal research stations (47–52) and the Universities of Manitoba (53,54) and Saskatchewan (55–58) engaged in varietal and cultural trials, and were assisted by Claassen and Knowles. All of these programs were terminated by the late 1960s.

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TABLE 16.6 Canadian Production Alberta

Saskatchewan

Manitoba

Total

Area Production Area Production Area Production (ha) (MT) (ha) (MT) (ha) (MT) 1943–56 1957 6,075 1958 7,290 1959 1960–69 1970 22,275 1971 1972 1973–8 1982 1983 45b 1984 80b 1985 240b 1986 970b 1987 2,145b 1988 2,430b 1989 3,035b 1990 3,075b 1991 2,106b 1992 1,418b 1993 1,012b 1994 405b 1995 1,619b

Area production (ha) (MT)

No good records available for this period 10,935

11,482 14,985

33 40 158 1,210 2,650 2,009 2,846 3,732 3,828 849 168 612 1,996

Very little produced during these years 16,200 9,720 3,645 Very little produced during these years 243 454 203 200 907 446 300 4,536 648 200 7,258 2,957 2,300 2,268 4,050 4,000 1,089 4,860 3,300 810a 400a 608a 500a 567a 500a 2,430 1,400 2,430b 500 2,023 1,100

1,155 5,062 8,146 6,195 – – – – – – –

– – – – – – –

aLethbridge Research Station reported: 3,240 ha/5,785 MT produced for Alberta in 1991. For Saskatchewan, 1,620 ha/1,379 MT production for 1989; 810 ha/598 MT for 1990; and 2,430 ha/3,250 MT for 1991. bHarvested ha; in 1993 plantings 3,845 ha, were damaged by cool weather. Sources: David Boehm, Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food, Economics Branch, personal communication; Blair Roth, Alberta Pool—Special Crop Historical Series, personal communication; John R. Dean, United Grain Growers, Ltd., Manitoba, personal communication; personal records.

In 1978, a program on New Crops breeding and management was initiated by Mündel at the Lethbridge station. Initially, one-quarter of his time was devoted to safflower (45). This program has continued to the present time and has resulted in the release of the first Canadian safflower varieties, as well as important work in good cultural practices and assistance in the release of suitable herbicide registrations (45,59). Table 16.7 compares the two Canadian varieties to a U.S. variety, showing their better adaptability but lower oil yield. The Lethbridge program also produced an excellent safflower production bulletin. It is a beautifully printed, comprehensive, and readable handbook on how to produce safflower on the Canadian prairies (45). Most of the diseases associated with safflower have been observed in Canada— rust (Puccinia carthami [60–64]), Alternaria leaf spot (Alternaria carthami, Alternaria tenuis, and Alternaria alternata [61,62,64]), pythium and fusarium rot rots (62,63), Sclerotinia sclerotium, and Botrytis cinerea (60–63). Only phytophthora root rot seems to be missing.

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TABLE 16.7 Comparison of Three Safflower Varieties Through the Safflower Cooperative Registration Test, 1988–90 Yield (T/ha) Variety

Alb.

Sask.

Saffire AC Stirling S-208 Alb. No. of sites

2.6 1.8 3.1 2.0 2.6 1.7 Sask. Manit. 14 9

Saffire AC Stirling S-208

Alb. 127 129 138

Manit. 2.1 2.4 2.3 Tot. 8

Dryland Sask. Manit. 122 108 125 110 128 114

Oil (%) Ave.

Alb.

2.24 32.0 2.61 35.1 2.24 37.0 Alb. Sask. 31 10 Days to Maturity Ave. 120 122 128

Sask.

Manit.

Ave.

32.1 34.8 38.4 Manit. 11

32.7 35.2 37.1 Tot. 11

32.3 35.0 37.7 23

Irrigated (Alberta) Range Ave. Range 99–136 126 119–129 101–139 133 121–145 105–148 139 127–153

Source: Mündel (45).

Sclerotinia is the most serious disease for Canadian safflower, with alternaria being a problem in wet years. Rust and pythium are primarily a problem in Canada if the crop is planted on previously infected land, or rust-infected seed is used. The Canadian varieties display some resistance to sclerotinia (45). Peschken produced an interesting study on the possible biological control of the Canadian thistle, one of the principle safflower weeds, by the use of Tingis ampliata (65). Not all Canadian utilization work has concerned strictly canola. McCutcheon et al. reported on cardiopathogenicity of rapeseed oils compared with blends of oils including safflower (66). Sim and Bragg reported on dietary factors affecting serum and yolk cholesterol levels of laying hens (67). Soluski and Sarmar discussed the amino acid composition of various oilmeals, including safflower (68). Cultural Practices Mündel points out, “Nitrogen is generally the most limiting nutrient to crop production in Western Canada” (45). This is the case in most areas where safflower is grown. If safflower is planted on summer fallow land, generally little or no additional nitrogen is needed. A level of 90 kg of nitrogen/ha will achieve maximum yields if moisture is adequate. Generally 60–100 kg of nitrogen/ha is sufficient on recropped land. Phosphorus is often the limiting factor in Western Canada soils and must be placed near the seed (45). Phosphorus is necessary to ensure early maturity and high yields; conversely a lack of phosphorus could delay maturity. It is best to test and, depending on the soil test, apply 15–40 kg of phosphate/ha. Potassium and sulfur are generally not needed in Canadian soils. Paraquat and glyphosate can effectively clear weeds from fields prior to planting safflower. Trifluralin and ethalfluralin are registered in Canada for use as preemergence herbicides. They control grasses and broad-leaf weeds if properly incor-

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TABLE 16.8 Effect of Seeding Date on Days to Emergence, Maturity, Heat Unit Accumulation, Yield, and Oil Content for Safflowera Seeding Emergence Date (days) April 9 April 15 April 23 April 30 May 8 May 16

21 22 19 15 10 10

Maturity (days)

CHUb

Yield (kg/ha)

Oil (%)

147 142 134 129 122 115

2,270 2,285 2,250 2,251 2,241 2,179

1,525 1,581 1,477 1,461 1,416 1,006

33.1 32.9 32.4 32.8 32.7 32.7

aExperiments performed at Lethbridge Alberta in 1991. bCHU = corn heat units. Source: Mündel (45).

porated in the soil. Ethalfluralin has shown some effectiveness against Russian Thistle and kochia (45). Safflower should be planted into a seed bed that hopefully is free of clods but without too many fines. As in other parts of the world, safflower does better on sandy loam soils with good water-holding capacity. Thiram (75 WP) is the only seed-treatment material registered in Canada and gives some control against soil- and seed-borne diseases. The key to obtaining a good stand is to plant at a depth of 2.5–3 cm into moisture. If safflower is planted too deep or at irregular depths, uneven stands are the likely result. In Canada, a seed rate of 28 kg/ha is recommended, although under irrigation up to 45 kg/ha can be used. Row widths are not a very important factor, although 15–23 cm drill rows tend to compete with weeds better and mature earlier. Crusting can be a problem if a hard rain is followed by wind on newly seeded safflower. Rototilling or harrowing can be used to break the crust in order to allow seedlings to emerge. In Canada, safflower needs to be planted during the last week of April through the first half of May. Early April seeding usually offers no advantage, since soil temperatures must be over 5°C for safflower to germinate completely. Waiting until the last half of May exposes the crop to risk of early fall frosts. Table 16.8 illustrates the effects of planting dates on maturity and quality factors. The Saffire variety of safflower requires 2,150 corn heat units (CHU) to mature. AC Stirling needs 2,250 CHU. Safflower in its early stages can take temperatures down to -7°C, but once out the rosette stage, any hard frost can cause severe damage. As Mündel points out, even if the plant survives a hard frost, maturity is greatly delayed (45). Safflower seedlings emerge quickly but grow slowly, and weeds can easily grow ahead of them. Safflower in this stage can survive a harrowing, which is best done at an angle to the drill rows. Figure 16.1 shows the areas of Canada to which safflower is adapted. In general, the areas shown have a growing season of 127–130 days, with the date of the first killing frost (-2°C) on September 20 or later. This means that planting around May 1 is ideal. High oil content varieties such as S-541 require 130 or more frost-free days to mature. A late planting, combined with an early frost can fall under this threshold in 7 out of 10 years, and raises the risk of having oil contents fall to 20% or lower.

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Figure 16.1. Areas of safflower adaptation in Canada. Source: Mündel et al. (45). Irrigation in southern Alberta has demonstrated a 668–897 kg/ha improvement in yield over dryland production, but this must be balanced with the fear of a delay in maturity of 5–10 days. Irrigation after full bloom should be avoided to decrease the risk of head rot and leaf blight and to avoid delaying maturity. Canadian safflower has few insect problems, although wire worms or cut worms have caused problems in isolated fields. Grasshoppers can create the most dramatic damage, and in seasons with high grasshopper populations, chemical control is advisable if 15 or more grasshoppers/m2 are observed (45). Grasshoppers generally prefer other crops, but after grain is harvested, they can move into safflower and defoliate the crop. In severe cases, they eat the bracts on safflower heads causing some shattering of seed to occur. In Canada. Cygon 480 (Cyanimid Canada, Inc.) is registered for use on safflower (45). The most serious disease affecting safflower in Canada is sclerotinia head rot (Sclerotinia sclerotium). It can cause total crop failure in severe cases and generally occurs in humid or prolonged rainy periods after flowering. Alternaria is also serious, particularly in the more eastern areas where the precipitation generally is higher. It is particularly damaging, since it reduces the oil content in oil types and affects the color in bird seed varieties. Rust and damping off caused by pythium or alternaria are more minor problems. Mündel recommends harvesting by straight combining at a moisture level of 12–13% (to avoid shattering) and then aerating the seed to 9.5% moisture. He recommends a cylinder speed of 500 rpm, concave cleaners of 16 mm at the front and 13 mm at the back. A reel can be avoided unless the crop is light. One needs to be careful to

Safflower Around the World

TABLE 16.9

Exports to Japan

Year

Amount Exported (MT)

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990

387

402 0 522 1,679 – 1,902

harmonize reel speed with ground speed, so the safflower feeds into the throat of the combine without choking, while at the same time avoiding reel shattering (45). Since safflower crop residue is relatively sparse, it is important to do little cultivating in order to preserve stubble. Safflower dries the soil very thoroughly and this makes recropping safflower land difficult unless there is adequate moisture in the following season to recharge the land to a depth of 2 m. Markets As discussed earlier in this section, safflower was originally produced in Canada for processing by local mills. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of the seed was sold to the mill at Culbertson for crushing, and part of the seed was exported to Japan. Japanese oil mills prefer California seed because of reliability, higher oil content, lower color and FFA, but they have purchased Canadian seed from time to time because it generally displays a linoleic fatty acid level 2–4% higher than California seed (Table 16.9). In the 1980s, increasing percentages of the seed produced in Canada has been for birdseed purposes. In general, birdseed prices are slightly higher than for oilseed varieties, except when the market is heavily oversupplied.

China History Safflower has a history of cultivation in China for more than two thousand years, primarily as a medicinal and dye source (69–72). The “Bowuzhi” (Reports on Natural Sciences) indicates that Zhang Qian (?–114 B.C.) introduced safflower seeds from the West during the West Han dynasty, sowing them in the Wei region (today comprising most of Henan [73]). Weiss reports that recent studies of ancient Chinese literature may place the timing during the second and third centuries A.D. (13). Safflower is grown all over China, but only relatively recently has it been produced as an oil crop. Xinjiang is the leading safflower-production prefecture of China, with an area ranging between 16,700 and 23,400 ha annually, or about 67% of China’s total safflower area (73). Qian evidently left seeds there on his way back to Wei (74). The prefecture’s production of dried flowers and seeds comprises about 80% of China’s total (73). In Xinjiang, it is grown primarily in Tacheng, but also in Ili, Changji, and Korla

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counties. It is also produced to some extent in the neighboring Mongolia Autonomous Prefecture of Bayingolin and in Gansu (Heyi Corridor, Tianshui, Dingxi, and Jingyuan counties); in Ningxia (Yinchuan and Guyuan counties); and in Qinghai (74). The region encompassing these prefectures is known as Xinganning. The Jiluyu Region includes Henan (where safflower was introduced), Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, and Shaanxi, and continues to produce some safflower; all of China’s cold-resistant safflower germ plasm comes from this region. An early variety, “Weihonghua”, was developed in Xinxiang County of Henan. Anyang and Shangqiu also produce safflower. In Hebei, safflower is confined to that region’s southern part; in Shangdong, safflower production is localized to the Heze and Jining prefectures (73). Safflower production in the Chuandian Region (Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou) ranks second to Xinjiang in importance. In Sichuan it has a long history. Jianjang County Annals for the period under the reign of Qianlong (1736–95) reports that safflower production was abundant in Jianyang and that trade with merchants in Henan was extensive (73). Production in Sichuan is centered in Jianyang, Ziyang, and Jintang. In Yunnan, safflower is an important crop with a 1,000 year production history in the valleys of southwest Yunnan in Weishan, Changning, Fengqing, Yangbi, Baoshan, and Gejiu. Dried flower production averages 210 MT out of China’s annual total of 1,370 MT. A carthamin factory has been established in Kunming to produce pigment for food processing (73). Finally, dried safflower is also produced in the Jingzhemin Region (including Zhejiang, Jiangso, Fujian, and Anhui). In Zhejiang, a type called Duhonghua (Rhododendron-safflower because of its golden flower color) is produced in Shaoxing, Jinhua, Xiaoshan, and Hangzhou. In Zhejiang it is mainly cropped in gardens or on marginal land. In Jiangsu, it is important in Huaiyin, Yangcheng, and Yangzhou (73). In Anhui it is produced in Lingbi, Guoyang, Linchuan, and Wuwei Counties. In Fujian, safflower has a long history but is now produced only in Xiapu county. In addition to the previously mentioned regions, safflower is also grown in Nei Menggu (Inner Mongolia) and Liaoning. In the 1930s, safflower was planted as an oil crop in Dunhuang County of Gansu (73), but it was not until the late 1970s that serious efforts were made for oil production (75). For centuries, Chinese varieties were bred primarily for floret production, and consequently the oil content was very low. China’s isolation from much of the West prevented the development of the higher oil content varieties that were flourishing in California. This, combined with limited funding for all agricultural research, kept safflower from developing as an oil crop more rapidly. For many in the West the presentation by Y.S. Wu and Dajue Li was their initial exposure to Chinese safflower research (76). D. Li of the Beijing Botanical Garden Institute of Botany led a team of Chinese scientists that began investigating all aspects of safflower production in 1976. While some of this work seems redundant, it was intended to thoroughly examine all aspects of safflower cultural technology as applied to the diverse conditions in the many regions of China and then to try to introduce germ plasm of foreign varieties (if adapted) and to incorporate higher yielding and higher oil content lines into Chinese materials, to understand the chemistry of

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safflower’s medicinal and dye components, and to find ways to incorporate safflower on alkali-rich soils. Over 2,300 ascensions of safflower germ plasm from over 50 countries have been collected and assessed, including 400 from 24 Chinese provinces. The International Board for Plant Genetic Resources provided financing for this project (77); this work was summarized by Li et al. and was released during the Third International Safflower Conference at Beijing (73). The three volumes published at the Third International Safflower conference provide a very good cross section of Chinese Research (78,79,80). Agronomy and Production China has some varieties that, contrary to the norm, have a longer rosette period as the temperature increases and if temperatures exceed 17.9°C, they will stay in the rosette until they die. The cultivar, BJ-240A, has been grown in Shandong province for at least 1,700 years. Shangdong has an average temperature of 1.9°C and an annual low of -20.4°C, yet BJ-240A can be planted in the winter and develops at a normal rate. If exposed to above-normal temperatures, its growth slows and eventually stops (73). Some other unusual data was presented by Yiang Gao and Tongde Wang in 1993. They reported that Jihong No. 1, the flat-stemmed variety released in 1991, has produced 2005.6 kg/ha in 5 years of testing in Jimusaer County of Xingiang. Additionally, it has produced yields of 237 kg of florets/ha (81). These yields are 14.3 and 11.7% higher, respectively, than the normal locally grown types. It shows a linoleic acid content of 80.76%, but has a disappointing 26.5% oil content. The flat-stemmed character was incorporated by backcrossing and is stable in 50% of a planting. They also have reported on work that started in 1976 to cross safflower with sunflower by grafting and sexual hybridization. They claim to produce offspring that have sunflower features without auxiliary buds, thin, long stalks, small flower discs, and so forth, but the plants produced have many poor characteristics. A number of researchers in China are engaged in trying to modify safflower by mutagenesis or tissue culture (82,83). Along more conventional lines, some interesting lines have been produced. ZW96 has been developed from a mutant of AC-1 found in 1983 in Gansu Province. It has a 38–40% oil content (probably on a dry basis), bright red flowers, takes 123 days to mature, demonstrated yields of 2,044.5 kg/ha in 1990–92 testing with a high of 3,750 kg/ha, and is drought and root rot resistant (84). FO-3 was developed to fit in North China where normal cultivars mature and sprout in mid-July at the commencement of the rainy season. FO-3 is based on local cultivars plus the Mexican Dwarf. It matures a month earlier, escaping the rain, is resistant to fusarium and verticilium, but suffers from low yield and oil content that are typical characteristics of materials that have used the Mexican Dwarf character. FO-4 is based on UC-26 but has a much higher oil content while retaining UC-26’s spineless, red flowered, narrow-branching characteristics. It is a model for future breeding to improve oil content, but it can be a good dual purpose type. FO-3 is a type aimed at southeast, southwest, and central China and is based in part on AC-1 variants to

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acquire good oil content, to be shorter and earlier, but retain spineless, red color, and striped characteristics (77). Chinese farmers plant safflower over a wide range of dates. In Henan, Gansu, and Shaanxi provinces, safflower is sown from November–May; in Yunnan, Sichuan, and Jiangsu in September–October; while in Neimeng and Xinjiang in April–May. A number of writers presented papers at the Third International Safflower Conference on cultural practices recommended for various regions of China. In Xinjiang, both labor-intensive farms and mechanized ranches grow safflower. D. Pei of Xinjiang suggests planting after deep plowing (25 cm) in November through April, if necessary, and rotating with wheat and summer fallow in a 4-year sequence of fallow-wheat-safflower-wheat (85). A seeding rate of 15–22 kg/ha, planted 4–5 cm deep is recommended after one preirrigation and followed by two irrigations in March–April. He recommends different row and plant spacings depending upon the soil fertility; for fertile fields the rows should be drilled 60 cm apart with plants spaced 22–24 cm apart, intermediate fertility lands should close the row spacing to 50 cm and plant spacing to 20 cm, and on poor soils the rows should be tightened to 30 cm with 17 cm between plants. Seed should be treated, and fertilizer should be added at a rate of 75 kg/ha. Yields improve 200% with this addition. The rotations recommended help to cut down wire-worm attack and wheat yields following safflower are increased by 20–30%. R. Tong made additional comments on Xinjiang irrigation techniques. He found that two or three irrigations were acceptable in northern Xinjiang; in the south, three or four were required. He recommended 40–75 kg/ha fertilizer at seeding time, followed by an additional 75–120 kg as a top dressing (86). Lizhong Xu pointed out that Xinjiang was one of the few areas where mechanization was available to safflower culture. He suggested deep plowing (22–25 cm), discing immediately prior to planting of treated seed in the first half of April followed by a packer to pack the loose soil. Planting rates of 3–3.5 kg/mu (mu is a Chinese unit of area, approximately 1/16 ha) at a depth of 5 cm was recommended, followed by three or four irrigations and harvesting at 10% moisture (87). Pei believes that floret harvesting should occur immediately once the heads begin to open (85). Harvested florets should be placed in a shady place at least overnight and then dried in the sun, or if the quantity harvested is low, it can be kept in the shade longer. Further recommendations on floret harvesting were contained in papers by Laiwu Xu of Pei County in Jiangsu Province (87) and Yang and Chen for the northwest hill country (Fuxin county) of Liaoning Province (88). In Jiangsu, floret harvesting takes place in the first 10 days of June when the florets begin to turn red from the opening yellow. Since flowers open at night, the best time for picking is around 6 A.M., when the spines are softened by dew and the florets themselves tend to pull out better. Florets need to be placed in a shady, cool area, turned often and not piled too high. If the florets are allowed to pile up, they will mildew and turn black. Yang recommends covering them with gauze. Seed harvesting can take place 15–20 days after floret gathering. Yang and Chen point out how safflower works well in their hilly area by intercropping with Chinese cabbage, cauliflower, or cotton (88). The intercropping can be done either alone or with buckwheat. The basic reason for intercropping is to allow

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TABLE 16.10 Areas of Safflower Cultivation in China (ha) Province

1950

1960

1970

Anhui 248.3 2,000 800 Beijing (Peking) – 5.4 – Fujian – 10.3 – Gansu – 333.6 – Guizhou – 197.8 1,440.7 Guangdong – – – Hebei – 520.1 44.7 Heilongjiang 15.6 213.3 – Henan 1,994.8 4,956.3 3,527.8 Hubei 372.5 133.3 179.1 Hunan – – 14.3 Inner Mongolia – 1,133.2 – Jiangsu 149.1 1,564.7 787.2 Jiangxi 43.1 2,241.5 622.6 Jilin – 80 686.7 Liaoning – 1,200 17 Sichuan 844.8 666.7 1,356.9 Shaanxi – 246.3 – Shanghai 20 60.8 69 Tianjin – 139.5 – Xinjiang – 2,666.7 – Zhejian 53.2 266.7 112.4 Total 3,481.3 20,466.7 9,971.6

1975

1978

1979

254.3 980 – 2.6 13.3 164.6 26.6 60.3 18.0 15.1 – – – 970.9 191.3 447.2 2,787 2,924.3 170.9 161.7 – 18.3 28.3 47.9 471.7 697.1 427.3 689.3 36.7 79.1 68.6 73.9 1,700.9 12,736.7 13.3 – 79.3 100.9 14.7 85.7 – 18,106.7 159 275.6 6,743.0 7,876.9

1,333.3 400 100 6.7 6.7 9.5 6.0 333.3 5,933.3 155.5 9.5 22.0 800 81.2 8.6 10.8 1,493.3 26.7 63 1.6 24,667 101.6 35,788.4

Source: Wu and Li (76).

farmers new to safflower to continue to farm a crop they have confidence in and yet try a new crop like safflower. Planting in the northern region is best done in late March. Other examples of intercropping have been presented. Zheng et al. intercropped safflower with sweet potatoes in Henan (89). When intercropped with sweet potatoes, the sweet potatoes were planted in two rows on beds in mid-April, and were preceded by a March planting of safflower in the furrows. M. Li intercropped safflower with maize in a part of Liaoning (90). Li interspersed two 50-cm rows of safflower with eight rows of corn and planted the safflower in mid-April. This produced a better income than either crop could do separated. W. Tian and M. Zhao introduced safflower into the Shanxi Province. The area they specifically introduced it to was near the Yellow River in a hilly area with loess. It was found that safflower could yield 1,110 kg/ha and produce higher incomes than traditional flax and the juncea form of rapeseed previously grown (91). Similarly L. Ms that safflower might be economical in Northwest Sichuan Province if it was planted in mid-March for harvest at the end of July. This schedule fits into the two low-rainfall periods of the year (92). D. Li presented a summary of the locations of Chinese plantings at the First International Safflower Conference (Table 16.10). China plants 30,000–47,000 ha and harvests about 1,370 MT of dried flowers annually (92). Xinjiang Province continues to dominate production in China as can be seen in my limited summary of the more recent production history in China in Table 16.11.

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TABLE 16.11 Safflower Production in China

Region

Year

Area (ha)

Xinjiang

1949 1960 1978 1979 1992 1993 1960 1978 1979 1979 1992

2,458 2,667 18,108 24,667 18,400 18,400 4,956 2,924 76 35,788 35,000

Henan Shanxi All China

Seed Yield (kg/ha)

Seed Dried Floret Dried Floret Production Yield Production (MT) (kg/ha) (MT)

326

800

545 1,546 1,628 680 20 7 1,500

13,444 28,500 30,000

207a

870 1,000

aYield for fields from which flowers are harvested. Source: Wu and Li (76); Li (77); and J. Smith, personal records.

I have found it difficult to determine the production of safflower in China accurately. First, the FAO has never included data on China in its statistics. Second, the data is difficult obtain because safflower is scattered over more than 90% of China’s provinces. But even in Xianjiang, the area having the greatest concentration of safflower, the data is confusing. For example, most Chinese agree that Xianjiang harvested 24,667 ha of safflower in 1979 and produced 13,444 MT. The yield was reported to be 538.5 kg/ha, but if it is calculated, a figure of 545 kg/ha is reached. Areas in China are reported in mu, an ancient measure of land. Webster’s New International Dictionary has defined the conversion as 1 ha = 16.25 mu. Yet D. Li and others appear to use a conversion of 15 mu/ha. D. Li’s summary (see Table 16.10) appears to be derived from a work by Jiazheng Li, a Research Fellow at Urumqui, that reported the areas in mu (93). In a June 1993 conversation and subsequent correspondence, Zhaomu Wang, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences Director of Oil Crops in Urumqui, estimated yields for 1992 and 1993 for his region as 95 kg/mu (1,546 kg/ha) and 100 kg/mu (1,628 kg/ha), respectively. Production for 1993 reached approximately 30,000 MT from an estimated 300,000 mu of land (18,432 ha). Gao and Wang’s report of Jihong No. 1 variety’s yield in Xinjiang’s Jimusaer County and the paper by Jinzu Song, the variety’s breeder and the Jimusaer County tax collector, tend to confirm Wang’s figures (74,94). They show other varieties yielding 1,153.6 kg of seed/ha and 207.2 kg of florets/ha, while the new variety is capable of yields of 2,000 kg of seed/ha and 270 kg of florets/ha on 12,000–13,400 ha planted in the county. Prices for safflower within China were originally controlled by the government, but lately they seem to be market driven. Safflower seed sells for approximately 2 yuan/kg, while florets vary greatly in value. In 1988, the florets sold for 90 yuan/kg; however, this fell to only 10 yuan by 1990. Sale of florets is still controlled by government documentation and quality standards. Local prices for safflower products in 1993 were 8–10 yuan for crude safflower oil, 12–13 yuan for refined safflower oil, 0.8–1.0 yuan for safflower meal, and 22–25 yuan for safflower florets.

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Markets In addition to trying to upgrade local varieties for improved oil production, China continues to push products made from dried safflower florets. These fall into three categories: yellow pigment and carthamin (red dye), health beverages and wines, and herbaceous medicines. Safflower florets, which are used as food coloring, are also the source of safflower yellow pigment (about 30 wt%) and carthamin. In 1984, China’s National Bureau of Standards approved safflower yellow pigment as a food additive. It is widely used as a food and beverage colorant in products such as candy; pastry; fruit juice; soda waters and other refreshments; fruit powder; wine; canned foods; condiments; and in wheat, soybean, and meat products. Carthamin is extracted by a more elaborate process and is employed in cosmetics, such as lipstick and rouge, and in the manufacture of high quality egg dishes. Several pigment factories are producing pigment in Xinjiang and Yunnan provinces. In China, human consumption of safflower is not just limited to seed or its products. In the beverage field, bagged safflower tea has been offered to domestic and export markets by Beijing Honghua Products Factory (77.95). Zheyue Wang has reported on several wines made from safflower floret pigment including SafflowerHawthorne Medicated Wine, and Safflower-Shredded Chicken Medicated Wine (96). There are other markets for human consumption. The Inner Mongolian Safflower Company has begun to produce Safflower All Amino Acids Oral Nutrient, a product for its high energy level. It is a powerbar-like product that contains amino acids from safflower meal, safflower yellow pigment, Chinese crabapple, and other products (77). In the traditional field of herbaceous medicine, Li has listed three primary symptoms for which safflower florets offer relief: treatment of dysmenorrhea and amenorrhea; at least eleven products used in the treatment of angina pectoris and other coronary heart disease problems; and seven products used in the treatment of pain associated with welling, bloating, or fractures (77). Safflower pollen is marketed as a highenergy food. In parts of China, young safflower plants are eaten as a vegetable. Perhaps 50% of the safflower seed China produces is consumed locally. Small oil mills account for 80% of the local consumption, and the balance is crushed by the farmers themselves. Most of the safflower oil China produces is consumed locally, but an effort was begun in the 1990s to export 500-mL tins of refined oil to Southeast Asia. The balance of the uncrushed seed is exported to Japan and to various parts of parts of the world for bird feed. China’s exports to Japan are shown in Table 16.12. There are also many uses that do not involve human consumption. In most parts of China safflower stubble is gathered for use as a feed extender and a composted much. The plant is used as an ornamental in front of farm houses, and safflower oil is added to camel rations. Chinese agriculture in 1993 was reminiscent of Millet’s paintings of French farming in the 1800s. Most of the work was done by hand and nothing was wasted. Much of China has rainfall at periods that can harm safflower production. The drier areas of China’s west and northwest are long distances from the markets that can pay a premium for safflower oil. If safflower dye can help overcome this logistic disad-

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TABLE 16.12 Exports of Chinese Safflower to Japan

Year

Seed Quantity (MT)

1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

445 268 843 2,130 4,894 2,273 3,368 7,519 4,663 4,518 2,614 4,856 1,422 4,275 3,209 1,477

Oil Quantity (MT)

20 100 103 149 388 11 388

Source: Japan Importer and Manufacturers Association (97).

vantage by providing enough extra income to the farmers, then it appears that China could become a more important factor in world safflower trade. The improvements in yield demonstrated in the last 15 years show that China’s research effort is making progress. Now China must demonstrate to the world traders that it can ship quantities of seed or oil that are of consistently good quality and show that disputes can be settled quickly under evenhanded applications of the law.

Ethiopia Ethiopia has consistently produced approximately 30,000 MT of safflower seed on 60,000 ha since before records were kept (see Table A.13) with very little fanfare. Little of this crop, called “suff” locally, travels far. Although some moves through Djibouti to neighboring countries (98), little has been published about Ethiopian safflower. In terms of area or production, however, Ethiopia ranks fourth in the world, ahead of China, Australia, Spain, and former republics of the U.S.S.R. Seegler in a joint publication of Addis Ababa University and Agricultural University of Wageningen gives a good survey of Ethiopian oilseeds including safflower (13). A rare paper on safflower in Ethiopia shows that safflower could act as a host for castor rust, Melampsorella ricini (99).

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India History and Production India is second only to the United States in area devoted to the production of oilseeds, and even though yields for most oilseeds are low in India, it produces 10% of the world’s output (100). India is the leading country in the world in terms of land devoted to safflower production. In India, safflower was ranked fourth highest among annual oilseed plantings as late as 1981 (101). Recently, sunflower and soybean plantings have mushroomed in importance, while the area devoted to safflower has not changed significantly. There are three reasons for safflower’s decline in importance. Government support prices for oilseeds increased substantially 5 years ago, and this encouraged the farmers in the relatively rich lands of northern India (Punjab and Hargana) to switch from wheat to sunflower production (100). Average yields for soy and sunflower have increased steadily over the past decade due to production in better regions of the country and improved cultural practices and planting seed. Safflower yields have declined a bit because relatively little emphasis has been placed on its production and since the international community has focused its efforts on selling planting seeds herbicides, and fertilizers that have been centered on sunflower, soy, and canola. Traditionally, much of India’s safflower is produced as a border crop which means that low inputs are usually involved. Finally, safflower’s built-in problem of a lack of dormancy limits the areas in India where it can be grown without facing the danger of rain near the time of harvest; sunflower’s much greater adaptability allows it to shed rain-borne problems. Table 16.13 compares the area, production and yield of safflower, sunflower, and soy in recent years, and illustrates some of the dynamic changes that have occurred in Indian oilseed production. As related in Chapter 1, safflower was probably introduced into India many centuries ago. Originally dye was its main reason for production, but the introduction of cheap aniline dyes at the turn of the century eliminated this industry (13). Most of the seed produced is converted to cooking oil, although at times some seed is exported. Indian safflower was regularly exported to Japan in the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, and PVO’s Yuzo Wada became an expert in dealing with Indian safflower meal and pulses. Weiss reported that exports of safflower seed reached 38,000 MT in 1951 and then fell to zero because of domestic needs (13). In recent years small quantities of seed have been exported for birdseed purposes, although in 1989 the government prohibited exports entirely. Price data for India seed is nearly nonexistent. Weiss (13) reported the prices shown in Table 16.14, and The Economic Survey gives a listing of minimum support prices for recent years as shown in Table 16.15 (Prasad, M.V.R., personal communication). Table A.13 lists FAO’s estimate of Indian safflower production for all years since 1950. Using a number of sources, Weiss produced data that showed the distribution by state of Indian production in mid-century years (Table 16.16 [13]). One should note some of the names are for the former states before the States Reorganization of 1956. Table 16.17 presents the distribution of production by state

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TABLE 16.13 Indian Safflower Production Compared to Soy and Sunflower Area (thousand ha) Year

702 749 752 831 918 911 892 1,052 816 842 821

Soy

1,543 1,672 2,150 2,400 2,467 3,000

Sunflower

462 696 835 694 850 860 800 830 1,217 1,593

Safflower 335 422 395 501 515 348 353 462 445 487 327

Soy

898 1,501 1,817 2,333 2,100 3,000

Sources: Prasad, M.V.R., personal communication; Economic Times (100); and FAO Statistical Series (101).

Yield (kg/ha)

Sunflower

230 300 440 301 460 635 650 600 880 1,200

Safflower 465 563 526 603 561 382 395 439 546 578 398

Soy

582 898 845 972 793 1,000

Sunflower

498 431 527 434 541 738 812 723 723 753

Safflower

1980–81 1981–82 1982–83 1983–84 1984–85 1985–86 1986–87 1987–88 1988–89 1989–90 1990–91 1991–92 1992–93

Safflower

Production (thousand MT)

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TABLE 16.14 Indian Safflower Seed and Oil Prices 1953

1956

1957

1958

1961

Local price (Rs/maund = 1 shilling 6 pence/82 pounds) Seed 16.3 13.0 16.0 14.5 17.3 Oil 55.8 54.0 60.0 57.5 64.0 CIF Europe (£/MT) Seed 41.8 40.8 42.0 41.5 49.5 Oil 147.0 145.2 148.0 146.6 153.6

1967 45.0 168.0

Source: Weiss (13).

TABLE 16.15 Indian Safflower Seed Prices Year

Support Price (Rs/100 kg)

1985–86 1986–87 1987–88 1988–89 1989–90 1990–91 1991–92 1992–93

400 415 415 440 550 575 640 720

Source: The Economic Survey (104).

in more recent years (data kindly collected by M.V.R. Prasad of the Directorate of Oilseeds Research [Prasad, M.V.R., personal communication]). Yields for safflower in India are low compared to yields achieved in the United States or Mexico. At the time of Weiss’ classic work, yields were reported to vary between 100–250 lbs/acre if grown as a mixed crop (sown with other seeds in the same field [13]). When sown in this way, a seeding rate of 5–12 kg/ha is common. If planted as a border crop in strips, a spacing of 45 cm and a seed rate of 18–22 kg/ha was preferred (13). Figures 16.2 and 16.3 show safflower interplanted with other crops. Figure 16.4 shows safflower as a border crop in irrigated fields. When safflower was grown as a pure crop, Weiss reported yields from 400–600 lbs of seed/acre (plus 80–120 lbs of dried florets [13]). This is not much different from today’s averages (546 kg/ha [Prasad, M.V.R., personal communication]). Various authors have commented on the reason for safflower’s poor yields in India. At the First International Safflower Conference, Singh and Rao (101) listed five reasons for low productivity: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Safflower was planted at the wrong time. Application of plant nutrients was either low or nonexistent. Protection of crop against aphids and diseases was insufficient. Resistant, high-yielding, input-responsive cultivars for various situations were lacking. Safflower cultivated in regions with poor or uncertain rainfall.

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TABLE 16.16 Safflower Seed Production in India State Andhraa

Andhra Pradesh Bombaya

Bombay Central Provincesa Madhya Pradesh 1948 Madrasa Mysore Hyderabada

Year 1944–45 1947–48 1954–55 1955–56 1955–56 1959–60 1942–47b 1948 1953–54 1954–55 1961–62 1954–55 1942–47b 2,800 1952–53 1954–55 1956–57 1961–62 1948

Area (ha)

Production (MT)c

24,000 11,000 2,020 2,800 5,660 5,200 202,000 166,000 174,000 222,570 335,000 3,300 2,800 – 9,900 17,000 149,000 142,000 242,000

– – 535 785 10,800 – – – – 86,000 – 1,500 – – 7,500 34,208 – –

aFormer state. bAverage. cCalculated from district average yields. Source: Weiss (13).

The last reason is probably the most difficult to overcome. Sawant and Deshpande probably described it best, “In the traditional safflower region of Maharashtra, probably the largest in the world, where spiny varieties are in vogue since time immemorial, safflower cultivation is mostly confined to poor marginal lands prone to water scarcity” (105). Similarly, Rama Mohan Rao et al. show that in Bellary, the region where safflower is mainly produced, crops fail three or four times in a decade—mainly due to a lack of a regular supply of moisture (106,107). Safflower is normally planted in the first fortnight of October in its main area of production. In the Varanasi area of northeast India, it is planted in the last half of October and in the Coimbatore region of South India during the first week of November. These dates are applicable only in the case of the normal onset of the monsoon. If monsoons are delayed, some farmers try to plant later with one preirrigation (101). Harvest takes place from late February–April. Planting Seed/Agronomic Research Indian researchers have published a vast body of work concerning safflower, particularly concerning the agricultural aspects of the crop. It is impossible to cite all of the Indian researchers in this book. I refer the reader to Abstracts on Safflower, and the Proceedings of the First, Second, and Third International Safflower Conferences if additional Indian references are needed (78,79,108,109). Numerous papers have also been written for the many commissions that have studied ways and means to

TABLE 16.17 Distribution and Production of Indian Safflower by Statea State Andhra Pradesh Bihar

Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Orissa

All India

Area 34.90 Prod. 5.50 Yld. 158.00 Area 0.30 Prod. 0.10 Yld. 333.00 Area 157.80 Prod. 80.90 Yld. 513.00 Area 1.00 Prod. 0.20 Yld. 200.00 Area519.90 Prod.245.60 Yld. 472.00 Area 6.00 Prod. 2.80 Yld. 467.00 Area720.00 Prod.335.00 Yld. 465.00

1981–82 1982–83 1983–84 1984–85 43.10 14.90 346.00 0.30 0.10 333.00 157.10 79.00 507.00 0.90 0.20 222.00 542.20 324.40 598.00 6.00 2.80 467.00 749.00 422.00 563.00

55.10 18.60 338.00 0.50 0.20 400.00 172.70 96.90 561.00 1.60 Neg. Neg. 547.20 277.60 507.00 5.00 2.30 460.00 752.10 395.90 526.00

56.30 15.70 279.00 0.05 0.03 600.00 200.00 108.80 544.00 1.70 Neg. Neg. 568.10 373.30 657.00 4.70 2.40 511.00 831.30 500.90 603.00

51.40 13.70 267.00 0.40 0.30 750.00 250.20 135.00 540.00 1.10 0.20 182.00 610.50 364.10 596.00 4.50 1.90 422.00 918.10 515.20 561.00

1985–86 44.60 10.80 242.00 0.50 0.30 600.00 241.80 85.80 355.00 1.40 0.30 214.00 619.00 248.70 402.00 4.00 2.00 500.00 911.30 347.90 382.00

1986–87 1987–88 1988–89 1989–90 33.80 31.80 9.40 13.90 278.00 437.00 0.30 0.30 0.20 0.20 667.00 667.00 268.30 304.40 143.20 118.00 534.00 388.00 1.40 3.60 0.30 0.70 214.00 194.00 583.70 708.00 197.50 327.80 338.00 463.00 4.70 3.80 1.90 1.60 404.00 421.00 892.20 1051.90 352.50 462.20 395.00 439.00

23.60 7.70 326.00 0.20 0.10 500.00 194.80 104.80 538.00 3.70 0.90 243.00 589.90 330.20 560.00 3.30 1.20 364.00 815.50 444.90 546.00

22.60 7.30 323.00 0.50 0.20 400.00 198.30 118.00 595.00 1.50 0.40 267.00 615.80 359.50 584.00 3.60 1.10 306.00 842.30 486.50 578.00

1990–91 1991–92 21.30 6.30 296.00 0.50 0.20 400.00 167.80 56.70 338.00 3.30 0.80 242.00 628.10 255.30 406.00 2.20 0.80 364.00 823.20 320.10 389.00

17.80 6.90 388.00 0.50 0.20 400.00 146.80 66.70 454.00 2.00 0.50 250.00 321.10 122.50 382.00 2.30 0.90 391.00 490.50 197.70 403.00

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Karnataka

1980–81

aArea in thousand ha, production in thousand MT, and yield in kg/ha. Abbreviation: Neg. = Negligible; Yld. = Yield; Prod. = Production.

399

Source: Prasad, M.V.R., personal communication.

400

Safflower

Figure 16.2. Safflower and wheat interplanted and that were sown at the same time. The wheat will be harvested by hand well before the safflower. The safflower roots feed at a different level in the soil than the wheat. This picture was taken 30 miles north of Amnigeri, India. Source. P.F. Knowles. improve Indian agriculture over the past 40 years. The research has culminated in work that has been produced at each of the three International Safflower Conferences, excellent reports on the status of safflower in India and what is needed to improve production (101,110–113). Safflower research in India dates back to about 1900 at the Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in Bihar (101). However, all reporters concede that serious work did not begin until 1969 as part of India’s Fourth Estate Five-Year Plan. Since that time, yield of safflower has quadrupled, and production has increased sixfold. India’s research efforts are coordinated by the Directorate of Oilseeds Research (ICAR) located at Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, working through seven regional stations in addition to the main headquarters. Table 16.18 lists 14 high-yielding cultivars that were released by 1981 as recommended best choices in the different states. Work has continued on improved types since, under Indian conditions, all of these suffer from relatively low oil contents. The All India Coordinated Research Project on Oilseeds (AICORPO) Annual Report was started in 1969 and continues today; it covers a huge number of efforts to help improve safflower in India. These programs initially concentrated on developing high-yielding cultivars to fit existing cropping patterns and on the control of safflower rust. This work was expanded to find higher oil content and yield; drought and salinity tolerance; evolution of high-yielding synthetics and composites; cultivars for short growing seasons, for irrigated conditions, and for fodder use; evolution of a suitable

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Figure 16.3. Safflower and interplanted rows of wheat or chickpeas. This picture shows safflower in mid- to late February in the western part of Maharashtra State with a harvested crop of wheat or chickpeas between the rows of safflower. Source: P.F. Knowles. package of practices, cropping systems, and so forth for different agro-climatic regions; evolution of cultivars with insect and disease resistance; screening for rust, leaf spot, and aphids; chemical controls for foliar diseases and pests; and a survey of important pests and diseases in the safflower-growing regions of India (101). As mentioned previously, regional environmental problems are the most severe faced by safflower growers. Most farmers growing safflower can not afford the inputs that would help them achieve much better yields in their particular area. Treatments necessary to protect seed are well understood. Rust (Puccinia carthami) can be checked by using 0.3% Daconil, Bavistin, Difolatan, or 0.3% M.B.C. as a seed treatment or by spraying wettable 0.3% sulphur, 0.2% Daconil, 0.1% Bayleton, or 0.25% Dithane M-45 (101,114,115). Similarly, fertilizer is recommended to be applied at a rate of 40–80 kg N/ha and 20–40 kg P2O5/ha under irrigation and 20–40 kg N/ha and 20–25 P2O5/ha without irrigation (13). Again, many farmers can not afford this luxury. Higher plant densities combined with correct fertilizer applications have shown much better yields (116), but the cost of additional seed is always a problem. In Andhra Pradesh, safflower is recommended as a winter-planted double crop following monsoon plantings of sorghum; if planted in an intercropping scheme, one row of safflower to two rows of bengal chickpeas is recommended (101). In western Maharashtra, safflower is recommended to follow monsoon plantings of intercropped sorghum and green gram or in paired rows if intercropped with alternates

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Figure 16.4. Safflower as a border crop. This picture was actually taken near Meshed, Iran, but the practice is common in India as well. Source: P.F. Knowles. (101). Finally, in Karnataka, the recommendation has been for wheat and safflower to be intercropped in a 3 : 1 row ratio (101,117). Since the wheat involved has to be harvested by hand, the workers involved face a very difficult task because of the safflower spines (118). A report at the 1993 Safflower Conference indicated that, while growing safflower alone would produce the most income, growing six rows of barley with two rows of safflower planted with a 50% of normal plant population would produce a good alternative to wheat intercropping and would allow space enough to harvest the barley easily (119). Unlike many areas growing safflower, India faces severe problems with five species of aphids, particularly Uroleucon compositae (Theobald) and to a lesser degree, the gram pod borers, Heliothis armigera (120,121). Loss of yield from aphid attacks can range from 20–24% to 35–60% (120,122). Heliothis losses vary depending on climatic conditions. Ghorpade and Shindi recommended avoiding intercropping with gram because that crop attracts Heliothis (120). Other recommendations to avoid problems with these insects were to plant early (by the first week in October in Maharashtra), plant tolerant varieties and spray with 0.05% methyl parathion (50 EC) or 2% methyl parathion dust at a rate of 20 kg/ha during bud formation to when 50% of the flowers have opened (120). Earlier recommendations had been to use 0.05% dimethoate (30 EC) or a number of other materials (101), but later work found the parathions much more effective. In addition to rust, safflower in India is subject to severe problems with Alternaria carthami. Seed treatments of Captan or Carbendatim have been found to be effective (101,123,124), and two sprays with Mancozeb (Dithane M-45) have been effective for the control of leaf spot (125).

TABLE 16.18. Cultivars of Safflower Recommended in Various States of India Days to Harvest

Yield (kg/ha)

Oil Content (20) (%)

Manjira

105

670-1590

32.5

APRR-3 59-2-1 A-1 A-300 S-144 JSF-1 NP-18 Tara N-62-8

120-130 146 122-125 130–135

1000-1200 1100 800-880 750-800 1000-1200 2000a 950-1100 770 1200–1400 100–1250

33

160 120 125 134-145

Nagapur-7 Bhima (S-4) CO-1

140–150 1200–1400 120–125

1000–1250

Local-1 29-A 140 T-65

108–160 2500a 180–190

900–1600

Andhra Pradesh Bihar Karnataka

Madhya Pradesh Mamarashtra

Tamil Nadu Uttar Pradesh

Characteristics Medium height, yellow/orange, fresh/dry flowers, white seeds.

32

Tall; dull white seed. Responds to irrigation and fertilizer; dull white seed. Same except creamy white seed. Drought tolerant, responds to irrigation.

30

Partially resistant to aphids.

31

32.2 30.3

Semierect, responds to close spacing. Responds well to wider spacing in medium to heavy soils, yellow/red, fresh/dry flowers. heavy soils, yellow/red, White flowers, creamy white seeds.

32.5 800

1200–1500

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Name of Cultivar

State

Tolerant to alternaria and wilt; nonspiny, suitable for mixed cropping with cotton. Late maturing. Responds well to irrigation. Resistant to ramularia Leaf Spot and rust. Large head, yellow/orange, fresh/dry flowers.

aUnder irrigation.

403

Source: Singh and Rao (101).

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Figure 16.5. Harvesting safflower with a sickle. Source: P.F. Knowles. Finally, it is recommended that manual harvesting should be done in the early morning hours of the day (Figure 16.5). It is recommended because dew will help to soften the spiny leaves and bracts, thus making harvesting less painful (101). Although many cultivars from all over the world have been tried, seeds that produce high oil contents in other countries have not done the same in India. Definite progress has been made in finding germ plasm that is tolerant to aphids (120), resistant to disease (123), and many other factors. If farmers can find ways to implement the factors Indian research has found to better control problems, average yields could be easily increased 100%. Hybrid safflower is also an option that appears attractive to Indian researchers (126). A commercial trial was made by Cargill in the 1980s, but the project was abandoned after several years. Yield was increased but oil content dropped correspondingly and grower/oil mill interest eventually subsided.

Mexico History Early Spaniards probably introduced safflower into Mexico to be grown for its flowers (13,127). No one knows exactly who first tried safflower as an oil crop in Mexico, but Leodegario Quilantan Villarreal probably has the best insight. For many

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years he was the Director of the Centro de Investigaciones Agricolas del Noreste (CIANO), an agricultural experiment station at Ciudad Obregon, working on safflower. I interviewed Quilantan on the subject (May 10, 1989 at Ciudad Obregon). He thought that the first safflower seeds were introduced into the central region of El Bajio of Mexico in the late 1940s. Sevilla reports that the Office of Special Studies of the Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock began the first safflower adaptation trials in 1948 (128). Alejandro Terrones outlined the early development of safflower in the presentations he made to the ACS and at the AOCS meeting in Singapore (129,130). Safflower was introduced to farmers in Mexico in the early 1950s. It was planted first in the central plateau and in the Sonora and Sinaloa states at about the same time. I am certain that some of the American farmers that emigrated to Sonora in the 1950s brought safflower seeds along. When the cotton market collapsed, safflower production began in Tamaulipas State in northeast Mexico for reasons similar to California’s Boswell and Giffen Ranches. In 1957, just prior to joining POI, Donald L. Smith of the Rockefeller Foundation interviewed Efraim Hernandez at Obregon. Hernandez, a self-taught botanist, had made the main Mexican collection of corn and had a fine knowledge of early safflower culture in Mexico. He called it “azafrancillo,” literally bastard saffron. He subsequently gave D. Smith a copy of a bulletin on safflower, published by CIANO—one of Mexico’s first efforts on safflower (131). Luis Salido of Culiacan has been credited with being the first to call safflower “cartamo” (Hoffman, A., Pacific Oilseeds memorandum, April 26, 1960). Alejandro Terrones has outlined several stages of development for Mexico’s safflower crop (129). The first was the period during the late 1940s and mid-1950s. The second stage from 1955–65 saw the crop grow from 1,500 ha to approximately 30,000 ha. Several factors contributed to this increase, not only in plantings, but yield as well. 1. 2.

3.

4.

More of the crop was being irrigated. Mexican government programs that provided price, credit, and water-allocation assistance were instituted to increase domestic oilseed production. Sevilla reports that after 1960 the National Institute of Agriculture Research (INIA), now called the National Research Institute for Forestry and Agriculture (INIFAP), began to investigate improving seed types and to study cultural practices and plant breeding (128). Sesame seed exports began to climb to levels that discouraged sesame oil production. At the time, sesame oil was considered to be the highest quality oil by the Mexican consumer. Safflower’s emergence satisfied the need for another quality oil. Low production cost and lower water needs allowed safflower to appeal to farmers, particularly in northwest Mexico, as an alternative to then-available wheat varieties.

In 1955, promoters, such as Pedro Borgues of Sinaloa, began to import small quantities of safflower seed from growers in the United States and tried them on Mexico’s west coast for the next 3 years. Borgues acted as a dealer, buying crops and selling the seed

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to buyers in Mexico City and Guadalajara, including PVO’s Nacional de Cornercio. Growers were able to produce safflower for a cost of 320 pesos/ha and sold the 1–2 MT/ha for 1,100 pesos/MT. This began to create excitement in Mexican newspapers. It is surprising that PVO had so little to do with early safflower development in Mexico, considering its pioneering work all over the world. This was because PVO felt that the crop was not adapted to parts of the country and that it had little chance to control the crop in Mexico. During this time, PVO tried from afar to reduce this threat to its program. In December 1957, I received a letter from Albert Lent, Manager of Arizona Flour Mills, who wrote at the suggestion of my uncle, Carlos Ronstadt, on behalf of a group of American investors and Mexican farm partners that wanted to grow large quantities of safflower. I replied with the party line, warning against irrigated production until root rot resistant varieties became available and advising a slow start. I also suggested that Nacional de Comercio would be interested in acquiring the small quantities they might produce. At the same time, realizing that it could not stem the tide any longer, PVO reversed its earlier policy and entered the Mexican safflower business with both feet. In 1957, Carlos Cuvi began to devote a high percentage of his time to Mexican safflower business, initially building up industrial oils business through the Nacional de Comercio and Sociedad Comercial y Industrial subsidiaries of PVO in Mexico City. In late May/early June 1958, Claassen of PVO’s Pacific Oilseeds subsidiary made a survey of safflower in the Los Mochis area. He recommended that more cultural research was needed and, together with Cuvi, began work on a safflower production bulletin to distribute to farmers. In 1959, farmer interest increased because of wheat surplus problems. Cotton production was facing a 40% reduction since the Mexican government wanted to cut production even more in the northwest, where crops such as safflower could be grown as alternatives. Cuvi began to work with Angel Rodriguez, the only oil miller in Baja California Sur, to promote safflower there, since the area was isolated from competition and also was free of the export controls that restricted the rest of Mexico. Cuvi also registered a brand name, “Karthamus,” to be used on safflower salad oil packaging in supermarkets, aimed at selling the oil for an 80% premium over regular products. After a 1960 survey by Al Hoffman, D. Smith, and E.A. Hill (of PVO), POI did not agree with Cuvi’s optimism (Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., memorandum, April 26, 1960). In 1960, PVO, through its Paveocor subsidiary, acquired a 50% interest in the Aceites Grasas y Derivados SA (AGYDSA) oil-milling company in Guadalajara and completed the addition of solvent-extraction capabilities to that company in 1961 (see Chapter 4). Concurrently, POI began working with Semillas Nacionales, a Mexican planting seed firm owned in part by Robert Greening, an American expatriate. Semillas Nacionales’ initial role was to provide sound cultural advice to Mexican safflower farmers and to import POI varieties. Eventually, the role was expanded to produce some seed on a local basis (see SeedTec, Chapter 17). Unfortunately, Greening, Claassen, and Cuvi often disagreed, which resulted in vastly different reports concerning the safflower situation at times.

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Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., introduced the Pacific-1 variety but quickly found that it was unable to prevent people from stealing its technology. Some growers kept part of their crop back for planting purposes while others sold their crop to seed dealers. The variety subsequently got mixed with other lines, but for years Mexican farmers referred to the mixture as “Pacifico.” While this was unfortunate for POI, it was even more unfortunate for Mexico, since it left the farmers with planting seeds that deteriorated in quality year after year and discouraged U.S. seed companies from selling improved seeds to Mexico for many years. Therefore, until about 1990, Mexican safflower seed never exceeded 38% oil content and usually averaged 35–36%. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation also made a Technical Assistance Agreement with Aceites Polimerizados’ Jose Terrones (Alejandro Terrones’ father) in 1959. Jose Terrones built the first solvent-extraction plant in Mexico City, the second extractor erected in all of Mexico, and used the PVO technology to allow him to enhance his industrial oil business in linseed and safflower oil. While this was going on, farmer unions in Sonora had been able to import Gila root rot resistant planting seed and started increasing irrigated production. Subsequently, this production spread into irrigated areas of Sinaloa as well. In 1960, Anderson Clayton, Co.; Cargill; and others began to work on Mexican safflower. Later in 1960, one of PVO’s associates entered into a joint venture with PVO in the Midwest and at the same time made overtures to dealers in Guasave to begin producing 10,000 MT of seed in competition with the joint venture. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s reason for building the AGYDSA addition was Cuvi’s belief that producing oil in your own mill was the only way to have reasonable control over the price of oil with so many others jumping into safflower. By this time, prices for safflower seed had climbed to 1,200 pesos/MT. As mentioned previously, PVO, through its Paveocor subsidiary, acquired a 50% interest in AGYDSA from the Sainz family on January 1, 1961. Ceferino Sainz Pardo became President of the new organization, and Cuvi became General Manager of AGYDSA. Shortly thereafter AGYDSA obtained a 15-year option to purchase the land and equipment of Nueva Galicia, S.A., (the manufacturing facility owned by the Sainz family); that option was exercised on January 1, 1964. The plant, which had crushed cottonseed on an expeller basis previously, was to be converted to crushing on a prepress/solvent-extraction basis with miscella refining. Merton Boomer, a consulting engineer formerly with Western Vegetable Oil, was employed to redesign the plant, supervise the construction, and train the employees to handle the new technology. Miscella-refining technology was licensed from George Cavanaugh, Chief Chemist of Ranchers Cotton Oil of Fresno, who provided technical assistance as well. When the new AGYDSA plant kicked off, the new equipment was very successful in processing and refining cottonseed, but less so in processing safflower. Boomer’s schooling had emphasized to the expeller operators that it was no longer necessary to try to get all of the oil out of the seed, instead the objective had changed to increase the tonnage that passed through the presses. Additionally cooking safflower was counterproductive, since it tended to cause oil in the conveying systems to polymerize faster over time (causing periodic cleanup problems) and tended to

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increase color in oil produced. It took more than 2 years to get the workers to change. Even though their supervisors would release the pressure on the expellers and lower cooking temperatures at the start and end of each shift, the men coming onto the next shift would change them back—it was the way they had been trained to run expellers for the previous 20 years, and they could not bring themselves to adjust. Miscella refining also failed to be much of an advantage in safflower refining. Since safflower oil is generally low in FFA, the centrifuges in a miscella system do not have enough soap to really “bite” on, and so after a while, AGYDSA gave up trying to run its miscella refinery on safflower and dealt with it conventionally. The AGYDSA operation was very profitable for its owners. An interesting sidelight was that much of the safflower oil produced was blended into sesame oil. As mentioned previously, during the 1950s sesame oil had been the premium oil of choice in Mexico, but as sesame’s value in the rest of the world increased, safflower found a niche. Over time, pure safflower oil brands were accepted by the public and then became the next oil into which other oils, principally sunflower in the 1970s, were blended. In the period from the mid-1960s through 1975, safflower planting steadily grew to over 200,000 ha, and planting was extended to all parts of the country. In 1971, Mexican safflower yields reached their zenith at 1,671 kg/ha for a national average (129). Helping to fuel the increase, the Mexican government began to provide a yearly support price for safflower seed in 1966 (129). For awhile, when production exceeded the growing local demand, Japan also became a good customer first for safflower seed (Mexico refused to license exports of safflower oil) and then safflower meal. From 1970–80, safflower production increased until it reached a maximum of 557,000 MT in 1979 (129), but then started to decline. The increase during the first half of the decade was fueled by large advances in dryland planting, while irrigated acreage began to shift to planting of new varieties of wheat developed by the Borlaug Experiment Station at Obregon, very similar to what happened in California. As the percentage of dryland acreage increased, production began to decrease. In the last half of the decade, the government shifted emphasis from promoting oilseed productio to encouraging cereals. As part of its program, the government began to place ceiling prices on edible oils along with its program through Conasupo, the government’s supply agency, to ensure that there were inexpensive supplies of beans and corn. Ceiling prices limited the prices that the industry could pay, sometimes forcing confrontations between members of industry, farmers, and the government agencies charged with dealing with their affairs. Usually this ended with Conasupo authorizing support prices higher than the mills could pay for a portion of the crop and enacting temporary subsi-dies to sustain mills and refineries. In an attempt to keep oil costs low to satisfy a rapidly expanding population, the government began to authorize larger importation first of inexpensive oilseeds and then of oils and meals. Sunflower production in the United States had been expanding and the Mexican market offered a good outlet. As sunflower imports increased exponentially, consumption of safflower oil declined, first due to blending and subsequently due to the proliferation of sunflower brands on supermarket shelves.

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The entire Mexican economy struggled during this period, and finally almost collapsed in 1982, when the Mexican peso was allowed to float (132,133). Safflower seed production fell drastically in the 1980s as the government progressively low-ered, and in 1990 removed, safflower seed supports. Additionally, the government sold off the Conasupo oil mills it had acquired as the Longoria empire collapsed. Over one-half of the Mexican oil mills were closed, never to open again. Because safflower required low quantities of water and could be planted as an alternative if cereals could not be planted on time, production continued to attract farmers. Production drifted to a level of about 150,000 MT, much of it planted by relatively poor farmers using little or no water, poor seed, and few other inputs. Still, safflower is a survivor and many of the farmers growing it do so because they feel that it is relatively dependable. Safflower production will probably be maintained at this level. In 1985, Mexico began to free its economy from the controls it had maintained for the past 40 years. First, the system of controls on export licenses was removed in order to try to encourage export business. In 1986, Mexico joined GATT. Then, it was announced that import controls would be removed, ceiling prices would be eliminated, and only a system of import duties would be in place. In 1990, while this system was being installed, the government took control one last time to force oil millers to pay higher prices to farmers for safflower seed. This was done by delaying the removal of ceiling prices and lower duties for all oilseed products, in exchange for the mills agreeing to a higher price for safflower farmers. Since safflower crushing represented only 5% of the Mexican oil business, the mills involved had to capitulate in order to free up imports they had already purchased with the understanding that duties and licenses would be changed. On January 1, 1989, the United States entered into a system of harmonized tariff nomenclature with many of its trading partners around the world, including Mexico. This replaced the previous Tariff Schedules of the United States (TSUS) with a new Harmonized System (HS) for listing all commodities in international trade. Safflower oil from Mexico had been free to move into the United States without penalty under the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). In 1987, when the U.S. International Trade Commission sought public comment on the effect of the upcoming Harmonization Treaty, no one thought to object. But buried in the Harmonization Regulations, safflower oil, which previously had been listed under a generalized category that made it eligible for GSP treatment, was placed in a category with sunflower and cottonseed oils. The change in categories resulted in safflower oil being assigned HS Nos. 1512.11.00.408 and 1512.19.00.400 for crude and refined safflower oil, respectively, and not being eligible for GSP treatment. This meant that safflower oil imported into the United States would face a $40–50/MT ($0.02/kg plus 4% ad valorem) penalty. Sam Evans of Producers Cotton Oil Company, John T. Ponting of California Oils Corporation, and I protested this move at an ITC hearing in San Francisco on February 15, 1989, but our protest was denied. Subsequently, we withdrew the petition to grant safflower GSP treatment on September 21, 1989. Surprisingly, the duty imposed has not curtailed safflower imports into the United States, since most

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duties collected were recovered by the draw back process as equivalent amounts of oil were exported. Production Safflower is grown under six different schemes of production within Mexico: 1. Dryland planting in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where most of the region’s annual rain falls between October 15 and December 15, following harvest of soybeans or sorghum, and harvest is between mid-March and May. Most of the planting occurs in the southern districts of El Mante, Gonzalez, and Altamira, with smaller amounts planted in the Victoria region of central Tamaulipas. These districts are susceptible to frost damage after planting, drought in many seasons, and, in other years, torrential Gulf rains at the time of flowering through harvesting. The rains can bring on attacks of alternaria or pseudomonas head rot, such as occurred in 1992. Yield and quality are highly variable in this region, usually ranging between 300–600 kg/ha. Tamaulipas has the potential to plant 150,000 ha with a production of perhaps 60,000 MT. In recent seasons, production has ranged between 17,000 and 35,000 MT. Oil contents of 32–35% are common with FFA from 1.0–4.0%, depending on the season. 2. The next area to begin harvesting is the Cienega de Chapala region in the states of Michoacan and Jalisco, on the east side of Lake Chapala. Safflower is planted on irrigated fields surrounding the lake and on land in the dry lake bed. The level of the lake rises and falls with changes in the weather. For example, in the 1990s the water level has been increasing, and therefore, the amount of land available for safflower planting has declined. A small amount of true dryland safflower is also planted in the surrounding hill country. On the dry lake bed, safflower yields of 3.0–4.0 MT/ha are attained, fueled by the combination of rich land and a high water table. Usually, 2,000–4,000 ha of dry lake bed are devoted to safflower. This area and the Tulare Lake bed area of California are similar in many ways, and both are capable of consistently producing the world’s best safflower yields. The one negative factor this region faces, compared to the Tulare Lake bed, is a summer rainy season. To be successful, safflower must be planted early enough to allow harvesters to begin and finish in early May, before the beginning of the rainy season in June. If safflower is planted late or the rainy season starts early, farmers eager to get the seed harvested can deliver high-moisture seed that needs to be dried. The irrigation district adjacent to the lake comprises approximately 50,000 ha, and safflower is a popular crop with all the farmers tilling it. Safflower plantings normally follow corn or sorghum and make up 15–25% of the total planted land in the district. Yields usually range between 2.5 and 3.0 MT/ha. This region has the potential to produce up to 100,000 MT of safflower. In recent seasons, it has produced in the 10,000–30,000 MT range. 3. Safflower in the state of Sinaloa is next in the harvesting order. Several production schemes are to be found in this area. In a 40-km radius around the city of

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Culiacan, safflower is planted following rice, and to some extent, soybeans, taking advantage of residual soil moisture. Production here is very volatile and in recent years appears to be declining. For example, in 1992, almost all plantings in this area were lost shortly after planting because of flooding, while in 1993, plantings were very limited by extremely dry weather in November and December. The chances of fog and rain after flowering also produces varying degrees of damage from alternaria, botrytis, or pseudomonas. In the dryland in the surrounding hills and over into Guamuchil/Mocorito, Guasave, and El Fuerte Valley around Las Mochis, farmers plant safflower because of its low moisture requirements; occasionally it is planted under irrigation. But safflower is not a miracle crop, and generally yields are very poor. Sometimes they are reduced further by humidity-driven diseases at the time of harvest. Yields generally range below 1.0 MT/ha. The entire area has the potential to produce up to 50,000 MT of safflower. Farmer interest has been declining in recent years because of the growing importance of other alternatives. 4. Among the northern Sinaloa border and in southern Sonora, safflower finds more reliable growing conditions. In the El Mayo Valley around Huatabamo and Navajoa, yields of good quality seed averaging 1 MT/ha are obtained on about 15,000 ha. 5. In the El Yaqui Valley around Ciudad Obregon, safflower is mostly irrigated, but generally not to its full potential. This area has conditions similar to the Five Points area of California, and yields average about 1.8 MT/ha, although good practices can achieve 3.5 MT/ha. Production in this region usually does not rise above 10,000 MT except in years when prices are high or if some of the many alternatives are not available. Small amounts of good quality safflower are also produced near Guaymas, on the coast west of Hermosillo and at Caborca in northern Sonora. The annual potential of this group of production areas is about 10,000 MT of good quality safflower. The only problems that normally can affect safflower in Sonora are caused by late planting that result in the harvest being caught by monsoon-type rains in July. 6. In Baja California Norte, good safflower seed yields and quality (2.2 MT/ha) can be obtained in the Mexicali Valley under irrigation. In Baja California Sur, a small amount of safflower is produced in the Santo Domingo Valley. Finally, in the La Laguna region around Torreon in the central highlands of Mexico, 3,000–5,000 MT of good quality safflower is produced under dryland conditions supplemented by irrigation in years when reservoirs are full. Alejandro Terrones has summarized the range of production that Mexico can expect under current conditions (129,130), as shown in Table 16.19. We expect production to decrease slowly from the quantity shown, as consumption of safflower oil within Mexico declines. This trend could reverse if production in California declines. The rise and fall of safflower production in Mexico can be seen in Tables 16.20–16.23. Table 16.20 compares estimates by members of Mexico’s industry compared to government estimates; we believe the industry estimate to be more accurate. Table 16.21 gives estimates of the distribution of the safflower crop during its period of expansion. Table 16.22 is a private estimate of production in Mexican

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TABLE 16.19 Regional Ranges of Mexican Safflower Production Region

Range of Planting (ha)

Tamaulipas 17,000–40,000 Cienega 20,000–30,000 Culiacan 10,000 Guamuchil 15,000–30,000 Guasave 5,000–10,000 Mochis 5,000–10,000 Mayo 15,000–20,000 El Yaqui 10,000–25,000 Sonora Coast 3,000–5,000 Caborca 3,000–5,000 Mexicali 10,000–20,000 Baha California del Sur/Torreon 2,000–6,000 Total 115,000–221,000

Average Production (MT) 30,000 25,000 20,000 12,000 15,000 7,500 7,000 15,000 18,000 3,000 3,000 15,000 4,000 153,500

Source: Terrones (129,130).

states in recent years. Table 16.23 shows the production in each Mexican state in a typical year. Even though Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, and Sonora dominate production, it is interesting to see how many states produce some safflower. Planting Seed/Agronomic Research Agronomic research in Mexico commenced in 1948 when the Office of Special Studies of the Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock conducted adaptation studies. Although cultivation of safflower began in Mexico in the early 1950s, serious agronomic research did not begin until 1960 under INIA. This program began to study planting dates, seeding rates, and development of varieties. The first results of the program were the varieties Huamaya, Kino-76, Mante-81, Aceitera 84, and later Noroeste, VF-89, Cienega, and Diana. In 1989, a program at the Ciudad Obregon Experiment Station was begun to test a number of varieties comparing oil and protein, effect of planting date on oil and protein content and oleic and linoleic levels (128). Tables 16.24–16.26 show the results obtained in 1990 and 1991. In their report, Sevilla et al. also comment on S-541 having an oil content > 40%, protein content of 12%, and being the most consistent variety (128). It was not included in the data reported. The report really reached no conclusions. The data reported was consistent with the data reported by the Yaqui Valley Experiment Station (138). The remainder of the bulletin gives details (Tables 16.27–16.29) of the breeding history and cultural characteristics of these lines. I was surprised when I found this bulletin at the Obregon Station in 1989. Nobody involved seemed to be concerned about releasing a variety (Quiriego 88) that was neither a high-oleic nor high-linoleic type. Upon investigation, I was told that the variety was not expected to be planted commercially. It is obvious from the results in Table 16.26 that the San Jose 89 variety released a year later than Quiriego 88 had a similar problem, yet nobody reacted to stop its release either. In general, safflower

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TABLE 16.20 Mexican Production of Safflower Seed Area Harvesteda Productiona Year (1,000 ha) (1,000 MT) 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993– 1994

– – 46 36 32 59 171 120 115 140 173 261 199 198 192 363 185 390 429 494 392 391 186 250 227 250 278 – 152 158 153 97 – – –

– – 65 50 45 80 236 149 102 209 289 412 271 298 272 532 240 521 557 530 400 312 200 272 204 144 160 – 172 157 167 134 – 69 –

Area Harvestedb (1,000 ha)

Productionb (1,000 MT)

26 33 37 37 36 59 165 100 86 145 175 265 199 198 192 363 185 404 429 523 398 391 211 349 227 234 204 277 200 150 157 90 81 59 58

32 41 47 47 47 80 236 149 102 209 289 411 271 298 272 532 240 518 616 628 446 339 221 277 209 156 161 219 247 142 159 84 59 69

Sources: aTerrones, I., and J.L., Terrones, A., unpublished data. bEstadisticas Historicas de Mexico (134); Annuario Estadisco de los Estados Unidos Mexicana 1987 (135); and Yearbook, Production: FAO

oil exported from Mexico has exhibited linoleic levels higher than 75%, contrary to what Table 16.26 shows for the commonly grown varieties. During the 1992 season, significant quantities of Quiriego 88 and San Jose 89 varieties were planted, harvested, and processed. Some resultant oil was delivered to U.S. buyers—much to their chagrin. In 1993, a program was instituted by some buyers to refuse or discount delivery of these types.

TABLE 16.21 Distribution of Mexican Safflower Production During a Period of Crop Expansiona

Tamaulipas – Michoacn/Jalisco – Sinaloa 54.5 Sonora 11.7 Baja Cal Sur – Baja Cal Norte – La Laguna 2 Total 68.2

3 – 60 20 – – 3 83

1966 Area Prod.

1967 Area Prod.

2 – 105 49 4 3.5 7 171.5

20 – 58 195 3.5 7 9 115

18 – 100 103 8 5 12 230

40 – 1 19 3.5 12.5 8.4 64.4

1968 Area Prod.

1969 Area Prod.

1970 Area Prod.

1971 Area Prod.

1972 Area Prod.

26.8 12 – – 47 52.2 21 42.5 4 7.2 4 7.3 4.5 6.0 120.5 142

4 40 4 3 49 62.3 21.7 43.4 1 1 26 30 17 24 130.7 167.7

40 40 4 3 60 66 30 60 3 5.2 26 39 15 19 178 232.2

40 4 62 25 3 30 10 174

40 4 65 25 3 30 10 177

40 3 68 50 5.2 45 13 224.3

414

1965 Area Prod.

3 72 50 5.2 45 13 228.2

aArea in thousand ha and production in thousand MT.

Safflower

Source: Terrones Langone, and Terrones y Lopes (137).

TABLE 16.22 Distribution of Mexican Safflower Production in Recent Yearsa 1988 Area Prod. Tamaulipas 25.3 Michoacan/Jalisco 7.2 Sinaloa 134.8 Sonora 15.6 Baja Cal Sur – Baja Cal Norte 1.9 La Laguna 1 Total 151.5

1989 Area Prod.

16.6 30 20 14.2 17 35 109.6 79.4 41.2 27.1 23.4 44.8 – – – 3.7 5.4 12.4 1.2 3 3.6 172.4 158.3 157

1990 Area Prod. 45 8 36.7 21.5 1.5 6.2 2.5 153.3

aArea in thousands of ha and production in thousands of MT. Source: Smith, personal records; and A. Terrones, personal records.

40 30 28.5 51.1 2.3 10.5 5 167.4

1991 Area Prod.

1992 Area Prod.

1993 Area Prod.

1994 Area Prod.

1995 Area Prod.

33 33.6 9.5 20.5 21.6 27.2 17 35 – – 5 10 2 3 96.5 134.3

40 4 20 3.3 – 1.6 3 80

33 3.0 13.0 17.0 – 3.0 4.0 73.0

32.4 2.5 15.5 14.0 3.0 3.0 7.5 62.4

25 3 11.6 22 – 3 2 66.6

24 3.7 7 8.9 – 2.6 5.5 51.2

16.5 7.5 9.1 34.0 – 6.0 8.0 82.1

3.9 5.0 9.6 21.0 2.0 4.0 11.3 56.8

8 6 9 40 – 3 3 69

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TABLE 16.23 Mexican Safflower Production by State for 1986 State

ha

MT

Baja California 1,660 Baja California Sur 905 Coahuila3,458 4,043 Chichihua 449 Hidalgo 97 Jalisco 2,191 Michoacan 12,754 Nayarit 160 Nuevo Leone 10 San Luis Potosi 3,573 Sinaloa 34,564 Sonora 13,360 Tamaulipas 130,143 Vera Cruz 500 Total 204,373

MT/ha

5,228 979 1.169 888 150 3,338 21,966 148 4 2,217 23,819 25,433 71,724 207 160,843

3.149 1.082 1.978 1.546 1.523 1.722 0.925 0.4 0.62 0.689 1.904 0.551 0.414 0.787

Source: Annario Estadistico de Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos 1987 (135).

TABLE 16.24 Comparison of Oil Content and Protein (1989–90) Variety

Oil Content (%)

Protein (%)

38.98 38.54 34.31 38.81 38.75 35.32 36.34 37.25 37.19 35.51 36.50 32.61

21.0 20.79 21.16 21.28 20.80 21.29 21.06 22.02 22.95 21.76 22.78 21.82

San Jose 89 C765-4Y-6Y-0Y C765-3Y-1Y-0Y CD-877-C-1Y-0Y CC28-2Y-1Y-0Y S-202/E (RCH) Quirego Sahuaripa 88 Gila Kino 76 Mante 81 Noroeste 84 Source: Sevilla et al. (128).

TABLE 16.25 Effect of Planting Date on Oil Content and Protein of Varieties Tested in Tables 16.24 and 16.26 Planting Date

Minimum Oil Content (%) Protein

Maximum Oil Content (%) Protein

Average Variation Oil ConOil Content (%) Protein tent (%) Protein

November 1 December 10 January 10 February 10

32.09 34.22 31.29 32.85

40.40 41.45 38.24 38.68

37.14 39.42 35.30 35.03

Source: Sevilla et al. (128).

20.10 20.20 17.87 20.02

24.9 24.26 22.79 24.88

22.35 21.81 30.24 22.21

7.26 5.5 5.9 5.41

6.75 6.14 8.0 6.16

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TABLE 16.26 Fatty Acid Content by Percent for Mexican Safflower in 1990 Variety

Oleic

Linoleic

San Jose 89 C-765-4Y-6Y-0Y C-765-3Y-1Y-0Y CD-877-C-1Y-0Y CC-28-2Y-1Y0Y S-202/E (RCH) Quiriego 88 Sahuaripa 88 Gila Kino 76 Mante 81 Noroeste VF-84

33.03 17.14 14.27 18.89 17.06 19.33 28.73 16.65 17.64 16.90 16.26 17.23

55.80 73.31 75.21 70.94 73.03 71.47 62.20 74.51 73.34 73.0 74.41 72.75

Source: Sevilla et al. (128).

TABLE 16.27 Yield Trial at Obregon Variety Quiriego Sahuaripa Gila Kino 76

1985–86

1986–87

1987–88

2,787 2,586 2,411 2,395

2,934 2,781 2,670 2,656

3,338 3,063 2,431 2,440

Average 3,020 2,810 2,504 2,497

Source: SARH Technical Bulletin No. 11 (139).

For many years, U.S. seed dealers refused to sell seed to Mexico, but in recent times this has changed. Oilseeds International, Ltd., provided the Centennial variety for testing in Sinaloa, Adams Seed, Inc., introduced Cal West 44–40, and 88 OL (oleic) into Michoacan in 1992, and SVO planted a large quantity of Montola 2000 in Tamaulipas in 1992, but most of the latter was lost to alternaria. SeedTec International introduced the S-541 variety into Sonora, Sinaloa, and La Laguna in 1991 and is only providing it to growers willing to contract all of their production to crushers’ agents. An oleic type (S-518) was introduced in 1993. Cultural Practices When safflower began to be grown in Mexico, farmers quickly began to realize that there were serious problems to face concerning correct date, depth, and method of planting; damage from scalding, drowning out, and root rot associated with irrigation. In addition, there were diseases, particularly Alternaria carthami, Chowdbury, Puccinia carthami, Cda, Pseudomonas syringae, Van Hall, and Botrytis cinera Pers. ex. Fr. (140). Claassen, Hoffman, and Don Smith of Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., (private communication) all felt that safflower would not be able to expand as a crop on Mexico’s west coast after the survey trips they made in 1957–60. Their primary reason was based on the vast amount of rust (Puccinia carthami) they observed in all locations surveyed, and lack of sufficient moisture in the drier areas. Strangely, rust has not been a seri-

TABLE 16.28 Yields of Different Varieties in Mexican States Variety Quiriego Sahuaripa Gila Kino 76

Mexicali Guaymas 3,071 2,421 3,476 2,847

1,583 1,605 1,304 1,308

Yaqui

Mayo

Fuerte

Santo

3,338 3,063 2,431 2,440

3,796 3,800 3,708 3,934

3,656 3,836 3,925 3,167

3,952 4,016 3,098 2,853

Domingo La Laguna Average 2,437 2,640 3,043 1,898

3,150 3,096 3,072 2,642

Fatty Acid % Oleic Palmitc

Stearic

Iodine Value

2.48 2.37 1.70 2.59

124.61 135.88 139.61 139.04

TABLE 16.29 Analysis of Seed Produced in Variety Yield Trials

Variety Quiriego Sahuaripa Gila Kino 76

Oil Content (%)

Protein (%)

38.1 38.5 37.2 36.1

18.06 19.37 18.49 18.34

Specific Weight Weight 1,000 (kg/HL) Seeds 52.1 53.8 51.6 53.1

43.9 43.2 42.4 44.6

Linoleic 55.4 74.09 75.06 75.51

35.35 16.86 16.52 15.00

6.78 6.68 6.64 6.9

Safflower Around the World

3,370 3,387 3,597 2,687

Abbreviation: HL = Hectaliter.

417

Source: Musa et al. (140).

418

Safflower

ous problem for Mexican production, but certainly head and leaf rots (alternaria, pseudomonas, and botrytis) have caused severe problems in many seasons. Claassen’s observations (private communication, 1958) about dates of planting have proved accurate, and today most safflower in Mexico is planted as early as possible in order for the crop to avoid having to face rain at flowering through harvest time. Claassen also suggested that the distance between rows be decreased. This observation still has not been fully implemented in Mexico. Many farmers plant with very low seeding rates in widely spaced rows to try to conserve moisture in a dry year. Mexican government agencies and agronomists have published a number of bulletins and papers on safflower culture. A great deal of published material gives good general recommendations for both irrigated and dryland production in Mexico (131,141,142). In general, they recommend planting between November 15th and December 31st in heavy soils and December 15th and January 30th in alluvial soils in Sonora. Planting 15–20 days earlier in Tamaulipas and Sinaloa would probably be better. With a large seeded variety like Gila, 10–15 kg/ha is recommended. Based on U.S. experience, these figures seem low, but Mexican producers seem to get good stands with these planting levels. They emphasize the necessity to plant into moisture, particularly in heavy soils at a depth of 4–8 cm (depending on soil moisture) in rows of 75–92 cm with 10–15 plants/m, while Quilantan indicates that 20–30 plants/m may work well. A technical bulletin published in 1978 gives detailed recommendations on sprinkler irrigation (142); however, it is not commonly practiced in Mexico. For land that is irrigated, a Mexican government bulletin recommends four applications on heavy soils (once at planting time, once after about 50 days, after 80 days, and again after 110 days at the start of flowering). On alluvial soils, they recommend a preirrigation and one additional irrigation after planting when the plant begins to branch at 65–70 days (141). Nitrogen is the primary fertilizer recommended; phosphate is required only if chemical tests demonstrate a strong deficiency. On heavy soils, 90, 120, and 140 kg nitrogen/ha are recommended following wheat, corn or cotton, and soy, respectively. On alluvial soil the recommended amounts are about 10–20 kg less. Early cultivation of weeds with a harrow is recommended. Although recommendations are also made for the application of Trifluralin as a pre-emergence herbicide, we have observed that most producers in Mexico do without it or any other chemical controls. Again, the bulletins provide for applications of Pithane M-45 or Manzate 200 to try to control Alternaria carthami, but we have seen very little success in Mexico (or elsewhere) with any chemical treatments against this disease. Pacheco Mendivil has published a good review of insects that are potential safflower attackers (143). With the exception of army worms, he believes that insect control is not a principal problem in safflower production. In Mexico, flowering occurs 115–120 days after planting. Safflower reaches physiological maturity after 145–150 days and is ready for mechanical harvesting after 175–180 days. A government publication recommends a cylinder speed of 760–915 rpm, and lower if the seed is dry (138). I believe lower speed is a necessity in any case, opening the concaves from 9.5 to 16 millimeters, and slowing reel speed to 1.25 times the combine’s ground speed.

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In general, Mexican safflower is produced with amazingly few weed problems. Disease, drought, moisture, and damage from late harvest are its principal problems. Gaxiola listed Alternaria carthami, Puccinia carthami, and stemphilium as the principal disease problems in order of importance (144). Fucikovsky provides an accurate list of diseases encountered in Mexico and includes a good bibliography of other studies on the subject (145). It is hard to emphasize the seriousness of alternaria and related head-rotting diseases on safflower production in Mexico, particularly in Tamaulipas and Sinaloa. In Tamaulipas, the Mante area can be devastated in one year by drought, in the next season by alternaria, and in some years by both. The more humid areas of Sinaloa are especially hard hit in many seasons. Market Forces, Quantities, and Prices As mentioned elsewhere in this section, Mexican safflower development has gone though several phases; each of these phases has shaped the market for Mexican safflower seed, oil, and meal. For 22 years (until 1976), the Mexican peso exchange rate was fixed at 12.5/U.S.S. The Mexican government strictly controlled movements of currency in and out of the country and imports and exports were subject to licensing and quotas that could be canceled (and at times were) after being issued or announced. Foreign investment was limited to less than 50% ownership in companies or most land, although some investors avoided these rules by purchasing larger interests through Mexicans who held the stocks or properties in name only. More and more Mexican capital was invested in other parts of the world as the true value of the peso became more and more unrealistic. Under the Lopes Mateos administration, land holdings of 12 million ha were seized by the government, and small farmers were allowed to occupy these estates (148). Production fell and farming efficiency decreased dramatically, Mexico’s population began the massive move to the cities, particularly Mexico City, and population growth escalated. Quite quickly in the face of the green revolution, Mexico changed from an exporter of grains and oilseeds to a large importer. The activities of Conasupo, the large Mexican government agency charged with maintaining a stable, low-cost food supply, became more and more important. As support for grains and oilseed was implemented, Mexico’s internal prices for safflower seed and safflower oil became higher than prices in the United States and other parts of the world. This effectively isolated Mexican safflower for quite a long time. The only breaks in this isolation occurred in some of the years between 1966 and 1976 when production of safflower seed in Mexico was perceived to have exceeded internal demand. Safflower seed dealers on the west coast of Mexico were granted export licenses and safflower seed began to move to Japan. Dealers in the United States continually hammered on Mexican millers and the Mexican government to allow safflower oil to be exported in return for importation of cheaper soybean oil, but the authorities never would agree. A combination of pride (wanting to use Mexico’s own production to feed its own people) plus pressure from Mexican oil millers’ groups (wanting to process Mexican seed to keep their mills busy rather than to be forced to buy U.S. oil) kept this ban in place.

420

Safflower

Almost as quickly as the issuing of export licenses for safflower seed occurred, new bans were put in place. Since 1976, little safflower seed has moved from Mexico. Once or twice, safflower seed from northern Sonora was granted a license and moved to the United States, but those quantities were small. Several times, seed also moved across the Texas, Arizona, and California borders in small quantities without licenses being granted—dealing in this business was dangerous. Exportation of safflower seed was also limited by lack of good ship-loading facilities. Only the elevator at Guaymas, Sonora, offered modern ship-loading facilities, but it was seriously damaged in a grain explosion in the late 1970s. A more regular export trade in safflower meal was allowed to occur during the 1970s. This meal came primarily from mills in northwestern Mexico that were closer to dairy users or export terminals in California than they were to the principal markets for feedstuffs surrounding Mexico City. Mexican safflower meal was usually sold on a pro-fat basis rather than on the U.S. practice of basing pricing on protein only. Anderson, Clayton Co.; Balfour Guthrie; PVO; and later Agricom were the principal foreign buyers of Mexican safflower meal. The Mexican safflower crop is not contracted in advance of planting, as is done in the United States. Safflower is planted by the small farmer at his own risk. Along the west coast of Mexico, decisions as to whether or not to plant safflower can be affected by government policy on the release of irrigation water and by financing made available by the banks or farmer-owned credit unions. Some of the west coast unions are very strong, operating much like U.S. cooperatives, using their massed power to buy fertilizer, chemicals, and planting seed at advantageous prices; providing credit; buying seed from their members; and storing and processing the seed in their own oil mills and/or merchandising seed to others. Still the majority of the Mexican crop is sold to small local dealers that operate warehouses capable of unloading and storing 200–2,000 MT of seed. The farmer sends a load of 5 MT on a truck to the nearest dealer and asks for a spot price. If it is not satisfactory, the farmer drives from dealer to dealer until a satisfactory deal is struck. The dealer weighs and analyzes the seed and merchandises it to a distant oil mill. A dealer may buy on behalf of one particular oil-milling company, or may act independently and sell to whomever offers the best price. From 1966–90, the prices offered by dealers were affected by government support prices for safflower. At times the mills were unable to offer a free market price better than the government support price for safflower because the government mandated subsidies for oil milling and refining either as direct subsidies or as changes in the ceiling prices on vegetable oils that prevented them from offering a strong price. All of this resulted in annual battles between farmers, oil processors, and government agencies trying to balance support prices, production supplies, and ceiling prices. Now that safflower seed has been removed from the support price system, vegetable oil prices have been basically freed from control. As safflower began to be withdrawn from a system of internal controls, Mexico was moving rapidly into an export-oriented economy in the 1980s. Initially, Mexican oil mills and refineries were granted extra import licenses for cheaper vegetable oils if they generated foreign exchange by agreeing to export more expensive products, such as safflower oil. Starting in 1986, safflower oil began

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421

to be exported from Mexico, after that export licenses for safflower oil became increasingly easy to obtain. With the removal of import license requirements for vegetable oils in 1990, exports of safflower oil became even easier since export licenses were then granted as a matter of course. Concurrent with the easing of export regulations, there has been a real change in demand for safflower oil within Mexico. Consumers began to feel no need to pay a premium for “pure safflower oil” that may have been blended with other oils, and switched to less expensive branded salad oils that did not identify the ingredients. Some governmental attempts to attack adulteration were made, but this forced refiners that packaged pure safflower oil at high prices to continue to face others that ignored the government controls and used much less expensive blends. Mexico in the early 1990s had no real demand for safflower oil remaining, and export of the oil became essential. In 1995, poor peso exchange rates made importation of other oils difficult and safflower oil prices became attractive to Mexican refiners. Mexican safflower oil is normally shipped to U.S. points prior to transshipment elsewhere since there are few facilities in Mexican ports for fast loading of safflower oil on parcel tanker vessels. Shipment by truck to destinations in the United States other than border points is very difficult, because Mexican trucks are not licensed to travel within the United States. This means that a costly and time-consuming transfer between Mexican and U.S. tankers must be done within a customs compound at the border. Holidays, delays in coordinating arrival of trucks, vastly different sizes between Mexican and American equipment (Mexican trucks are much larger), delays because of customs disputes, drug enforcement agency inspections, periodic demands by the Food and Drug Administration that a particular shipment be segregated and held, and chances for contamination during an exchange have made truck movements almost impossible. Railroad shipments from Mexico to U.S. destinations are slow and usually move in cars leased from the United States because Mexican railcars are in poor condition. Most U.S. dealers provide for some type of confirmation of the oil quality at loading time at the oil mill in Mexico, since it is better to know if a quality problem exists right away than to find out 2 weeks later at a border point. Again, most cars moving across the border are sealed, so they may be subject to inspection at final destinations within the United States by the FDA. Prices paid for Mexican safflower seed have steadily increased over the years under the pressure of Mexico’s problems with inflation. These prices are compared with a value in U.S. dollars based on the exchange rate at the time in Table 16.30 to give a sense of the value of Mexican safflower in world terms. We should point out that average prices cited cannot, of course, reflect the huge variation that can take place during a given year. For example, prices for the 1992 crop started at 525,000 pesos and escalated to 1,100,000 pesos by the time harvest was complete. Table 16.31 lists official export figures for safflower seed from Mexico. It is believed that the actual shipments were somewhat larger than shown because of some unrecorded movements into the United States during the late 1970s. Table 16.32 attempts to chronicle exports of Mexican safflower oil during recent years. We have been unable to locate good Mexican government figures that cover

422

Safflower

TABLE 16.30 Prices Paid to Mexican Farmers for Safflower Seed, in Pesos and U.S. Dollar Equivalents Year

Average Price Pesos/MTa

Price Converted to U.S. $/MTb

1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

1,245 1,315 1,269 1,308 1,379 1,369 1,390 1,460 1,478 1,504 1,542 1,555 1,575 1,896 3,748 3,365 3,650 4,186 5,647 5,650 7,200 7,768 11,846 21,920 35,581 63,748 NA 600,000 550,000 650,000 700,000 650,000 850,000

99.60 105.20 101.52 104.64 110.32 109.52 111.20 116.80 118.24 120.32 123.36 124.40 126.08 151.68 299.84 269.20 232.63 184.49 248.11 247.59 313.32 316.93 206.23 182.42 212.09 248.05 NA 353.00 239.00 273.00 250.00 210.00 272.00

aEstadistas Historicas de Mexico (134). bEconomic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean (146); and Mexico, La Economica en Cifras (147). Abbreviation: NA = not available.

these movements, so this table combines U.S. government import data, together with data from the Port of Brownsville, Texas, official entries at the Port of Rotterdam, and personal knowledge. Some of this data is available on a calendar year basis; we have tried to convert it to a crop year basis. Finally, Table 16.33 lists prices paid for Mexican safflower seed in U.S.$/MT, on an ex spout Mexican West Coast port basis when such seed was being exported in the 1970s, and prices for Mexican safflower oil in more recent years on a middlebridge U.S. border basis, loaded in 75-ton railroad tank cars in U.S.$/MT. We know

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TABLE 16.31 Exports of Mexican Safflower Seed Year

Quantity (MT)

1966 1967 1971 1972 1973 1975 1976 1977 1979

50,607 21,822 280 47,381 12,662 5,782 68 19 117

Source: Estadiscas Historicas de Mexico (134).

of no official statistics for these prices other than the prices shown in U.S. Customs data, so most of this is based on personal knowledge. Safflower’s Future in Mexico Safflower in Mexico has been freed from governmental constraints and assistance. The vegetable oil market within Mexico now has little insulation from world prices, so unless safflower oil prices within Mexico are within 5–10% of imported soybean, sunflower, or canola oil prices, only those consumers that require the particular char-acteristics of safflower oil will purchase it. On the other hand, since Mexico generally exhibits lower farming costs; higher meal values; and lower labor, energy, and hexane costs than its neighbor the United States (and particularly California), it should continue to find a demand for its safflower oil on the international market. Current freight rates from Mexico’s east coast to Europe are substantially lower than rates from California, so Mexican safflower oil should be able to capture the safflower market in Europe. There are not many vegetable oil parcel tankers calling on TABLE 16.32 Estimated Exports of Mexican Safflower Oil Year 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

Quantity Exporteda (MT) 1,000 3,000 15,000 19,918 31,178 46,323 22,700 26,131b 20,754b

aExportation time period is from April–March of each year. bU.S. Customs Import data only Source: J. Smith, unpublished data.

424

Safflower

Mexico’s west coast today, but costs from Mexico to Japan versus California, should be similar. Therefore, Mexico should have a good chance of capturing the Japanese market as well. Freight rates from northern Mexican oil mills should allow them to reach much of the U.S. market as easily as California mills. None of this has happened yet. Mexico’s safflower oil moves to Europe primarily transshipping through U.S. ports and almost entirely through non-Mexican intermediaries. Mexican oil moves to the United States, and in some cases is reexported to Japan from the United States, through non-Mexican dealers. The reasons for this are rooted in recent history. Some Mexican oil mills have defaulted on sales and refused to make amends. Mexican hexane is poorly refined, containing unwanted hydrocarbons, and forces some buyers to specify delivery of oil only extracted with U.S. hexane. U.S. television abounds with pictures of lax pollution controls on Mexican farms and factories. Shoddy dealers have shipped oil exhibiting high colors, FFA, and sediment; low linoleic values; and sold safflower oil within Mexico adulterated with other oils. Until recently, there were no enforcement policies in effect to prevent premium oils from being blended with less expensive oils. Government seed research primarily had been aimed at increasing yield and not concerned with oil content or oil characteristics. Much of Mexico’s safflower is produced in areas that can suffer crop failures in a particular year, and most of the crop is still treated as a commodity and not a specialty. As reported elsewhere, rail and especially tank truck shipments between Mexico and the United States are slow and costly. The longer lasting memories of a society ridden with corruption, bribery, smuggling, and abrupt changes in government trade policies and currency values underlies foreign buyers’ reluctance. Mexico has done much to change the facts that bred those perceptions and continues to do more. If Mexico continues on this path to become a more reliable trading partner, the mills and dealers should be able to capture a substantial part of the safflower market both in the United States and other parts of the world. Mexico can not change the weather, but safflower can be produced in those parts of the country that offer the most security for a steady supply. Good quality and surety of supply are mandatory to capturing any specialty market, and Mexican safflower is no exception. TABLE 16.33 Prices of Mexican Safflower Exportsa Year

Safflower Seed $/MT FOB Vessel

1972 1975

125.30 240.00

aYears not listed had negligible export activity. Source: J. Smith, unpublished data.

Year

Safflower Oil $/MT

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

700–800 790–805 630–660 615–800 820–1,000 750–1000 750–850 800–850

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Spain Safflower entered Spain with the coming of the Moors. Safflower has continued to be grown in Spain as a food colorant in its own right and also as an adulterant for saffron. Knowles discovered this on one of his collection trips for safflower germ plasm in Spain (see Chapter 1). Saffron Saffron comes from the dried red stigmas of the saffron crocus (Crocus satirus L.). It is by far the world’s most expensive food spice, as pointed out by Basker and Negbi (149). Saffron is the richest known source of riboflavin with about 100 t/gram (150). Saffron contains crocetin, a substance that is theorized that acts as a serum cholesterol-reducing agent (151). The crocetin may account for the low incidence of heart disease in the parts of Spain where saffron is consumed liberally (152). Alpha-crocin, a water-soluble carotenoid, provides the color in saffron (153). Saffron is odorless when fresh (154), but develops a distinctive, pleasant odor during drying that is caused by the compound safranal. Safranal is the result of the degradation of a bitter compound, picrocrocin, found in the fresh stigmas (155,156). Saffron has always been terribly expensive. In medieval times, 0.5 kg saffron cost more than a horse (157) and the penalty in Nuremberg for adulteration was to be buried alive (158). In 1969, it was valued at $200/kg at the wholesale level. In 1983 it cost over five times that amount, and the price increased to around $100/ounce in 1989 and much higher at the retail level (159). Saffron must be picked on the exact day when the silky lavender flower of the crocus blooms during late October. The whole flower is picked, put into rope baskets, and rushed to local homes where women and children pluck the three tiny red stigmas that protrude from the center of each flower. Care must be taken to avoid crushing the stigma, and it must be free of the yellow style by which they are attached on the blossom. If the harvesting is delayed, the action of light causes the loss of picrocrocin and crocina. After picking, the stigmas are roasted on mesh screens over charcoal for 5–10 min at 90–105°C to a moisture content under 10%, and placed in bags for delivery to dealers. If properly dried and packaged in glass, saffron can be stored for 50 years (160), although others say 2 years without refrigeration (159). Saffron is now being produced successfully in California by amateur growers who dry it in ovens and store it in home freezers (161). Intact stigma filaments are hard to adulterate, but adulteration takes place in ground saffron powder. If adulterated, it tends to lose color and become more golden, whereas pure saffron darkens with age (160). Companies such as General Saffron Company of Spain, the world’s largest shipper, try very hard to prevent adulteration but the temptation remains. Spain is the main exporter with over 50% of its shipments going to the Arab world. Safflower Production of safflower in Spain for oil purposes did not start until 1962 when Claassen made his initial mission to Spain on behalf of PVO. Hard work by

426

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Claassen, Don Smith of POI, Rafael Carrascosa of POI’s Sepasa, Geronimo Cejudo, Francisco Gonzalez Avila, and Francisco Gonzalez Blazquez when combined with work by Spanish government researchers built up safflower production to a zenith of 70,000 ha in 1967, primarily in Andalucia. In 1968, a severe attack of pseudomonas head rot destroyed more than 90% of the 57,000 ha planted that year (162). Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., had no cultivars in its arsenal that could offer resistance, and growers became very wary. Carrascosa and POI worked hard to develop some tolerance and some changes in cultural practices were also attempted to avoid the problem. Varieties with some tolerance were released in 1973 (162), but Spanish safflower was already facing another serious problem. The Russian sunflower revolution was sweeping the world, and POI was very much involved in pushing it along. Claassen and Don Smith had found that sunflower was very successful in Spain and the hybrids that they were developing would make it even more so. Sunflower produces higher oil contents and definitely was producing better yields in many areas. During the hard times after the first pseudomonas attack, sunflower began to take over in areas where safflower had been TABLE 16.34 Planting and Consumption of Safflower and Sunflower in Spin Year 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988

Plantings (ha) Safflower Sunflower 300 3,300 7,600 21,000 62,000 53,700 11,000 15,000 20,000 9,000 15,800 17,000 17,000 17,000

500 1,200 4,900 6,900 17,600 31,500 71,000 155,000 300,000 237,500 328,300 286,000 318,000 338,000

aVallin (170). Source: PVO, unpublished data; and J. Smith, unpublished data.

Oil consumption (MT) Safflowera Sunflowera

218 166 263 34 38 223 165 132 – – – – – –

97,896 103,461 162,672 154,091 171,380 204,882 224,291 246,216 237,868 256,065 266,743 286,397 292,584 267,644 263,123 290,335

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grown. Other seed companies released newer and better sunflower hybrids in Spain in 1978 and later. This resulted in safflower plantings descending to an annual average of only 12,000 ha in the late 1980s. Since then, Spain has become a member of the European Community, in which sunflower is recognized with a subsidy and safflower is not. At this point it appears that safflower faces a very limited future in Spain unless a combination of change in government policy and a major breakthrough concerning yield or oil content in safflower varieties occurs. For awhile, part of the safflower grown in Spain was the oleic type, but this was never an important factor for Spain. The safflower research activities of Carrascosa and Spanish government research that Cejudo had helped to inspire ran out of steam and shifted its efforts to sunflower research. Fernandez-Martinez and Dominguez-Jiminez published a series of reports in the 1980s concerning advances in safflower seed research (163–165) and the efforts to find solutions to problems with broom rape (166). Importantly, they released five improved varieties based on their single-seed method of selecting (167–169). Three of the varieties, Tomejil, Rancho, and Merced, were high linoleic types, while the other two, Alameda and Rinconada, were high in oleic fatty acid. My records of early Spanish safflower plantings (Table 16.34) can be compared with those compiled by the FAO (see Table A.13). Table 16.34 also lists ha for sunflower during the same period to illustrate the impact of sunflower after safflower was damaged by pseudomonas in 1968. Consumption of safflower and sunflower oils for more recent times is also listed to accentuate the comparison. References 1. Cartamo—A Cultivar with a Great Future in the Semi-Arid Region of Chaco, in Spanish, INTA, Las Breñas, July, 1965, 2 pp. 2. Covas, G., Cultivation of Safflower in the Semi-Arid Region of La Pampa, in Spanish, INTA Technical Bulletin No. 4, Anguil, Argentina, 1965, 12 pp. 3. Millington, J., J. Agr. West. Aust. 20: 313 (1943). 4. Pugsley, A.T., Paint Notes 1: 268 (1946). 5. Pugsley, A.T., and G. Winters, Safflower: A Potential Crop for Paint, Report 171, Munitions Supply Laboratories, Maribyrnong, Victoria, August 1947, 57 pp. 6. Jackson, K.J., and J.E. Berthelsen, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 84–91. 7. Miles, J.F., Plant Introduction Trials in Central Coastal Queensland, CSIRO, Industrial Division Report No. 6, 1949, p. 121. 8. Horowitz, B., and C.R. Kleinig, Safflower Trials in Australia, CSIRO, Division of Plant Industry Technology, No. 11, 1958, pp. 1–19. 9. Gray, S.G., Experiments with Safflower in Southern Queensland, CSIRO, Technical Paper No. 11, 1954, pp. 1–19. 10. Brauns, P.J.C., Queensland Agr. J. 87: 279 (1961). 11. Brauns, P.J.C., Queensland Agr. J. 88: 583 (1962).

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12. Harbison, J. Queensland Agr. J. 94: 203 (1968). 13. Weiss, E.A., Castor, Sesame, and Safflower, Barnes and Noble, Inc., New York, 1971, pp. 534, 543–549. 14. Beech, D.F., J. Agr. West Aust. 1: 181 (1960). 15. Beech, D.F., and M.J.T. Norman, Aust. J. Exp. Agr. Animal Husb. 3: 140 (1963). 16. Beech, D.F., Aust. J. Exp. Agr. Animal Husb. 4: 215 (1964). 17. Beech, D.F., and M.J.T. Norman, Aust. J. Exp. Agr. Animal Husb. 6: 255 (1966). 18. Beech, D.F., and M.J.T. Norman, Aust. J. Exp. Agr. Animal Husb. 7: 77 (1967). 19. Beech, D.F., and M.J.T. Norman, Aust. J. Exp. Agr. Animal Husb. 8: 66 (1968). 20. Beech, D.F., Field Crop Abstr. 22: 107 (1969). 21. Beech, D.F., Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 9–15. 22. Jackson, K.J., and J. Harbison, Queensland Agr. J. 99: 344 (1973). 23. Naughton, L.C., Aust. J. Exp. Agr. Animal Husb. 15: 270 (1975). 24. Hore, H.L., and H.J. Sims, J. Agr. Vic. Dept. Agr. 58: 407 (1960). 25. Cutting, F.W., Agr. Gazette NSW 85: 2 (1974). 26. Jackson, K.J., Queensland Agr. J. 104: 257 (1978). 27. Harrigan, E.K.S., A.D. Heritage, C. McRae, and P.E. Kriedemann, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 64–69. 28. Harrigan, E.K.S., C.F. McRae, and A.D. Heritage, J. Austr. Inst. Agr. Sci. 48: 158 (1982). 29. Harrigan, E.K.S., and H.D. Barrs, Sesame and Safflower: Status and Potentials, CSIRO, Griffith, New South Wales, 1985, pp. 211–216. 30. Harrigan, E.K.S., Ses. Saff. Newslett. 3: 3 (1987). 31. McRae, C.F., A.D. Heritage, and J.F. Brown, Australasian Plant Path. 12: 53 (1983). 32. McRae, C.F., and E.K.S. Harrigan, Australasian Plant Path. 13: 6 (1984). 33. McRae, C.F., E.K.S. Harrigan, and J.F. Brown, Plant Dis. 68: 408 (1984). 34. McRae, C.F., E.K.S. Harrigan, and J.F. Brown, Ses. Saff. Newslett. 1: 48 (1985). 35. Jackson, J.F., and J.E. Berthelsen, J. Aust. Inst. Agr. Sci. 52: 63 (1986). 36. Heritage, A.D., and J.M. Duniway, Am. Phytopath. Soc. 75: 199 (1985). 37. Heritage, A.D., and E.K.S. Harrigan, Ses. Saff. Newslett. 1: 48 (1985). 38. Heritage, A.D., and E.K.S. Harrigan, Plant Dis. 68: 767 (1984). 39. Irwin, J.A.G., Aust. J. Exp. Agr. Animal Husb. 16: 921 (1976). 40. Jackson, K.J., J.A.G. Irwin, and J.E. Berthelsen, Aust. J. Exp. Agr. 27: 149 (1987). 41. Harrigan, E.K.S., Ses. Saff. Newslett. 3: 49 (1987). 42. Beech, D.F., and G.J. Leach, Aust. J. Exp. Agr. 29: 655 (1989). 43. Brooke, H.D., D.R. Coventry, T.G. Reeves, and D.K. Jarvis, Plant Soil 115: 1 (1989).

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70. Breitschneider, E., On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical Works, Foochow, China; also Medical Researches from Asiatic Sources, 2 vols. London, 1870. 71. Yuan, G., and D. Li, Nature, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 1981. 72. Wang, K., and F. Fu, Crops—Oil Safflower Special Issue, China Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 1988. 73. Li, D., M. Zhou, and V. Ramantha Rao (eds.), Characterization and Evaluation of Safflower Germplasm, Geological Publishing House, Beijing, 1993, pp. 7–9, 12–14. 74. Li, J., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 218–220. 75. Zhang, Z., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 2–7. 76. Wu, Y.-S., and D. Li, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 272–275. 77. Li, D., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 35–46. 78. Li, D. (ed.), Abstracts on Safflower, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, 784 pp. 79. Li, D., and Y. Han (eds.), Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, 906 pp. 80. Li, D., M. Zhou, and V. Ramantha Rao (eds.), Characterization and Evaluation of Safflower Germplasm, Geological Publishing House, Beijing, 1993, 276 pp. 81. Gao, X., and T. Wang, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 30–34. 82. Chen, Y., and Z. Wang, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 144–150. 83. Hou, Z., and B. Han, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 184–194. 84. Lai, L., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, p. 217. 85. Pei, D., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 610–619. 86. Tong, R., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 730–731. 87. Xu, L., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 741–747. 88. Yang, Y., and Y. Chen, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 762–765. 89. Zheng, V., Z. Zhao, and D. Ge, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 778–782. 90. Li, H., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 520–521. 91. Tian, W., and M. Zhao, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 708–713.

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92. Ma, L., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 553–551. 93. Li, J., Safflower, New China Publishing Co., Xianjiang, 1983, pp. 110–111. 94. Song, J., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 316–319. 95. Li. D., and Y. Han, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 837–843. 96. Wang, Z., Chinese Health Preservation Dictionary, Beijing, 1990, pp. 227–228. 97. The Japan Oil and Fat Importers Association, “Summary of Customs Clearances,” in Statistics for 1965–1995 of Oilseeds, Oils, and Oilcakes, The Japan Oil and Fat Importers Association, Tokyo, 1965–1995. 98. Seegler, C.J.P., Sesame and Safflower: Status and Potentials, FAO Plant Production and Protection Paper (66), Rome, 1985, pp. 87–110. 99. Jannong, G., Rev. Agr. Subtrop. 46: 132 (1952). 100. Joshi, A., INFORM 4: 1042 (1993). 101. Singh, V., and J.V. Rao, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 250–257. 102. Economic Times, New Delhi, 1980–1990. 103. FAO Statistical Series, No. 82, Production Year Books, Vols. 41–46, United Nations, Rome, 1988–1993. 104. The Economic Survey, 1991–92 and 1992–93, Government of India, 1993. 105. Sawant, A.R., and S.L. Deshpande, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 306–315. 106. Rango Rao, V., and M.S. Rama Mohan Rao, in 25 Years Research, CSWCRTI Research Center, Bellary, India, 1980, p. 77. 107. Srivastva, A.K., M.S. Rama Mohan Rao, and B. Ramanath, Indian J. Soil Cons. 16: 14 (1988). 108. Knowles, P.F., Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, 222 pp. 109. Abstracts of the Second International Safflower Conference, ICAR, Hyderabad, India, 1989. 110. Ranga Rao, V., Abstracts of the Second International Safflower Conference, ICAR, Hyderabad, India, 1989, pp. 1–2. 111. Zaman, A., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 84–93. 112. Srivastva, A.K., and M.S. Rama Mohan Rao, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 375–382. 113. Patil, M.S., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 604–609. 114. AICORPO, Annual Progress Report on Oilseeds, 1978–79, ICAR, Hyderabad, India. 1979. 115. AICORPO, Annual Progress Report on Oilseeds, 1979–80, ICAR, Hyderabad, India. 1980. 116. Mane, V.S., and A.S. Jadhav, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 390–394.

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117. Ranga Rao, V., Proceedings of the Second International Safflower Conference, ICAR, Hyderabad, India, 1989, pp. 213–220. 118. AICORPO, Annual Progress Report on Oilseeds, 1987, ICAR, Hyderabad, India, 1987. 119. Bohra, J.S., K. Singh, H. Kumar, and S.C. Varma, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 383–389. 120. Ghorpade, S.A., and Y.M. Shinde, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 435–447. 121. Singh, G., S.S. Sandhu, and S.S. Saini, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 791–795. 122. Suryavanshi, S.R., and V.M. Pawar, Proc. Indian Acad. Sci. 89: 347 (1981). 123. Patil, M.S., Y.S. Shinde, and K.A. Attarde, Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 269–278. 124. Siddaramaiah, A.L., R.P. Bhat, S.A. Desai, and A.B. Basavarajaiah, Curr. Res. 8: 170 (1979). 125. Lunade, G.M., D.V. Indi, and P.S. Patil, J. Oilseeds Res. 2: 282 (1985). 126. Ramachandram, M., and Ranga Rao, V., Proceedings of the Third International Safflower Conference, Beijing Botanical Garden, Beijing, 1993, pp. 285–286. 127. Weisner, J.V., The Raw Materials of the Plant Kingdom, Vol. 1, 4th edn., Leipzig, Germany, 1927. 128. Sevilla, P.E., G.C. Musa, and P. Perez H., Evaluation of the Quality of Safflower Varieties, in Spanish, 1st Reunion de Oleaginosas, Guadalajara, Mexico, September 29, 1992, 15 pp. 129. Terrones, A., Sesame and Safflower in Mexico—Its Development and Industrialization, American Chemical Society Convention, Montreal, 1988, 25 pp. 130. Terrones, A., Historic Development of Safflower in Mexico, The American Oil Chemists’ Society World Meeting, Singapore, 1990, 26 pp. 131. Gomez, J.R., El Azafrancillo—su Cultivo en el Noroeste, Centro de Investigaciones Agriculturas de Noreste, Cd. Obregon, Son., Mexico, 1958, 68 pp. 132. Noble, J., D. Spitzer, and S. Wayne, Mexico—A Travel Survival Kit, 3rd edn, Lonely Planet Publications, Hawthorne, Victoria, Australia, 1989, p. 27. 133. Lustig, N., Mexico: The Remaking of an Economy, The Brookings Institute, Washington, DC, 1992, p. 24. 134. Extadisticas Historicas de Mexico, Tomo 1, Instituto Nacional de Estadiscas, Geografia y Informatica, Mexico D.F., 1985, p. 378. 135. Annuario Estadistico de los Estados Unidos Mexicana 1987, Instituto Nacional de Estadiscas, Geografia y Informatica, Aguascalientes, Mexico, 1990, pp. 178,183,188,198. 136. Yearbook, Production: FAO Statistical Series 104, Vol. 45, Rome, 1991, p. 116; and Series 125, Vol. 48, Rome, 1995, p. 115. 137. Terrones Langone, J., and J.L. Terrones y Lopes, The Mexican Oil Industry, in Spanish, National Assembly of Industrialization, Mexico City, June 13, 1970. 138. Musa, G.C., and S. Muñoz Valenzuela, Sahuaripa 88 y Quirego 88, New Safflower Varieties, INIFAP, in Spanish, Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, 1989, 10 pp. 139. SARH Technical Bulletin No. 11, Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, 5 pp.

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140. Musa, G.C., S. Muñoz Valenzuela, J.J. Pacheco Covarrubias, Uvalle Bueno, E. Ortiz Enriquez, L.M. Tamnyo Esques, P. Figueroa Lopez, and E. Contreras de la Cruz, Guide for Producing Safflower in Southern Sonora, in Spanish, Secretary of Agriculture and Water Resources, Ciudad, Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, 1988, 20 pp. 141. Quilantan, L., Cultivation and Improvement of Safflower in Mexico, in Spanish, First Seminar for Research, Development and Commercialization of Oilseeds, Queretaro, November 11–14, 1987. 142. Corres Gleaves, S., Sprinkler Irrigation in the Cultivation of Safflower on Ejidal Parcels, Technical Memo No, 370, in Spanish, SARH, Mexico D.F., 1978. 143. Pacheco Mendivil, F., Safflower Pests and their Control in Mexico, in Spanish, First Seminar for Research, Development, and Commercialization of Oilseeds, Queretaro, November 11–14, 1987, 7 pp. 144. Gaxiola, S.L., Safflower, Publication No. 1, in Spanish, CAEVAF, Mexico, 1980. 145. Fucikovsky, L., (in Spanish) ANIAME, Ano IV 2: 15 (1990). 146. Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean, U.N., Chile, 1989, p. 484. 147. Mexico, La Economica en Cifras, U.N., 1991. 148. Noble, J., D. Spitzer, and S. Wayne, Mexico, A Travel Survival Kit, 3rd edn., Lonely Planet Publications, Victoria, Australia, 1989, p. 25. 149. Basker, D., and M. Negbi, Econ. Bot. 37: 228 (1983). 150. Bhat, J.V., and R. Brorer, Nature 172: 544 (1953). 151. Gainer, J.W., and G.M. Chisholf, Atherosclerosis 19: 135 (1974). 152. Grisolia, S., Lancet 2: 41 (1974). 153. Arctander, S., Perfumes and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin, Arctander, Elizabeth, New Jersey, 1960. 154. Guenther, E., The Essential Oils, Vol. 2, Van Nostrand, New York, 1952, p. 348. 155. Zarghami, N.S., The Volatile Constituents of Saffron (Crocus satiuus, L.), Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Davis, California, 1970. 156. Parry, J.W., Spices: Their Morphology, Histology, and Chemistry, Chemical Publishing House, New York, 1962. 157. Rosengarten, F., The Book of Spices, Livingston, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, 1969. 158. Bowles, E.H., A Handbook of Crocus and Colehium, Bodley Head, London, 1952. 159. Nauman, M., San Jose Mercury, “The World’s Costliest Spice,” C-1, C-6, San Jose, California, November 8, 1989. 160. Pappas, L., Times Tribune, “Why Spain’s Just Wild About Saffron:” F-5-7, Palo Alto, California, May 23, 1989. 161. Guigno, S., San Jose Mercury News, C-1, C-6, November 8, 1989. 162. Dominguez-Jiminez, J., Ses. Saff. 3: 63 (1987). 163. Fernandez-Martinez, J., and P.F. Knowles, Crop. Sci. 18: 516 (1978). 164. Fernandez-Martinez, J., and J. Munuz Ruz, Ses. Saff. Newslett. 3: 61 (1987). 165. Fernandez-Martinez, J., and J. Dominguez-Jiminez, Abstracts of the Second International Safflower Conference, Hyderabad, India, 1989, p. 7.

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166. Fernadez-Martinez., J., F. Insua-Munoz, and J.M. Melero-Vara, Sesame and Safflower: Status and Potentials, FOA Plant Production and Protection Paper 66, 1986, pp. 64–72. 167. Fernandez-Martinez., J., and J. Dominguez-Jiminez, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California, Davis, California, 1981, pp. 52–55. 168. Fernandez-Martinez., J., and J. Dominguez-Jiminez, Ses. Saff. Newslett. 2: 89 (1986). 169. Fernandez-Martinez, J., and J. Dominguez-Jiminez, Plant Breeding 97: 364 (1986). 170. Vallin, A., Agricultura, Revista Agropecuaria, Colegio Oficial de Ingenieros Agronomos, Madrid, Supplement September 1989, p. 150.

Chapter 17

The 1980s to the Present

With the demise of Agricom International in 1984 and the sale of PVO’s Richmond plant and safflower oil business to a Hong Kong based holding company, the transition to the players into today’s safflower market was underway. The safflower oil business then began to be divided between J.G. Boswell, Adams Grain, California Oils Corporation, and whatever group Oilseeds International, Ltd. (OIL), was representing, with Cargill and Cal/West Seeds each holding a share of the business of selling safflower seed. The Great Plains became a battleground between the owner of the Culbertson, Montana, plant, whomever OIL represented, and various birdseed buyers. The world’s basic supply of exportable safflower seed and oil had come from the United States for the past 30 years. Supply had been reasonably reliable and up to the early 1980s was not threatened by any other sources. Mexico and India consumed safflower oil within their own borders, Argentina still had poor planting seed and little desire to attempt to grow safflower well, while the Australian production continued to be marginal at best. However by the end of the 1980s, Mexico would have shattered this tranquil scene by making its oil available to world markets. Argentina had begun to try to improve production by employing U.S. varieties, and Australia cut its local demand and began to produce most of its acreage in Victoria, a state with more reliable production.

Production and Market Trends During The Period Market Trends As this period began, domestic consumption of linoleic safflower oil had fallen to approximately 50,000,000 lbs. annually, with 35,000,000 of this being consumed by just two consumers—Hain Pure Foods and Saffola. Since blending activities in Europe had been stopped and domestic consumption by fryers had fallen off because of price competition from cheaper oils, the oleic safflower oil market had fallen from a high of as much as 35,000,000 to perhaps 10,000,000 lbs consumed annually. On top of this, PVO had contracted 40,000 ST of California safflower seed in a 4day buying orgy in December, 1981, at a price of $325/ST FOB ranch. To this day, it is still unclear why PVO purchased so much seed at high prices for that time period. Even J.G. Boswell joined the selling frenzy and provided 10,000 ST of PVO’s total purchases. The Boswell purchase occurred first (December 10, 1981), and it can only be speculated that communications failed between PVO and its country buyers over the ensuing weekend and before they could be reined in, the deal was done. 435

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OILscoop, OIL’s new market letter, explained why growers suddenly became interested in selling: “Contracting for 1982 crop safflower tried to get started in California @ $250 per short ton, roadside basis. Growers laughed and made plans to plant wheat. The $250 level was raised to $265, then quickly bumped to a $300 floor, which was countered in turn by a $375 firm price by early November, where it stayed until this past week. With offerings for 1982 California wheat fluctuating between $130 and $140 per ton, growers calculated that a price of $325 to $350 was needed for safflower to be equal. Then rainy weather intervened and the growers stopped laughing. California has experienced a very wet fall and the 60-day forecast predicts more of the same—this has left many fields planned for wheat unplanted. A lot of growers decided to sign safflower contracts as a hedge and it now looks like more acreage has been contracted in California than was grown in 1981—much of it signed up at $325. One buyer has temporarily withdrawn from the market; another has reduced offerings to $275 and is getting takers. It could go lower.” (1)

Boswell had become temporarily disenchanted with oleic safflower by the time they made their large sale of linoleic safflower to PVO because their sales destined for European blenders had also come to a halt the previous year and left them with an extensive carryover of oleic oil. This provided the fledgling Oilseeds International, Ltd., with the opportunity to introduce Boswell both to Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and (through C. Itoh) to Fuji Oil Co., Ltd.’s needs for assured supplies of oleic oil. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation had withdrawn as a seller because its owner, Kay Corporation, did not wish to take a loss while it was negotiating to sell the company. At that time, Agricom was presenting a new set of managers to the world with the departure of Smith, Kopas, and Easler. By April of 1982, PVO’s grower price had fallen to $225—a $100 drop in 4 months. I presented a lengthy discussion in OILscoop about large inventories weighing on the market (2). I remember getting complaints from PVO about this issue, even though the general market was very much aware of the situation. We soon realized that they were busily negotiating with Philippine buyers for the sale of the company. Oilseeds International also provided counsel to Cal/West Seeds during 1981/82 while they considered whether to engage in the C and F market versus their normal mode of selling safflower seed ex spout. They also considered finding a way to produce and sell safflower oil under our guidance. After 1 year of study, they decided to stay with their traditional methods. In 1982, just before Agricom was purchased by All Sun, Inc., Cal/West again considered becoming a player in the crushing field when I proposed that they enter into a consortium with All Sun to buy and operate Agricom. Again, after serious study, Cal/West decided not to get involved with such large financial commitments. Oilseeds International had also promoted limited production of safflower in far eastern North and South Dakota for the 1982 harvest with some of the shareholders All Sun, Inc. This involved planting of Hartmann and Rehbein varieties of safflower that had been developed by Jerry Bergman of the Eastern Montana Experiment Station. These varieties exhibited improved resistance to alternaria, and it was hoped

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that they could yield much better in this area of higher rainfall and yet resist diseases associated with more moisture. However, heavy rains prior to harvest brought on both disease and sprouting, and this experiment failed miserably in a sea of mud. By December, 1982, OIL had started soliciting grower contracts on behalf of Producers Cotton Oil (PCO), and we had to drop our short-term efforts on behalf of J.G. Boswell and Cal/West (3). Initially, we convinced PCO to try a $200 floor contact with the grower offered a 75% share of PCO’s marketing profits over the floor. This was a concept similar to PVO’s long-term profit-sharing contracts. But this form of contracting had seen its day. It was complicated to explain. The Producers Cotton Oil Company had no recent history with safflower growers and by the end of December, PCO opted to adopt a firm price of $250 as its contracting basis. In Montana, Continental Grain was soliciting grower contracts at $180/ton and by early January, 1983, had purchased more seed, first at $160 and then at $150. To put PCO immediately into oleic safflower production we were able to buy 70 MT of Spanish oleic planting seed with the help of Francisco Gonzalez Avila. The seed was old, but was still capable of germination. We got it to California in time for spring 1983 planting. By March 3, 1983, we were able to announce that we could provide PCO with the capability to produce, store, and deliver safflower salad oil (4,5). Agricom’s new management made a production gaffe, and allowed a major portion of their oleic seed inventory to get contaminated in storage. Again, this gave OIL an opportunity to introduce Wyeth and Fuji to another oleic supplier in the form of PCO, since Cal Oils’ initial efforts were stifled by the high inventory costs it acquired from Kay Corporation, and by Charles Hultberg’s caution. The problem Cal Oils faced was only accentuated when Kay Corporation threatened legal action when Cal Oils lowered prices in an effort to sell inventory. This was because Kay’s sale had guaranteed the value of the inventory it sold, and a low sale would trigger the right of Cal Oils to collect against the guarantee. But the total amount of the guarantee was small relative to the total loss Cal Oils was facing because of its erroneously valued inventory. Arbitration ensued, and eventually Cal Oils was able to collect from Kay. Continental’s low seed cost was to lead to increased interdependence between Continental and Hain Pure Foods. Hain had always purchased a portion of its needs from California mills while Greg MacIntosh had been there, but in 1983, Continental was able to capture most of Hain’s business since the more venturesome George Bobango was in charge of purchasing at Hain Pure Foods. The 1984 demise of Agricom and the earlier departure of PVO made the Sacramento Valley an Adams stronghold and strengthened Penny Newman in the San Joaquin Valley. Growers that had been loyal to Carl Claassen had transferred this loyalty to PVO after Claassen’s retirement and now placed their loyalties with Adams. Penny Newman was sorely tested by Tom Mulcahy’s ploy to buy Agricom with money owed to Penny Newman growers. Frank Moradian of Penny Newman was able to get financing from Bank of America to allow him to carry the load until Agricom paid him back a year later. Since Penny Newman’s handling of this affair put no grower at risk, their reputation with some of the San Joaquin Valley’s best safflower producers was enhanced.

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Penny Newman shifted allegiance to PCO as soon as it could, and Adams was able to pick up Agricom’s growers in the Sacramento Valley, and in the process, hired their Delta field representative, Clarke Brown. However, PCO was not able to retain Penny Newman’s services for long. Producers Cotton Oil’s policy was to buy from any field buyer, and eventually Moradian’s successor, Mike Nicoletti, decided to divide his sales between PCO and California Oils. Once California Oils agreed to give him exclusive marketing of their safflower mill, he agreed to give Cal Oil all of his purchases. As the 1980s played out, Japan’s consumption of safflower oil continued to grow. When the polyunsaturated boom hit the United States, Japanese refiners had been quick to follow with products of their own. For example, the Mitsubishi subsidiary oil mill, Tohama Oil Mill Co. Ltd., changed its company name to Rinoru Oil Mills Co. Ltd (a contraction of “linol” for “linoleic”—there being no “1” sound in Japanese). Safflower oil was added to gift-packs featuring beautifully lithographed cans of various salad oils packaged in attractive gift boxes and offered in the big department stores during summer and Christmas gift seasons. Over the years, extensive print and television advertising was used to promote safflower’s healthful image. The gift-packs had originally contained three or six tins of cottonseed oil when cottonseed was the preferred salad oil. They then began to shift to a mixture of corn and cottonseed oils; then perhaps corn, sunflower, and cottonseed oils; then corn, safflower, and sunflower oils; and recently in the 1990s, many packs have eliminated the corn and sunflower oils to feature only safflower oil. These trends created an apparent continuously growing market for safflower oil even in years when the overall gift-pack seasonal buying trend might be poor. This was because safflower’s market share of the total gift-pack oil market continued to grow, reaching perhaps an 85% share in 1993. In February 1993, Ajinomoto introduced a new safflower oil product in Japanese gift-pack circles—a blend of linoleic and oleic safflower oils. Their reasoning was twofold. One, a survey had demonstrated that gift-pack buyers were beginning to use safflower oil not only as a salad oil, but also in everyday frying applications. They found that some customers complained because safflower oil tended to cause sticking in the frying pan if not handled carefully. The blend provided a much more stable product. Second, Ajinomoto could offer a “new” safflower oil to its customers, one that had the best features of both mono- and polyunsaturates for a health-promoting diet. It remains to be seen if this tactic will prove successful; to date, it has achieved a growing market share. It follows a trend already adopted by Vandermortele and Lesieur in Europe of offering a “healthy” blend of oils. In 1993, as discount buying became more popular in Japan, safflower oil found its way into these venues as well. Regardless, the gift-pack market for safflower oils has become the single most important and sizable market for safflower oil in the world. By 1980, very little industrial consumption of safflower oil remained in Europe. The edible market was dominated by four types of consumers. The largest single market until the end of 1993 continued to be margarine manufacturers that would buy safflower oil in order to maintain a constant guaranteed linoleic level in margarines primarily based on sunflower oil. In years when weather drove linoleic levels in

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sunflower down, as much as 15,000–20,000 MT of safflower oil could be consumed in a single season by that market. The second largest European market consisted of sales of bottled safflower oil used by increasingly popular discount chain marketers, such as the Aldi chain in Germany, that featured safflower oil at loss leader prices. Sometimes they would price it at one-half to one-third of the price of a similar bottle in a health-food store. With the sharp rise in the safflower oil prices in 1992–93, some of this type of discounting subsided and the safflower oil was replaced by the less expensive canola oil. A third market for safflower oil consisted of various bottlers (in many cases bottling unrefined prepress oil for the so-called “green” market) selling to those desirous of a highly polyunsaturated product. A fourth market of some importance at the beginning of the 1980s was the blended oil market. Oleic safflower oil was particularly desired for blending into other products. This market was always hard to identify or quantify and has diminished in importance, primarily because of increased government surveillance and higher safflower oil prices that removed much of the incentive to blend. During this period, we have witnessed the introduction of canola oil into the U.S. and European markets, a shift in advertising emphasis led by Procter & Gamble in the United States promoting the low level of saturates in the oil rather than the high level of polyunsaturation featured in ad campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. As mentioned previously, canola oil has been able to replace safflower oil in some venues that safflower oil had dominated in the past because of changes in advertising support and also because safflower is double the price. During the 1980s and 1990s oleic safflower oil has continued to be used by some fryers that are interested in its good taste and stability. Oleic sunflower has begun to replace safflower in the preparation of cocoa butter substitutes and, more recently, in infant formulas, since sunflower can be produced in more areas of the world at a lower cost with a higher oleic fatty acid percentage. On July 27, 1981, Ogden Corp. acquired Hain Pure Foods Co., Inc., from the Jacobs family for $31 million in 15% subordinated notes (6). At that point, Hain was the United States’ leading marketer of safflower oil, margarine, mayonnaise, and salad dressings and a significant factor in a broad line of health and natural food products. The Hain and Hollywood brands consumed about 30,000,000 lbs of safflower oil annually. Ogden was a very diverse conglomerate that owned Tillie Lewis Foods and Progresso Soups among many other unrelated businesses. MacIntosh and George Jacobs continued as the day-to-day management of the firm. Hain, with its newly acquired backing, was able to promote its products well, and continually commanded the lowest prices for safflower oil. MacIntosh had an excellent grounding in the cost of growing, extracting, and refining safflower from his days in PVO; as Hain’s Purchasing Director he effectively played the various sellers off against each other. In the fall of 1982, Ogden’s Tillie Lewis subsidiary purchased safflower planting seed from SeedTec, and projected the threat that it would buy seed from growers and produce its own oil in the future. In actuality, Hain Purchased only enough safflower seed for a few acres, but the threat helped to keep prices at a low level.

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In 1983, Wilsey foods attracted MacIntosh from Hain and Bob Rardin from Hollywood Foods. Bobango advanced in Hain to MacIntosh’s position. He was more audacious than MacIntosh, and soon he was purchasing most of Hain’s needs from more volatile Montana production. After only 5 years of ownership, Ogden decided to sell off its Food Products Corp. which included the Hain and Hollywood safflower brands. In 1986, the Hain and Hollywood brands became part of I.C. Industries’ Pet Foods, Inc., of St. Louis (7). Pet quickly terminated the Los Angeles based marketing personnel of Hollywood Foods and many of Hain Pure Foods’ executives as well, transferring their functions to St. Louis. Over the ensuing years, more of the Los Angeles personnel were let go, until all production operations in Los Angeles were suspended in 1993, and packaging was being handled in Pet’s New Jersey plant and on a toll basis on the west coast. Pet appeared to be interested in expanding the Hollywood brand, but soon took a series of actions that destroyed a substantial portion of their safflower market share. In 1986, after Procter & Gamble introduced Puritan Canola oil into the U.S. market (8), a relative shortfall in Canadian production forced canola oil prices to high levels. Hollywood’s executives believed that they should take advantage of this situation to introduce a premium-priced Hollywood canola oil label to stores that already carried Hollywood brand safflower oil. They enjoyed a good margin on paper in this initial business. Advertising for Hollywood safflower oil was suspended, and the new canola brand was heavily promoted hoping to enjoy some rub-off from Procter & Gamble’s heavy promotion efforts. This worked for a short while. Hollywood safflower oil sales plummeted. Within a year, Pet was forced to reduce its prices on Hollywood Canola Oil drastically as new supplies became available and other bottlers entered the market with far lower prices (9). The premium for canola oil quickly evaporated, and it became a commodity oil, much like soybean oil on U.S. grocers’ shelves. Safflower oil was still able to sell at a premium, but Hollywood’s volume had been cut by one-half. Several different marketing managers made preliminary attempts to pump some life into the brand again, but none was brave enough to push for the long-term advertising effort that would be needed to try to recapture a larger market share. So its market volume has remained at the lower levels. Sales may also have been affected in 1987 and 1988 when Hain accepted shipments of darker oils at a discount price. These oils were from Continental blending oil from sprout-damaged crop. This resulted in oils of noticeably different colors appearing at the same time on store shelves around the country. The Hain product line suffered even more under the Pet banner. The specialized knowledge of the health-food market disappeared with the termination of Hain’s Los Angeles personnel. Hain has been managed by the large corporate structure of Pet’s St. Louis operation which is much more attuned to the standard grocery trade. In 1993, Pet announced that it wished to dispose of parts of its food operations with vegetable oil sections (Hain and Hollywood) and its successful rice cake section being offered as a package. In late 1993, it was made known that the two operations could be sold separately, but in 1994 the Hain Pure Foods operations was sold

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to the Kineret Food Group, who changed the name to Hain Food Group and appears to be following a more aggressive marketing policy concerning safflower oil. In 1981, Wilsey Foods acquired the Saffola brand from Kay Corporation for a sum in excess of $4 million. For the next 2 years very little happened; even though Wilsey had its own margarine plant in Los Angeles, they continued to have Saffola margarine produced by another firm. Wilsey brought in Herb Seigler from Star Kist Foods to complete a new team along with MacIntosh and Rardin. Between 1981 and 1988, Wilsey invested $4.9 million to upgrade its Los Angeles facility. The new members of its staff captured market share as Hain’s declined. Finally in May 1988, Seigler, MacIntosh, and Rardin, together with outside financiers, formed a new corporation, Saffola Quality Foods, Inc. They raised $19 million in capital and loans, and the following month purchased Wilsey’s Los Angeles private-label packing operation plus the Saffola business. Perhaps the most interesting and, at the same time, controversial development of the decade was the marketing of grown-without-pesticides oleic safflower oil by Saffola Quality Foods, Inc. Their program has adopted a definition that allows no chemicals to be used during or 90 days prior to production of the crop, requires constant surveillance during and after production, allows no planting seed treatment, but does allow fertilizer to be applied. The oleic oil is offered in bottles and through television advertisements that proclaim that the oil produced was grown without pesticides. No mention of monounsaturation is contained in the advertising and only on the back label of the bottle can it be determined that oleic safflower is being offered. The public has responded to this approach in areas where the oil has been marketed. Saffola Quality Foods was sold in 1995 to Holsum Foods. The principals involved hope that the new combination will provide capital for advertising needs to expand Saffola’s market area. Production Trends No real changes in safflower seed production methods occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. In Yolo County, California, some farmers in the area have been able to irrigate safflower successfully for the first time, on beds carrying three rows of safflower. The primary production trend for the period has been a general decline in importance in safflower production in the northern Great Plains under a combination of poor weather and lack of incentives versus government programs for other crops. In contrast, Mexico has emerged as an important source of safflower oil (see Chapter 13), able to provide similar quality oil at prices below U.S. levels, but with a somewhat more indifferent assurance of supply. During the period, governmental actions that directly affected safflower created more fear of damage than has actually occurred. On January 1, 1989, safflower oil imported into the United States from Mexico was suddenly removed from the Generalized System of Preferences list and faced an increase of $50/MT or more in cost (10). However, most importers were able to recover the duty by re-exporting similar quantities of safflower oil, so the change has had little effect. The Farm Bill of 1990

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included safflower for the first time as a crop eligible for federal subsidies but, in practice, the Bill has had little effect, and very few farmers have applied for assistance. Little research has occurred during this period that has resulted in changes for safflower. Breeders continue to feel that they will find a way to produce a successful and economic hybrid safflower seed, but that point has not yet been reached. Attempts made to obtain patent coverage for safflower and oleic safflower seed are in some ways similar to those granted for oleic sunflower (which were reaffirmed in 1995) and have not been successful. Safflower meal continues to be marketed as a secondary protein source; very little of the 42% protein safflower meal has been marketed during the period because of the high energy cost of decortication. Chapter 18 explores some of the trends we may see in the future. Chapter 14 contained a history of Agricom International’s tumultuous life, together with a summary of PVO’s long tenure in the safflower business. Chapter 5 contained summaries of other firms that pioneered safflower production and marketing. The remaining sections of this chapter review backgrounds and approaches of the companies that came along later, some of which are active today in the U.S. safflower business after the demise of PVO and Agricom. These companies, Adams Grain (Adams Vegetable Oil); California Fats and Oils Corporation/California Oils Corporation; the owners of the Culbertson mill after it was sold by PVO: P.J. Anderson & Son, Continental Grain Company, Elders Grain Company, and SVO Enterprises; and the companies represented by OIL: PCO, and C. Itoh & Co. (America). Inc. (Itochu. International, Inc.). This group together with some of the companies reviewed in Chapter 5, J.G. Boswell, Cal/West, and Cargill, made up the primary U.S. buyers, processors, and exporters of safflower products from the 1980s until the present. Also included is a review of SeedTec, the planting seed company that is the successor to Claassen’s POI.

Adams Grain Company, Inc./Adams Vegetable Oil Adams Grain Company, Inc., of Woodland, California, is a power in the Sacramento Valley grain business. It was started in 1920 by other family members, but it was David Adams, the patriarch of Adams Grain, who built a wonderful relationship with the struggling farmers of the Valley during the Great Depression and World War II. He accomplished this by providing credit, help, and advice when it was needed most, and by promising to take care of each customer’s needs. Over time, many of his clients simply delivered their grain crops to David Adams and trusted him to take care of their product as if it were his own. The sons and grandsons of these pioneer farmers learned to do the same. David Adams purchased some safflower acreage in the early 1950s, but was very disappointed in the results and swore that safflower was a worthless crop to deal with. He told Claassen of POI that if Claassen would stay out of the grain business he would stay out of the safflower game. True to his word, he refused in the late 1960s when Jack Harley, then president of PVO, tried to get David Adams to purchase

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safflower for PVO, and in the few instances when his son did otherwise, he quickly cut off future sales. But by April, 1983, things had changed. Bill Adams, David Adams’ son, sought to develop new directions that might offer better margins than the grain business. He fell in love with grain trucking in the early 1960s, and using the family agricultural fortune, ruthlessly expanded this business, buying out or trampling competition, and Adams Trucking, Inc., became the dominant agricultural trucking operation in California. After his father distributed 80% of the company’s shares in 1988 to Bill Adams and his two sisters, he bought his sisters out and obtained effective control of the company. In April of 1983, Jack Ponting left Pacific Oilseeds and joined Adams. Ponting, while at Stockton Elevators and Pillsbury, had been a confidant of Adams and was looking for a way to expand into the storage business. Woodland Warehouse, a seed-cleaning facility was for sale; this attracted Ponting and he tried to interest Adams and others in getting into a line that involved custom cleaning of seed. Ponting was approached by Mulcahy of Agricom International, which was hard-pressed to find seed because of the reluctance of Penny Newman to work with Agricom. An arrangement was made in which Adams would contract safflower seed with some of its grain customers. General Electric Credit Corporation would provide a letter of credit guaranteeing Agricom’s payment, seed would be placed under ware-house receipt and released as it was needed for the crush at the Grimes mill. Adams got the business of trucking and the sale of the meal. Agricom kept the oil. The first year, Adams contracted about 6,000 ST of seed and got his friend, Earl Wallace, to plant 2,000 ST of oleic safflower late in the season to fulfill a desperate need for Agricom. Agricom purchased additional seed via the NFO from Montana, but had to default when they could not pay on time. As contracting began for the 1983 season, plans were made to do much more, and Mulcahy constantly called from various venues overseas, promising great things. But Ponting could see that Agricom was getting shakier day by day, and he began to prepare for an alternate direction. Ponting and Jo Vic Fabregas, one of California Fats and Oil’s (CFO) new managers, began a series of conversations that lasted over the years. In November, 1983, Ponting persuaded Bill Adams to go to Richmond, California, to meet with Mike McKittrick and Hultberg, who managed CFO’s safflower operations. California Fats had just taken over the PVO Richmond plant, its sales list and Dave Hofsten as traffic manager. Originally the plan involved Adams providing seed, CFO crushing and refining, and Agricom marketing the oil, but as Agricom sagged, Ponting convinced Bill Adams to curb his normal conservatism and enter the safflower game with CFO alone. Bill Adams agreed, and between February and April of 1984, the plan took shape for Adams to purchase seed to toll crush with CFO. A toll fee of $45/ST for 10,000 ST, $40/ST for 20,000, or $35/ST for 30,000 or more was agreed upon. California Fats and Oils got a selling commission of $5.00/ST for domestic sales, and $35/MT went to Paveocor (then still owned by Kay Corporation) for sales in Europe. Ewold Dubbleman in Rotterdam was becoming disenchanted with Paveocor, and in May or June of 1984 he left Paveocor and became manager of Cal-Adams

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Vegetable Oils, B.V.—a CFO/Adams jointly owned company. Originally, the plan was to buy a few thousand tons of seed and sell the oil to consumers such as Hain or Saffola; however, the business quickly turned in the direction of Europe. Dubbleman, released from the restrictions he had faced at Paveocor, became a powerful force in the safflower business. He called on each customer at least once per month and quickly captured a large percentage of the European business since both PVO and Agricom were relatively inactive at that time. Bill Adams did not like to sign agreements and only signed the contract with California Oils Corporation (Cal Oils), the former CFO, after milling had already started. There followed a period of bad feelings involving Francis Lee of Cal Oils, Bill Adams, and Ponting, that culminated in legal action between Cal Oils and Adams. The suit was settled out of court on a basis in which both sides agreed not to discuss the terms of settlement. Eventually, OIL was unable to go forward with the marketing part of the agreement that it had signed with Adams (covered elsewhere in this chapter). When this occurred, Adams reached out to Hofsten and hired him as their new marketing manager. Mike Adams, Bill’s youngest son, became more involved with the Adams Group safflower business starting in approximately 1985. He first managed a nutprocessing business for the company. By the time of the breakup with Cal Oils, he was fully involved along with his father in the day-to-day safflower business, forming Adams Vegetable Oil. As time has passed, he has assumed more responsibility for both the safflower business and the company’s grain business. In the late 1980s, Mike Adams began working with safflower in Mexico, and originally planned to refurbish the Las Palmitos mill at Culiacan, Mexico, through James Kendall, a U.S. trader residing in Mexico. This turned into a major dispute from which Adams withdrew. Adams then turned their representation in Mexico over to Tron Hermanos of Morelia. In 1992 they introduced oleic safflower into Mexico. Since that time, Mike Adams has taken the company into the planting seed and birdseed business, and tried contracting for safflower production for one year in Idaho and Montana, but basically has stuck with California and Mexican production. In 1988, Adams and Hofsten made an initial approach to Japanese buyers and began a program to become fully integrated by offering safflower seed on an ex spout basis. They have enjoyed closer and closer relationships with Sumitomo and Mitsubishi in recent years. In 1985, prior to the OIL purchase of the Grimes oil mill from the Agricom bankruptey court, Adams made an effort to buy the mill. They then made an attempt to buy the plant from OIL the next year, and kept up a conversation that eventually resulted in a 5-year crushing agreement between Adams and OIL that was executed in 1987. That agreement contained a provision that allowed Adams to purchase the mill at $4.25 million or more, subject to appraisal, until July 31, 1993. It also gave them the first option to purchase OIL. During the course of the agreement, they made numerous efforts to purchase the company or the mill for lesser amounts, but we were never able to agree. Since no sale was forthcoming, Adams has done extensive design work to build its own oil mill and refinery. When C. Itoh re-entered the safflower business in the

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TABLE 17.1 Estimates of Adams Grain/Adams Vegetable Oil U.S. Safflower Production

Year

California Acres Regular Oleic

Mountain States Great Plains Production Acres Production Acres Production Regular Oleic (ST) (ST)

1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

10,500 9,000 24,000 28,000 25,000 28,000 11,000 5,000 25,150 32,500 8,000

11,750 9,500 20,000 25,000 28,500 27,600 14,100 4,650 23,900 33,000 9,000

4,000 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,500 7,300 3,500 7,000 12,000 11,000 12,000

4,500 4,000 6,200 4,100 4,000 7,300 4,000 4,000 7,200 13,000 11,000 15,500

1,000

4,750 2,500

2,000 200

1,000

400

Source: J. Smith, Personal Estimate.

United States in 1991 by purchasing PCO’s interest, C. Itoh tried to get Adams to give up their option on the Grimes plant so that C. Itoh could purchase it. They offered to provide Adams with a long-term crushing agreement at favorable terms. Adams, however, would not release its option, saying that its plans were still unsettled. In 1992, Adams was hounded by the District Attorney of Yolo County and Woodland City officials about dust and noise created by some of the elevator and trucking operations that had become surrounded by the growth of the City of Woodland. In 1993, he announced that he was moving most of his operations to a new location on County Line Road in Colusa county that would involve building a prepress solvent-extraction mill and vegetable oil refinery in the future (11). In February, 1993, he signed a new 4-year extension of his crushing agreement with OIL, that removed his option to purchase the plant or the company, but gave him the right to cancel with proper notice each year. Within months, he canceled and made a new arrangement to crush his 1994 and 1995 production at the Cal Oils plant at Richmond. Adams has constructed a new trucking facility at its County Line location. The vegetable oil refinery has been erected and construction of an oil mill may go forward—both operations as ventures with Sumitomo Corporation. The Adams Group remains a very potent force in the safflower business. It has a very loyal cadre of growers that Mike Adams and his right-hand Field Director, John Gilbert, are counting on for continued support. The company is well financed, very quality and cost-conscious in its operations, and efficient in its dealings with growers. Its vast trucking network, modern cleaning facilities, and a planned state-of-the-art extraction and refining complex should allow it to remain a formidable force in the safflower industry. My estimate of Adams U.S. safflower production is listed in Tables 17.1 and 17.2.

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TABLE 17.2 Estimates of Adams Grain/Adams Vegetable Oil Safflower Dispositiona Crush

1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Exports (ST)

Regular (ST)

Oleic (ST)

2,200

11,750 9,500 20,000 27,000 26,500 27,600 16,000 1,000 6,000

4,500 4,000 6,200 4,100 4,000 7,300 3,800 7,100 13,000

10,200 16,200

Planting Seed (ST)

200 100

aIncludes purchases from other dealers, Source: J. Smith, Personal estimates.

California Fats and Oils, Inc./California Oils Corporation California Fats and Oils, Inc., was formed in August, 1982, to take over the PVO International, Inc., plant at 1145 South Harbor Way, Richmond, California. The Kay Corporation transferred ownership as of November 30, 1982. California Fats and Oils was identified as a subsidiary of Victorio, Inc., a Hong Kong corporation that held its meetings in Manila. The purchase price of $16.5 million was more than double the appraised value of the facilities. In addition, CFO purchased PVO’s contracts and inventories. This was a way to settle a treble damage restraint of trade suit brought by PVO International, Inc., against Granex Corp., Crown Oil Corp., Pan Pacific Commodities, all San Francisco coconut oil importers, United Coconut Planters Bank, United Coconut Oil Corp., and Lu Do & Lu Ym Corp. In the suit, PVO’s attorney, Joseph I. Alioto, asked for $75 million dollars in triple damages and $25 million in punitive damages, alleging that the defendants had conspired to eliminate competition and fix the price of coconut oil in the United States (12). The suit was settled, but even more problems erupted soon after. Hultberg, the manager of PVO’s Philippine copra-crushing operation for several years, was retained by CFO’s owners as President because they had known and trusted him while he lived in the Islands. Hultberg conducted many of the negotiations for both sides and assured CFO’s owners that the inventories they purchased were properly valued. It turned out, however, that they had purchased over 40,000 ST of safflower seed as part of the bargain, much of which had been purchased at high prices and most of which could not be sold at any price until the following season. The new owners soon realized that they had rushed in too fast without an audit, relying on Hultberg’s assurances. The new owners dismissed Hultberg, filed a claim in arbitration against Kay Corporation and against Hultberg as well. The claim against Hultberg was eventually dropped, and Hultberg retired. I was retained by CFO to supply them with expert testimony on the size and dynamics of the safflower oil market. Kay Corporation also tried to have me supply data for them as well, but I

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refused. After a long, drawn out arbitration, CFO won a several million dollar reduction in their inventory cost. California Fats and Oils owners were primarily coconut oil traders, little interested in a specialty business like safflower. Since they refused to disclose who their real owners were, California farmers and dealers were wary of them, making it difficult for them to acquire safflower seed. Secondly, the owners’ trading mentality gave them little incentive to improve the plant or search for new business. However, they did have intangible assets in the form of several former PVO employees familiar with safflower oil markets and production. The new owners installed Lee as their eyes and ears in Richmond, and dispatched Fabregas from Manila to assume active day-to-day management. At one point, CFO came close to closing its oil mill, then entered into an arrangement to crush for Adams in 1984. In 1985 in order to improve the image of the company, the name of the company was changed to California Oils Corporation dropping the cholesterol connotation in “Fat.” In 1987, they evidently decided to expand their own operations in safflower and this triggered a 2-year legal battle with Adams. They quickly retained Benny Nern, a former SeedTec employee, as a full-time field agent and made a representative agreement with Ralph Pöhner of Gebrüder Pöhner in Hamburg to replace Dubbleman as their European safflower oil sales representative (California Oils Corporation letter, Francis K. Lee, President, October 2, 1987), but progress was slow. Before the dispute with Adams was settled, the shareholders of CFO sold the company to Premier Edible Oils Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi, holding Mitsubishi harmless in the process (13). Once again, California Oils Corporation had a mission in the safflower business, representing Mitsubishi’s interests as one of the leading buyers of safflower in Japan. With Mitsubishi’s financial clout, they were easily able to get dealers to sell to them. They quickly bought their way into an important position in the seed market by targeting some of Adams growers and paying a higher price. They also gave Penny Newman in the San Joaquin Valley the exclusive right to sell Cal Oils’ safflower meal in exchange for Penny Newman’s buying clout. Much as Soetemann and Jaeggi had been able to capture a large share of the European market in the 1960s for PVO, as Al Westerweel was able to capture a substantial share for Agricom in the 1970s, or Dubbleman had done for Adams in the mid-1980s, Pöhner was able to capture market share for Cal Oils in the late 1980s and early 1990s. California Oils entered the Mexican market with Fabregas coordinating this operation, introduced SeedTec varieties into the Mexican market for the first time, and captured a significant share of this production. The California Oils’ Richmond plant was purchased by Mitsubishi at a high cost, and a substantial amount has been spent since the purchase to refurbish the plant. Coconut and palm oils are the principal products run through the facility; recently, these markets have afforded poor margins. Corn germ is also processed in the Richmond mill, but it also contributes poor margins. All of these have put pressure on the safflower operation. Perhaps the GATT agreement with Japan, which will lower import duties on safflower oil to Japan, may give the mill a new lease on life.

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TABLE 17.3 Estimate of California Safflower Production for California Fats and Oils Corp./California Oil Corp. Acres Year

Regular

1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

400 4,000 13,900 29,000 11,000 5,000 21,500 20,000

Production (ST) Oleic

Regular

Oleic

1,000 12,000 8,000 11,200 14,000 20,000

400 4,400 13,700 30,000 10,300 5,500 25,000 20,000

1,200 15,000 9,000 12,000 18,400 27,000

Source: J. Smith, Personal estimates.

TABLE 17.4 Estimate of Safflower Disposition for California Fats and Oils Corp./California Oil Corp. Export (ST) Year 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Regular

15,000 10,300

Oleic

Crush (ST) Regular

Oleic

400 4,400 13,700 15,000

1,200 15,000

5,500

5,500

9,000 6,500

Source: J. Smith, Personal estimates.

However, the company must be willing to risk spending the additional funds needed to enable the plant to operate efficiently within an ever closer environment of surrounding residential and light industrial development. My estimate of Cal Oils’ U.S. safflower production history is listed in Tables 17.3 and 17.4.

The Culbertson, Montana, Oil Mill Tables 17.5 and 17.6 depicts the acreage and production of safflower seed handled by the various operators of the Culbertson, Montana, oil mill once it was sold by PVO. The next sections of this chapter depict the operations of those operators. While the Culbertson mill had been under PVO control its production was merely supplementary to PVO’s plans. Once it was placed in the hands of others, it became a destabilizing factor in the safflower market because at times huge acreages of safflower might be planted by an operator that kept those plans secret. Because of the volatile nature of weather in the Northern Plains, neither the owner of the plant nor other traders could be sure of the results until harvest time. Therefore, the Culbertson mill became a source of worry for all concerned.

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TABLE 17.5 Estimate of Safflower Production for P.J. Anderson, Continental Grain, Allstate, Elders Oilseeds, Inc., and SVO Year

Acreage a

Productiona (ST)

P.J. Anderson 1968 4,000 1969 8,000 1970 14,000 1971 12,000 1972 21,000 1973 12,500b 1974 15,000 Continental Grain 1975 20,000 1976 13,000 1977 100,000 1978 102,000 1979 113,000 1980 50,000 1981 50,000 1982 40,000 1983 90,000 1984 76,000 1985 130,000 1986 190,000 1987 50,000 1988 30,000 Allstatec 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 Elders 1988 1989 SVO 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

800 5,000 5,600 5,000 5,000 3,500b 5,000 75,000 78,000 30,000 35,000 38,925 15,000 15,000 11,000 28,000 22,218 34,000 35,000 27,500 4,500

15,000 7,500 2,000 5,000 15,500

4,500 1,500 500 1,500 6,300

22,000 30,000

3,000 9,000

20,000 30,000 23,500 20,000 5,000

(3,000) (30,000) (17,500) (3,000)

6,500 10,000 7,700 6,500 2,000

(1,350) (5,500) (5,000) (1,000)

aOleic safflower is listed in parentheses. bIncludes Canadian production. cProduction additional quantities in Canada. Source: J. Smith, Personal estimates.

P.J. Anderson Company Vern Anderson operated P.J. Anderson & Co. at Conrad, Montana, for a number of years. He contracted with growers in the United States and Canada to produce vari-

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TABLE 17.6 Estimate of Safflower Disposition for P.J. Anderson, Continental Grain, Allstate, Elders Oilseeds, Inc., and SVO Year

Exports/ Birdseed (ST)

P.J. Anderson 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 Continental Grain 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 10,000 1987 1988 Allstate 1983 4,500 1984 1985 1986 1987 6,300 Elders 1988 2,000 1989 2,000 SVO 1990 6,000 1991 1992

Crush (ST)a Carryover

Planting seed (ST)a

800 1,300 5,400 4,800 4,800 3,400 4,800

200 200 200 200 100 200

7,000 7,300 29,000 34,000 38,325 14,500 14,500 10,000 25,500 20,718 31,000 23,500 26,000 4,500

500 500 1,000 1,000 600 500 500 1,000 2,500 1,500 3,000 1,500 1,500

1,500 500 1,500

500 6,500 500 9,500 7,200

500 500

(1,150) (5,000)

500 500

(200) (500)

aOleic safflower is listed in parentheses. Source: J. Smith, Personal estimates.

ous types of mustard seed which he cleaned and marketed through his elevator. Anderson was a kind man who had a good reputation with his bankers. He always seemed to operate on a shoe string, but his banks helped him enough to maintain a level of solvency. Anderson purchased the PVO Culbertson plant in 1967 and put Jerry Knick in charge. The previous plant manager, Curt Halseide, had decided to go off to work for a large ranching complex. Knick had grown up with the plant from the day it was

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built, working first as a construction worker and then hired on as a maintenance man under Les Hefferline. Knick also engaged in farming in a small way on the side, and had developed his own theories on the proper way to grow safflower. The time of the purchase coincided with the first availability of the herbicide, Trifluralin. Now something was available that would enable safflower to compete evenly with most of the tenacious weeds in this north country. Anderson and Knick held grower meetings and talked up their dream to run safflower, mustard, sunflower, and flax seeds through the plant on behalf of the local growers, cleaning and selling planting seed as well. This was to be the only time the Culbertson plant was to be owned and run by local people. Anderson and Knick received good support from Bergman, the safflower researcher at the nearby Sidney, Montana, Research Center and from Neil Riveland at the Williston, North Dakota station, just a little farther away. Knick found ways to process mustard seed since it required different techniques than safflower. Mustard seed contains some very pungent factors that are released into the air when it is heated during processing. They found that the best way to produce mustard oil was to plan relatively short runs, start up the plant, and then have all the workers stay outside. It was impossible to breathe or see once the pungent vapors built up. Every few hours someone would run inside to see if everything was running smoothly and quickly run back out. Don Baker of PVO kept a relationship going with Anderson after the plant was sold and purchased some safflower oil from him in 1968/1969, and tried to help Anderson market mustard oil, a product that was new to most U.S. buyers. Anderson was more successful marketing mustard meal to the various condiment companies that he had marketed mustard seed to. They liked the meal since it retained a nice yellow or brown color, depending on the type of mustard processed, as well as carrying the pungent mustard flavor. They used it as a filler for hot dogs, giving them a mustardy taste for a low cost. When Baker moved to Agricom, he persuaded Anderson to market his safflower oil through Agricom on a joint venture basis. Anderson would agree to supply a high and low quantity of oil (depending on the season) and Agricom would buy his oil at a firm price that would be paid quickly as soon as the oil was produced. They would then split the prices that Agricom was able to obtain from its buyers evenly. This worked well for several years. In 1970, Anderson was a great help to us in Agricom. When California’s oleic production fell short, he put us together with Bud McNab of Milk River Grain Co. in Canada with whom he had a loose association. We contracted many thousands of acres of oleic and regular safflower through McNab. Unfortunately, most of our safflower was lost to snows that fell just as harvest had begun. Using the so-called crow’s nest railroad freight rate for oilseeds, the seed that did survive was shipped on the Canadian Pacific and Canadian Northern Railroads to Vancouver and later to Prince Rupert for export to Japan. Safflower seed was not mentioned in the railroads’ tariffs. After reviewing matters they tried to collect a normal rate from Agricom, but we refused and pointed out that the wording gave safflower the privilege even though it did not mention safflower by name. They took

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us to court, and the lawyers we retained in Vancouver threatened to take the matter to the Canadian high court if necessary. Eventually it was settled. The railroads dropped asking for the premium if we agreed never to return to Canada to buy safflower. Later, Anderson and Agricom parted company. Anderson tried to market on his own, which he did for several years, but his thin level of working capital caused him terrible worries. He tried to work out ways of paying growers later for their seed, but eventually a poor production year forced him to sell his mill to the imaginative Hurley Zook of Continental Grain for $500,000.

Continental Grain Company The surprising thing about Continental Grain Company’s approach to the safflower business was the fragmented way in which it was managed. The world has been taught to think of Continental as one of the all-encompassing multinationals with a web of offices and associated companies extending all over the earth. Continental certainly worked with safflower in many parts of the world, but each of these operations seems to have been handled separately—almost never with a coordinated direction from its central New York headquarters. The company had the financial resources and physical presence to have become a dominating force in the safflower business, particularly after PVO began to decline, but this never happened. Continental’s initial approach to safflower was in 1959 when it had acquired Allied Grain in Phoenix, Arizona. I had been directly involved in negotiating a joint venture on behalf of PVO with Continental’s Phoenix Manager, Allen Rosenberg, and New York Executive vice president, Loren Johnson. When I went to Continental’s headquarters in New York, it was easy to see the strengths and weaknesses of the Continental organization regarding the safflower trade. They had a huge organization of first-class traders and transportation and financial experts providing several lifetimes of experience in dealing with grain, major oilseeds, and foreign governments. These men were not used to losing money. Although they dealt in huge amounts of money, mountains of grain, fleets of grain carriers, quick changes in government policy or weather, and such, they became very cautious when approaching a new agricultural product serving primarily the new “polyunsaturate market.” Shortly after the start of this joint venture, Rosenberg left Continental to become President of a new Arizona bank, and Continental’s interest waned as the market for safflower took a temporary dip. Continental next became active in California in the late 1960s, partly as a processor of safflower planting seed at its French Camp, California, seed-processing plant and as a contractor with farmers, but primarily as a trader in safflower seed for export through the Port of Stockton. Their operations were controlled by Zook, Continental’s sunflower trader, out of Continental, New York. Zook had come to Continental’s New York office via their Vancouver operations, where he had first encountered safflower. He was a very imaginative and dynamic individual given to using Continental’s power to the fullest in exploiting the growth of the sunflower seed trade and incorporating safflower seed into that mold.

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Zook was quickly involved in trading shiploads of safflower seed to Japan and then to Europe. He pioneered trade of U.S. safflower seed to Portugal. Portugal by this time had been cut off from trading with its former colonies in Africa, the source of groundnuts and cottonseed for Portuguese edible oil needs not filled by olive oil. The Portuguese considered soybean oil a vile product, fit only for industrial purposes, but would use either sunflower or safflower oil to substitute for the unobtainable cottonseed and groundnut oils. Because of the huge trade Continental was doing in corn, soybeans, and then sunflower to Iberia, Zook quickly found the route required to trade sunflower and then safflower to Portugal. In Agricom, even though we had good friendships with the Spanish owners of the Portuguese oil mills crushing safflower, we continuously failed to make a sale. Finally at a congress in Africa, one of the Spaniards pointed out that we were at a dead talking to the owners of the oil mills, since all purchases were controlled by a central buying agency of the Portuguese government. We needed to contact that agency through a certain Paris broker, Fabien Bismuth. We did, and soon were able to break the monopoly that Continental and Cargill had enjoyed, since we were willing to pay the $5–10/MT brokerage commission demanded that both of them refused to pay. At about the same time, Continental also began to show interest in Australia, purchasing safflower seed to be processed in the small cottonseed mill it operated in Morree in northern New South Wales. Part of this Australian oil began to find its way to Rotterdam in 500-MT lots, once or twice annually. While Zook was busily trading safflower seed, he in no way supported the activity of the Australian operation—it was another profit center. The oil produced in Australia at that time was not always the best, since it suffered from a green color at times when immature seeds were harvested. The oil was not supported by a concentrated effort when it reached Rotterdam. Continental’s Rotterdam office was primarily concerned with handling freighting and documentation clearance and had no time to be involved in calling on safflower consumers. They accordingly would offer the oil in 500-MT lots and lower the price until someone picked it up—usually at $200/MT under the safflower-merchandising market. Zook was unique among Continental’s traders in taking big risks in new products and in getting backing for this from the top. He acquired the Culbertson safflower mill from P.J. Anderson Company in 1975 for under $500,000 with the operating it to process safflower, mustard, and perhaps certain spices. Continental was able to pay off the purchase price in just over 1 year of operation, but within 2 years Zook was transferred from New York to Geneva. Those who followed him did not have the same interest and imagination to continue with a small operation. From that point on, the Culbertson operation was handled on the one hand as a stepchild that needed to be expanded in size in order to succeed, while at the same time it became a burden to the traders assigned to watch over it. One of those traders, the brilliant Tom Medd, remarked that he could trade 15,000 tons of sunflower seed in 1 hour but needed to spend an entire year watching over the Culbertson operation to trade the same quantity. He felt that he could not afford to waste his company’s time.

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With Zook gone, Continental’s west coast trade in safflower seed exportation transferred to others in the organization who quickly got the company into a short position and Continental paid dearly to escape. Medd was given the job of cleaning up the short position. Once that was accomplished, he quickly removed the company from the export seed trade even though Continental had acquired Stockton Elevators and had an ideal physical situation to be a safflower seed trader or shipper. The management of the Culbertson plant was placed under Continental’s Jim Reed, Head of their Production Management Group; new Directors of Operations were dispatched to the plant. Bad feelings developed between them, Knick, and Chuck Crowell, the Field Crops Manager. Knick and Crowell resigned on June 5, 1979, and were quickly hired by Agricom International. Our principal reason for hiring Knick had been to have a candidate in hand for plant manager of a sunflower mill that Agricom was hoping to build at West Fargo, or the Culbertson mill if we could buy it intact. Crowell later left Agricom employment after only a few weeks to become an independent contractor. In 1982, he helped to form the Northern Plains Safflower Growers Association, a group aimed at broadening the local market for safflower. The magical touch that Zook had used to make the local staff feel appreciated was gone. Continental alienated local elevators, through whom their buying of safflower had been directed in the past, by primarily dealing directly with safflower growers. Continental’s buying policy was to require growers to purchase planting seed from the company. Continental also became a dealer for Trifluralin. It refused to buy seed from noncontracted growers at prices higher than it had granted contracted farmers even though market prices might have risen. This made Agricom’s job of competing with Continental easier using Jim Bervig, formerly of Atwood Larson, and Knick as field representatives. Upon leaving Continental, Knick and Crowell had begun attacking Continental verbally to local residents. It was reported that they claimed that Agricom would buy the Culbertson plant from Continental within 3 years. This word reached Continental’s Reed, who had been secretly negotiating with me to sell the plant to Agricom for little more than $1 million. Reed immediately withdrew the lower price and went buck to a $4 million price tag (J. Reed, personal communication), which Agricom could not afford. Reed expanded the Culbertson plant. A surplus solvent extractor and DT was brought from Continental’s plant in Alabama along with a plant manager accustomed to soybean processing. Plant capacity was increased from 90 ST/day to a the oretical 300 ST/day, a deodorizer was added together with much seed storage, and plant staff was increased, but none of this expanded the size of the crop, and the plant suffered through several years of operating losses. Continental’s marketing of safflower oil was handled by the New York office, generally working through brokers. Year after year Hain Pure Foods purchased most of its oil in the refined, bleached, and deodorized form. Hain shipped the oil to its New Jersey bottling site since the Culbertson location had a built-in freight advantage versus West Coast production. In 1986, the operation suffered a disastrous season when the first large acreage in several years was hit by torrential rains and snows that caused a major portion of

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the crop to sprout before harvesting. Continental’s grower contract did not address this issue, and the local management and New York management could not quickly reach an agreement on what to do. Growers were given varying reasons as to whether their seed could or could not be delivered. Initially, some heavily damaged seed was accepted, and subsequently much less damaged seed was rejected. Seed delivered to the mill or seed delivered to country elevators received different treatment. This resulted in well over 100 growers taking legal action that was finally resolved (in Continental’s favor) after 2 years of argument and arbitration. Approximately 9,000 MT of this sprouted seed was shipped to Rotterdam, and created an immense problem for its ultimate buyers in both the extraction and sale of the resultant dark oil. Even the meal that resulted from this lot was dark in color and produced a strange odor. Birdseed buyers began to become a more important factor in the Northern Plains during the 1980s. Allstate Grain Company, Ltd., founded by Rick Dobranski, began to purchase significant quantities of safflower in Southern Canada and the northern United States. Finally, his company was purchased by Elders Grain, a subsidiary of Elders IXL of Australia, as part of a move for Elders to become a major factor in the North American grain market. Grower relations and profits did not improve for Continental, and finally Zook, who had subsequently left Continental and returned to Vancouver, acted as the broker in September 1988, when Continental sold the plant to Elders Grain through Allstate (14). Before the sale, however, Continental had become involved in safflower in other ways as well. They acquired Pacific Seeds’ planting seed operation in Australia to augment their mill’s operation in northern New South Wales. Saffola 208 planting seed was acquired from Montana and introduced into Argentina where it performed much better than local varieties. Continental encouraged large local growers in the far northern states of Argentina to plant safflower, and offered to contract for the seed at prices similar to sunflower seed delivered to its oil mill at Rosario. Initially, it appeared that most of the safflower oil produced disappeared into the sunflower market, but by 1985, Continental began to ship safflower oil to Europe, and in 1986 and 1987 brought a portion to the United States, as well, to replace shortfalls in its Northern Plains production. Production in Argentina never became very large because the crop existed on the edge of disaster, having to be planted without any soil preparation immediately after the harvest of soybeans in June. If the soybean harvest was delayed for any reason, the safflower harvest would be pushed back to the beginning of the rainy period in November/December and severe damage and sprouting would result. With the sale of Continental’s Argentine plant to Cargill at the end of the decade, Continental’s interest in safflower in Argentina came to an end. In the period from 1985 to the present, Continental’s activities in safflower have been confined to acting as a buyer through its Northern California field offices. They then resell the seed to local crushers or exporters on a back-to-back basis.

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Allstate Grain Company, Ltd./Elders Grain Company, Ltd. (Elders Oilseeds, Inc.) Dobranski, formerly of Northern Sales Company of Winnipeg, formed Allstate Grain Company, Ltd., in the mid-1970s at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Initially, it was an elevating and cleaning operation to handle canary seed, mustard, buckwheat, and other special seed crops. Dobranski’s experience with sunflower operations, both domestically and overseas, naturally led him to look into safflower production and sales for Allstate. Dobranski was very active in his management of Allstate’s safflower business. He contracted seed with growers on both sides of the U.S./Canada border. He cleaned and marketed this seed to birdseed buyers in the United States and overseas. He used friendships that he had cultivated to obtain terminal elevator space and ocean freight from Vancouver so that he could offer seed to crushers within the United States or overseas. If he could not sell seed for a fair price, he made arrangements to toll crush at the Continental Culbertson plant. We found him to be a good trading partner on behalf of PCO and also to Japanese seed buyers with PCO’s permission. He explored production and purchase of safflower in Argentina. He displayed similar energy in the other commodities that Allstate handled and then attracted Elders IXL. Elders was looking for ways to expand its Australian grain business into the northern hemisphere, and Dobranski offered one step in this process. Allstate was acquired by Elders and Dobranski was retained as a consulting manager. With Elders’ muscle and Dobranski’s drive, Allstate literally began to explode from its Surrey, British Columbia, office space. Don Foster, who had formerly worked for Cargill as a meal merchandiser, was hired to understudy Dobranski. Zook, one of Dobranski’s trading counterparts when Dobranski was at Northern Sales, proposed that Allstate purchase Continental’s oil mill, which they were tiring of. The chance to operate an oil mill intrigued Dobranski, who was also looking into fish farming in Manitoba. The purchase was made through Zook, who acted as a real estate agent for a fee. Soon after the plant was taken on, Dobranski tired of his consultant role and retired to his farm in Manitoba. So again, the Culbertson plant was abandoned by an imaginative individual, and a large organization assumed control with no experienced personnel in place and no one to provide proper guidance. Elders’ grower contracts were initially based on trying to get growers to sell a definite amount of safflower seed (400–1,000 lbs/acre) at the contract price plus any balance at Elders’ price at time of harvest. Others have found this type of contract very hard to enforce if the grower cannot deliver the quantity contracted to sell. Foster began to follow up on Dobranski’s activity in Argentina and explored puchasing of safflower oil in Mexico to supplement Montana supplies. Soon Elders began to try to offer safflower on a U.S. or Australian origin basis, at seller’s option, because of the poor weather during their tenure in the Culbertson plant. Elders was forced to try to process other oilseeds at Culbertson because of the small crops they experienced. On February 23, 1990, Directors of Elders IXL announced that they were going to restructure in order to escape a financial bind. The Elders Agribusiness Division

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would divest itself of its Grain Division, selling off assets in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia in order to concentrate on building up its brewing business (15,16). But even prior to this discussion, Elders had been trying to sell its Culbertson plant. It was obvious that its Vancouver management was having trouble coping with the business. In less than 2 years, the plant had changed products it was running 76 times, making it impossible for the Plant Manager of over 20 years, Larry Mehlem, to forecast or produce a profit. Employment, which had been at the 40 worker level during Continental Grain’s tenure had fallen to 11 under Elders’ cost-cutting procedures by December, 1989. Some employees were refusing to talk to Elders’ Vancouver personnel. On November 25, 1989, Elders quietly told its Culbertson employees that the plant had been sold to AG Processing, Inc., a Midwestern soybean-processing company, subject to AGP Board approval on December 5th. AG Processing, Inc., was interested in the purchase in order to broaden the company’s scope. Again, Zook was the agent that put Elders and AGP together. I had become concerned that AGP was making its decision based on false impressions of the extent of the safflower business. I corresponded with AGP personnel and provided them with data about the safflower business, in particular about the oversupply of safflower that existed at the time. Eventually, AGP’s Board did not allow the deal to proceed. On June 19, 1990, Agrigenetics company, a division of Lubrizol Corporation, announced that it had purchased the Culbertson plant and safflower business from Elders IXL for operation by Agrigenetics’ SVO Enterprises unit (17,18).

SVO Enterprises SVO Enterprises was formed in 1984 by Lubrizol Enterprises, Inc., a wholly owned division of Lubrizol Corporation, to handle that company’s operations in oleic sunflower. Prior to the formation of SVO, OIL, had been employed by Lubrizol to assist in the initial production and marketing efforts of that company in the oleic sunflower field. Subsequently, SVO was transferred into Agrigenetics Company, another Lubrizol division, parallel with Sigco Research Co. SVO was intended for the processing and marketing of special vegetable oil products, such as oleic sunflower oil, while Sigco was to produce the necessary planting seeds for that business, and in some cases to contract with farmers for the production of oil crops. Since 1983, Lubrizol had been marketing oleic sunflower oil produced by toll processing in oil mills owned by others. The Culbertson plant was purchased with the hope of filling a great portion of its processing time with oleic sunflower seed as the crop volume increased, and in the meantime to process safflower or other oilseeds that were already being handled at Culbertson. In June of 1990, Elders sold both the Allstate Grain subsidiary in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the Culbertson oil mill to SVO (18). SVO acquired Elders’ existing safflower oil sales and purchase contracts, which included 6,000 MT of Argentine safflower oil being brought into the United States for refining and resale to Hain. Part of this oil arrived contaminated with a percentage of sunflower, but this problem was worked out with Hain.

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The Vancouver office was closed, and only Foster was retained by SVO. Foster worked out of his home as SVO’s western sales representative. SVO’s Dennis Terry assumed command of production. The Culbertson plant personnel were retained, a new field agent was hired, and procurement for the plant was put under the direction of Sigco Research. In contrast to Elders, SVO and Lubrizol are companies built on making plans, employing technology, and acquiring control of intellectual properties. Since 1983, they have been engaged in a program to develop and control vegetable oils high in oleic fatty acid, among a number of other agribusiness projects. In January, 1989, Agrigenetics had acquired Cargill’s hybrid safflower program in Woodland, California, and the services of its plant breeder, Barney Hill (19). Just 1 week prior to the announcement of the Culbertson purchase, Agrigenetics and the Idaho Research Foundation had announced the joint filing of broad-based patent applications for high oleic rapeseed lines with oleic levels up to 94%, saturated fatty acids as low as 3%, polyunsaturated levels as low as 3%, and zero erucic acid. These applications came from a body of work conducted by Dick Auld under a cooperative research program between the University of Idaho, the Idaho Research Foundation, and Agrigenetics Company. Agrigenetics had provided $844,300 to Auld’s program since 1985 (USDOE/USDA contributed $572,481 more), and became the exclusive licensee of the discoveries that were generated by conventional plant breeding techniques and mutagenesis (20). Agrigenetics already possessed patents covering oleic sunflower seed and oleic sunflower oil, displaying levels of the fatty acid in excess of 80%, and earlier in their endeavors had employed Paul Knowles as a consultant upon his retirement from U.C. Davis. Prior to the Culbertson plant acquisition, SVO had been diligently working to obtain a commanding position in oleic safflower in the same way that they approached oleic canola in Idaho. Bergman, Director of the Sidney Experiment Station of Montana State University, operated a facility that had conducted safflower research at nearby Sidney for 35 years. In the mid-1980s, with help from the Northern Plains Safflower Growers’ Association, the Montana Farmers Union, OIL, PCO, and others, Bergman began to receive grants of $200,000 or more annually to conduct research in oleic safflower oil as a possible substitute or extender to reduce petroleum consumption and provide a possible new crop for Montana farmers. These funds came from stripper well funds flowing through the Montana Department of National Resources and Conservation. In 1989, the Northern Plains Safflower group had successfully lobbied and USDA and Congress to appropriate $250,000 for safflower work at the Sidney and nearby Williston, North Dakota, stations. These funds have continued each year. These grants were used to purchase sophisticated laboratory equipment to allow Bergman and his associates to search for components that might be high in oleic fatty acid and also to search for other aberrations in other fatty acids, oil content, amino acids, oil color, taste factors, and so on, as well as agronomic factors affecting safflower production. Riveland at the Williston Station concentrated on herbicides, long-term rotational studies, and improved cultural practices. Prior to these efforts, Bergman had released six safflower lines aimed at Northern

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Plains conditions: Rehbein, Sidwill, Hartman (named after his mentor and predecessor as Station Director, Glenn Hartman) Gerard, Ocre, and Finch. I had always admired Bergman’s energy since my PVO days, and had encouraged each of the companies I worked for to support Bergman’s work. By the late 1980s, he was the only public researcher left in the United States working on safflower on a full-time basis. In January, 1989, Bergman told me that he had developed a new high oil, high yielding, linoleic variety of safflower (Centennial) that displayed a resistance to alternaria, and asked if we would be interested in licensing the variety. At that time my company, OIL, was contracting safflower acreage in the Great Plains for PCO and in competition with Elders Oilseeds, Inc. Because of internal conflicts, PCO was unable to take on a license themselves but they encouraged OIL to do so since it appeared that it would enhance our joint program. On September 13, 1989, we worked out a license and royalty agreement with Montana’s Research and Development Institute, Inc., (RDI) a counterpart of Idaho’s Research Foundation. In exchange for an initial fee plus a royalty for each lb sold, we obtained the rights to exclusive use of the variety for 2 years. Unfortunately we were unable to market much of the seed and found little difference in performance compared to Saffola-541. We gave up the license in 1993. Prior to releasing Centennial, Bergman had produced an oleic line, 3569. Oilseeds International had earlier encouraged Bergman to look for improved oleic types (J. Smith letter to Bergman, July 16, 1986) but had not coached Bergman on the specifications for oleic safflower. Bergman had shown his data about 3569 to Randy Bodley, manager of a fertilizer-marketing company owned by Conagra. Bergman told Bodley to call us. In the meantime, Bodley had talked to folks in Conagra who were involved in processed foods manufacture. They were interested and so were we, but upon checking the fatty acid distribution in the seed, we found that it was substantially below minimum specification levels. Both Conagra and OIL were interested to see if we could develop a market for the oil from the variety, selling off the remainder to other consumers of oleic safflower oil. Since the oil did not meet specifications, this would not be possible, and any development would have to depend entirely on the new product. This made development quite risky. I had to tell Bergman and Conagra that Bergman’s new variety did not meet market levels. Conagra dropped the project. Bergman soon developed another line called Montola that was quite superior to 3569. Later, this variety was called Montola 2000. The new line exhibited 80% oleic fatty acid levels when grown in Montana. After hearing from Bergman about the new type, I wrote to his boss expressing interest in obtaining a license (Oilseeds letter, J. Smith to Russel B. Muntifering, October 13, 1989). We repeated our request; subsequently we learned that SVO was increasing Montola for Bergman. We asked for a chance for a chance to license Montola and finally were presented with a proposal for a contract that was too rich for our blood. We can only speculate about what was finally worked out between SVO, MSU, and RDI, since RDI is not required to reveal its activities even though it is selling materials that have been derived from publicly funded research. Many people have protested to no avail. We do know that SVO was awarded control of use and publication of

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findings by Bergman’s team in exchange for a large up-front fee and that Bergman was granted a substantial share in royalties paid for seeds developed from his research. SVO planted substantial acreages with Montola 2000 in Montana and South Dakota in 1991 and 1992, and in Mexico as well. The terrible weather in the Great Plains hurt Montola even more than it did other varieties since it seemed to be more susceptible to attacks of alternaria, contrary to earlier test results. I witnessed similar damage in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, where SVO planted a substantial acreage in 1992; the dark brown color of Montola fields made them easy to identify from a mile away. SVO continued to supply normal safflower oil from the Culbertson plant, to Hain Pure Foods for its New Jersey plant until 1995. Generally low yields of safflower have plagued SVO since purchasing the Culbertson plant, but it is a very resilient company and its President, Richard Schoenfeld, never ceases searching for better market opportunities. Of course, when it was purchased, the function of the Culbertson plant was to process SVO’s oleic sunflower from North Dakota, and substantial sums have been spent to upgrade the plant, particularly to add hydrogenation facilities to enhance some oleic sunflower products. As related elsewhere, Agrigenetics purchased the Cargill hybrid safflower program together with the services of Hill. Hill’s program in Woodland, California, was integrated with safflower work generated by Bergman and Sigco Research and in a more recent corporate change became part of Mycogen Corporation of La Jolla, California, under a long-term contract with SVO. Hill continued to try to produce a practical hybrid safflower variety, doing increase work for this project in Argentina as well. Tests of their hybrids in Davis, California, and Williston, North Dakota, and three locations in South Dakota showed that more work was needed to generate a hybrid that showed a substantial improvement in yield and was able to hold an oil content above 40%. Mycogen suspended its safflower planting seed research program in 1995. In 1995, SVO faced a tough challenge to encourage sufficient grower production in the Great Plains after 2 years of almost total crop failure. Complicating the problem was the increasing demand for safflower in birdseed. Today, this market can afford to pay a higher price than the oil market will support; therefore, in 1995 SVO ceased pursuing safflower grower contracts in the northern plains.

Companies Represented by Oilseeds International, Ltd. As mentioned in Chapter 14, OIL’s first 18 months in business kept us all looking frantically for new business. A large part of my time was tied up trying to help All Sun get underway. I was precluded in part from generating income by the noncompetition agreement that had been signed under duress after leaving Agricom, and which did not expire until August 1, 1982. More importantly however, I was concerned about the supply of oleic oil for Wyeth Pharmaceutical. Wyeth’s supply from Agricom was adequate for the moment, but in the future that appeared to be a dangerous source for Wyeth to base their entire formula business on. Accordingly, I went to Los Angeles to talk to Brooks Pierce, Boswell’s trader, about engaging in a new direction in oleic safflower oil. Pierce’s previous feelings about any new business was that he was not interested in selling anything that made

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him responsible past the doorstep of his plant. If he could not load the oil on a car or truck and be done with it, he did not want to get involved. Selling to Wyeth would mean supplying RBD oil to a very quality-minded customer, 2,000 miles away in Mason, Michigan. But Wyeth was the type of customer that Boswell favored—someone who could plan and contract for oil to be delivered well ahead of planting time and who would appreciate Boswell’s regard for good quality. After much discussion, Pierce said he would be willing to try. First, Liberty Vegetable Oil had to be enlisted to refine crude oil from Boswell; second, Wyeth’s purchasing agent, Allen Hovde, had to be introduced to Boswell and convinced that this was an important and reliable producer of safflower. After a couple of meetings, Wyeth agreed to buy from Boswell. We could not gain any recompense for putting the two companies together, but once our agreement not to engage in the safflower business for 1 year had expired, Boswell made it worth our while. The arrangement went into a second year, but we were forced to bow out of our arrangement with Boswell when we were retained by PCO to be their exclusive representative in December, 1982. We had created our own strongest competition in Boswell, but I felt good at having put two fine companies together. Wyeth has continued to purchase a portion of their needs from Boswell to this day. At the same time we also introduced Pierce of Boswell to the Japanese oleic safflower oil trade through C. Itoh. A contract for sale of Boswell’s last 300 MT of oil was made from a phone booth in North Dakota minutes after OIL was freed from All Sun. Again, we could only introduce the parties because of our noncompetition arrangement with PIRMI. After a shaky start, Pierce began several years of good business with C. Itoh and Fuji, until oleic sunflower eventually replaced oleic safflower in that market. One other positive factor that resulted during this period was to reconcile Cal/West, Don McLeod the broker, and Toshoku, Ltd. Dean Schneider of Cal/West had developed the belief that McLeod was not treating Cal/West fairly, since he portrayed himself as a broker but acted only on behalf of Toshoku if the destination was Japan. I pointed out that Toshoku was only going to buy one way, and that was through McLeod. I also indicated that McLeod was giving Cal/West a complete view of what all buyers were doing, and that they would be foolish to turn their backs on Toshoku. Ed Weimortz soon held another discussion with McLeod and the three companies have worked closely together ever since. Oilseeds International began to represent PCO in late 1982. Once PCO had begun producing oleic safflower oil, we began trying to capture part of Wyeth Laboratories’ and C. Itoh’s requirements. In 1983, PCO operated approximately 40,000 acres of its own farmland. We decided to have their farms grow only oleic safflower on the portion of their land devoted to safflower. In addition, of course, PCO contracted with farmers in other parts of the San Joaquin Valley for oleic production. The obvious distress Agricom was suffering and the flooding of a large part of the Boswell Farm in 1982 and 1983 helped convince both Wyeth and C. Itoh’s customer, Fuji, to contract from PCO starting with the 1984 crop. Oilseeds International and PCO got great cooperation from Sumitomo Corporation and Mitsubishi International Corporation during the next 5 years. They regularly gave us bids for part of their safflower oil needs. In a

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similar vein, Toshoku Ltd. allowed OIL to supply the ocean freight needed to carry their ex-spout safflower seed purchases to Japan as well as the oil supplies that were purchased later. Once we began working with PCO, we had hoped to obtain the services of Westerweel of Matthes & Porton to introduce PCO safflower oil sales on the European Market. However, Westerweel felt an obligation to stay with his representation of Agricom because during 1983 and early 1984 the Pierson, Heldring, and Pierson Bank was in a precarious position, having financed Agricom’s European oil inventories at a very high cost level. Westerweel asked us to wait for Agricom to die a natural death, feeling that we would not lose that much business, but we and PCO were anxious to get PCO’s name established with the smaller buyers in Europe and did not want to lose a year of exposure. In 1983, we established a relationship on behalf of PCO with Ruud Mente of Agrioil, a brokerage firm formed by former Matthes & Porton employees. In April, 1984, we attempted to encourage Mente to join forces with Dubbleman, who was becoming disenchanted with Paveocor. Mente and PCO both dragged their feet on this gambit, and Dubbleman soon joined CFO. Although Agrioil served PCO well, I believe that we had missed a good chance to have created an even stronger marketing team. Following several discussions we had conducted with Cal/West over the past several seasons, we tried to bring Cal/West and PCO together in a supply/marketings relationship. We failed in the attempt, because Cal/West decided its coop status would prevent such a joint arrangement. We tried to enhance PCO’s safflower seed purchasing coverage by bringing them together with Ken Woodward in August of 1983. Woodward had been with PVO for the previous 20 years and had just left CFO. He was able to introduce PCO contracts to Idaho and Utah growers in 1984, working on a part-time basis, but in 1985, he was offered a full-time position with Cal/West Seeds, which he accepted. He continued to cover Idaho and Utah for PCO, but the following year this ended as well. Also in 1983, Chuck Crowell began another relationship with OIL and PCO. He sometimes acted as an independent contractor, occasionally represented sales by the Northern Plains Safflower Growers Association, and finally became a full-time representative dealing with safflower producers in the Northern Plains States. Planting seed supplies were also a concern in 1983. There were several sources of linoleic safflower planting seed, but only one company, SeedTec International, produced oleic planting seed. Knowing that SeedTec was being offered for sale by the Kay Corporation made us very nervous. SeedTec was also nervous because CFO had purchased PVO’s safflower operations; this meant that SeedTec would have to make firm contracts for its planting seed stocks in the future. Accordingly, PCO and SeedTec tried to negotiate a long-term contract, in which SeedTec would agree to supply PCO’s oleic and regular safflower planting seed needs in return for an agreement from PCO to allow SeedTec to select its seed stocks from fields contracted to PCO. The negotiations broke down. When SeedTec was finally purchased, its owners decided that SeedTec should sell to all comers, so PCO’s worry was not realized. But the failed negotiations cemented a close buyer/supplier relationship between the two companies, that later resulted in some sponsored planting seed research.

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On February 18, 1983, Noble Koepp of Triumph Seed Company invited me to hear Knowles and David Anderson of Lubrizol Enterprises, Inc., discuss a new vegetable oil venture. Knowles was retiring from UC Davis the next month, and he had been retained as an advisor for Lubrizol. Triumph was then affiliated with Bob Schuler’s Sigco Research. Sigco in turn, had been acquired by Lubrizol Corporation, and Lubrizol hoped to embark on the development of oleic sunflower seed from hybrids that Sigco was developing. In discussions over the next few weeks with Koepp plus Bruce Grasser, Donald Murfin, and David Anderson of Lubrizol Enterprises, Inc., we worked out a contract, first on a monthly basis and eventually a 5-year agreement, to guide Lubrizol’s oleic sunflower program. We tried to model it after our arrangement with PCO, but finally agreed to a fixed price contract in which we would budget our expenses and margin each year. After agreeing in principle to the agreement, I met with Sam Evans and Jim Greer to explain the arrangement. It involved our working to promote a product that could become a competitor for oleic safflower oil. I could see that Evans was not happy with the proposal, but at the same time he said that our mutual agreement did not prevent such a deal. Oilseeds International needed the business and if it made us a stronger company that would be good for them too, and that we should go ahead. We both expressed hope that it might result in toll-crushing business for PCO if the project was successful. I can not cover the story of oleic sunflower’s development in this book, but it is a product that has had a profound effect on markets for oleic safflower oil and on the course of OIL. We introduced Wyeth and Fuji to the merits of oleic sunflower oil on behalf of Lubrizol, and made a strong attempt to sell our first production to some very interested Italian buyers. Right from the start, we began to see that Lubrizol was a different sort of company than PCO was. The association with Lubrizol took most of my time, and the best thing that came of it was that it forced me to start bringing John Gyulai forward into all of our sales operations. Gyulai had proved to be a natural, and as time went on, he took over the handling of all of our domestic selling while Chris Thompson concentrated on our international oil dealings. In time, Gyulai worked his way into the international area for safflower oil. He first took on the dealings with Europe, and then he began to take over the dealings with Japan after we made an introductory trip together in 1986. In the later approaches by Adams and Cal Oils to purchase OIL, Gyulai’s services were the paramount factor that attracted them to our company. We had demanded a 5-year agreement with Lubrizol, since we were afraid that a big company would simply use us for a couple of years to learn the rudiments of the business from us and toss us aside. Koepp reacquired Sigco’s interest in his company and began to operate independently. Subsequently, Lubrizol formed SVO Enterprises to handle its oleic sunflower business, and we worked out an early termination agreement with SVO’s President, Mike Hein. Hein left shortly afterward and was replaced by Schoenfeld who has done a very professional job for SVO (now named SVO Specialty Products, Inc.). We, in turn, began to work overseas with Koepp and his Italian associates to develop oleic sunflower production in that market, and reduced markets for oleic safflower oil as we went along.

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In 1984, we had arranged to produce the first commercial quantity (approximately 400 ST) of oleic sunflower seed for Lubrizol in the Sacramento Valley and PCO agreed to toll crush it in their Fresno plant. On Lubrizol’s behalf, we employed Richard Purdy and Don Smith to assist with oil refining/technical matters and sunflower grower relations, respectively. Don Smith continued working jointly with us from that time, first representing PCO, after SVO withdrew from California oleic sunflower production, and subsequently, with C. Itoh (Itochu International). As time passed, it became more and more apparent that we and PCO had prepared a faulty plan for the 1984 safflower crop, and we were going to end up with too much safflower seed for what the market appeared ready to absorb. Up to this point, when we suggested that PCO consider selling safflower seed as well as oil, both Evans and Greer told us that they belonged to an oil-milling company, and that all of us should do the best job we could to produce and sell oil. Now that they were facing a tougher market situation, Evans agreed that it might make sense for us to help them sell seed to a foreign buyer. We were able to find a buyer in the Sumitomo Corporation, and executed a sale for 2,000 MT on a CANDF FO basis. Greer proved to be a ready student and eagerly looked into every aspect of what would be involved in this trade, writing succinct letters of confirmation on all actions regarding the trucking, elevation, sampling, analysis, and loading that would be involved. Seeing that more was required, I approached Bismuth to see if there was any chance for Portugal to buy safflower seed before the 1984 sunflower harvest would become available in October. At first he felt there was no chance, but I continued to try to persuade him. Finally at the International Association of Seed Crushers Congress in Rio de Janeiro in April, 1984, he and I had a brief conversation with a buyer. After that point, Bismuth said to leave it to him. Portugal wanted 15,000 MT of safflower if we could get it there early enough. Jim Easler felt we could do it, although at this point we had no vessel in hand. We realized that 15,000 MT was more than what was needed to even out PCO’s position, so we enlisted the help of Cal/West to provide part of the cargo. Easler, and his friend, Bill Sibbern of Farallon Shipping, sweated blood but came up with an ideal vessel. Evans and PCO put a lot of faith in our judgment in making a deal to sell seed without a letter of credit to a company that they had never seen before. It went smoothly, and what could have been a losing year was turned into a good gain for PCO, Cal/West, and OIL. By May, 1984, Mulcahy of Agricom International approached George Kopas, proposing several different plans of dubious worth. At Mulcahy’s invitation, we went over Agricom’s records hoping that there was something we could do to help rescue some old friends who were still employed by Agricom, but the company was beyond repair. Eventually, we made offers ranging from $250,000–450,000 to purchase the Grimes plant and Berkeley equipment but could never get Mulcahy or General Electric Credit Corporation to confirm any proposal. Finally, on July 27, 1984, Agricom filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code. In November, 1984, we learned that the Berkeley land had been sold, and in January of 1985, a phone call came that changed OIL. Harold Fenske, a North Dakota All Sun shareholder, called to say he believed that the Grimes plant and Berkeley property would be auctioned. I immediately contacted the judge involved and was

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told to contact Charles Duck, a trustee in bankruptcy, located in Santa Rosa, California. I contacted Duck to get all of the particulars in the matter and for the next month, Kopas and I held many discussions with him. An auction was advertised for March 20 and March 21, and then withdrawn since we made a proposal to buy everything with an offer that Duck evidently thought to be better than what he could net by selling the equipment piecemeal. I was advised by Express Mail on March 13 of the canceled auction and that in its place, sealed bids would be accepted no later the 4 P.M. on March 20, 1985, to be accompanied by a check for 10% of the bid price. In a comedy of errors, Kopas took our bid letter and check to Santa Rosa personally, and forgetting how far away Santa Rosa was, arrived there only 2 minutes before the deadline. Perhaps this also was fortuitous, since with Kopas on hand Duck was able immediately to confirm that our bid, in fact, had won his acceptance. In the next days after the deadline, Continental Grain, CFO, and Bobango all called Duck to complain about the bidding process, but Duck stuck with his confirmation and Grimes again became ours. Kopas had made an agreement with a relative in the salvage business to take most of the Berkeley equipment, and removal began immediately upon approval of the court. The Grimes plant had not been operated for 14 months, and had been shut down without removal of the seed, meal, and oil last processed. But other than being dirty, it was in good shape. We had acquired a plant that would cost $6 million to replace for only $250,000 plus our cost to put it back into service. Although Bill Cates, Grimes’ previous plant manager, provided us with good records of what had transpired in the plant since we had left Agricom, Kopas chose to employ former PVO employees Nissen and Paul Fiausto to help us clean up the plant, and named Dwight Hendrix as our Plant Manager. We immediately offered PCO a share in the plant plus an agreement not to process safflower for anyone but PCO. Evans appreciated the offer, but Lear Sigler, then owner of PCO, had no interest in acquiring further assets. We then offered to toll crush oleic sunseed for our other client, SVO. The Grimes plant was up and running with 7,000 ST of sunseed its first year. In 1986, we processed additional oleic sunseed for SVO, after which they switched their U.S. sunseed buying exclusively to midwestern states and processed in Texas and North Dakota. We also processed 910 tons of safflower seed for PCO that same season. In Chapter 14 I discussed how OIL acquired the lease to its Fresno refining property. Chris Kopas, George Kopas’ son, who had earlier operated Agricom’s Berkeley refinery had become the manager of OIL’s Fresno refinery. Our landlord, Allied Vegetable Oils, Inc., transferred Phil Stanton from their headquarters to manage the U.S. business, refurbish the plant and introduce Meadow Lea margarine to West Coast consumers. Although Meadow Lea was a good product, Allied’s advertising campaign was not successful and the plant suffered losses even though it also began to handle substantial custom packaging for the food service industry. However, in 1985, before the plant had a chance to prove itself fully, Allied Mills was forced to garner its assets to fight a takeover battle and offered the plant for sale. We were initially surprised by this action, since our lease contained a last refusal clause allowing us to meet offers made by others for the property. Producers Cotton Oil was not in a position at the time

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to acquire more assets, so we made a number of efforts to acquire the property ourselves, and attempted to find partners that would be interested in the margarine and shortening side of the property so we could preserve the refinery and storage portion under our control. We were ultimately unsuccessful in these endeavors. The plant was sold to PVO Foods, Inc., of St. Louis in 1986 to enter the custom-packing business (PVO Foods, Inc., had purchased the old PVO Blanton plant plus the PVO name from Kay Corporation). George Kopas negotiated a new lease with PVO Foods on similar terms to our Allied lease, although it required definite monthly rental payments. In 1991, George Kopas, hearing that PVO Foods was having financial problems, recommended purchasing the Fresno refinery property from PVO Foods to ensure that it remain in OIL’s hands. Easler and I did not agree with this thinking, but agreed that if George Kopas wished to buy it, OIL would lease and operate the refinery. This was accomplished in 1992. Mexico began to export safflower oil in 1987, and Millard Evak of Durkee Famous Foods suggested to Thompson that Alejandro Terrones of Aceites Polimerizados S.A. (APOLME) would make a good partner. I met Terrones and found that he was the son of PVO’s first Technical Assistance Contractor. We soon concluded an agreement to have Terrones replace Manuel de la Fuente as our Mexican representative for purchasing safflower oil. De la Fuente had done a fine job for us previously, but was currently tied up in much more lucrative pharmaceutical trades. Terrones was able to arrange more supplies each year, occasionally processing seed in his own Mexico City mill and at other times in mills on Mexico’s West Coast. In order to minimize the time between production of the oil and payment by PCO, our initial shipments were brought to the border by truck. At the border, it was necessary to transfer the oil from Mexican equipment to U.S. tank trucks and then drive these vehicles to Los Angeles, Fresno, or Richmond. Coordinating Mexican trucks with U.S. trucks through the maze of border delays, holidays, and periodic FDA orders to delay shipment made the logistics of this operation a nightmare for Thompson, who was supervising this operation. We soon abandoned truck movement and went to railcar shipments. With rail, it was not necessary to unload oil at the border and transfer the product in a dusty freight yard. Railcars could be sealed and moved to the final destination where they could be held for release if the FDA placed some restriction on a particular shipment. Mexican oil was surprisingly good, and the relationship between APOLME and PCO (and subsequently C. Itoh) went well in spite of Mexico businesses constantly facing tight financial restrictions. In 1987, the owners of PCO, Forstmann, Little & Co., decided to sell the company and many potential buyers toured the PCO plant and offices. Soon the bidding was narrowed down to two interested parties, Cargill Inc.’s Hohenberg Brothers, and Dunnavant Enterprises. Both of these companies held a large share of the world’s cotton-merchandising business. Each had primary interest in PCO’s ginning operations, but Cargill had the edge since they also had an oil-milling side to their business. They won the bidding war, entered into an agreement in principle to acquire the assets of PCO and set their lawyers and engineers to work drawing up a final purchase agreement. Easler, George Kopas, and I were asked to meet with two Cargill representatives in Fresno to discuss how the OIL relationship would be treated once Cargill took over.

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This meeting only confirmed our worst fears. A few days prior to this, Bill Adams of Adams Trucking had asked me what was going on at PCO and asked me to keep in touch. Since our agreement with PCO could not be altered without our permission, we believed that we should explore our options because it appeared that Cargill might modify the way the agreement worked, increase our costs and lower our profit share. I went straight from our Fresno meeting to see Bill Adams in Woodland. As it turned out, Adams had just experienced a traumatic situation of their own, finding that Cal Oils wished to increase the cost of Adams’ crushing, and it appeared to Adams that CFO desired to force Adams out of the safflower oil business. Adams and I outlined a form of agreement, and I returned to San Francisco to discuss it with Easler and George Kopas. On July 24, 1987, we met in Sacramento at the offices of Adams’ attorney and initialed an agreement in which our Grimes plant was committed to process and store a minimum amount of safflower seed for Adams during the ensuing five seasons. The rate was to be set by OIL yearly. We were to act as Adams’ marketing agent should the PCO deal with Cargill be signed. In return, at any time during the 5-year period Adams was give the option to purchase the Grimes plant for $4,250,000 or more, if so valued by appraisers, and the right of last refusal to meet any price and terms offered by others to purchase OIL. A formal agreement was signed on July 31, 1987. On August 3, we explained the deal to a not-so-happy Evans and Greer. They understood our reasons for taking this action and soon were feeling better about it when it became apparent that the sale of PCO to Cargill would not go through. We notified Adams that we would not be able to market safflower products for them and canceled the appropriate sections of the agreement. On August 19, we initiated discussions between PCO and Adams to see if there was common ground so that we might represent both companies, working together in some sort of production and marketing joint venture. Although all sides worked hard to find agreement, little was accomplished. We made further attempts to find ways to work together in the spirit of saving costs, but these discussions failed as well. In the meantime, PCO had been reoffered to Dunnavant Enterprises, and that deal was finalized with great expectations since PCO was once again in the hands of an agriculturally oriented company. This euphoria soon turned sour. In 1989, Dunnavant began Enterprises began to make their presence felt. Evans and other executives took early retirement. Dunnavant was not happy with PCO’s operating costs. (Oilseeds International, as PCO’s exclusive safflower broker, had not been happy with their operating costs either. Oilseeds International’s complaints previously had led to the early retirement of PCO’s oil mill superintendent.) At the end of 1990, Greer, Evans’ long-time assistant, to resigned to join Kingsburg Cotton Oil. This removed the last person in management with a good understanding of the vegetable oil business. Even so, after an engineering study was completed, it appeared that the new management was prepared to invest new funds in plant improvements and met with the company’s union to ask for their cooperation in continued operation. After a new accounting report was released, Dunnavant suddenly reversed itself and announced its decision to close the oil mill, and suspend all crushing operations permanently (21,22). With PCO’s decision to end both its cottonseed- and safflower-crushing operations, OIL was faced with two conflicting jobs that required patience. One, OIL

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needed to assist and advise PCO in the disposition of its remaining inventory, and in selling off its existing purchase and sales contracts. At the same time, OIL needed to find a new relationship. The management of PCO was now in the hands of lawyers that found it very difficult to release OIL quickly to explore a new direction. Adams Vegetable Oil, California Oil Corporation, C. Itoh and Co. (America), Inc., and Elders all approached OIL to work with them in the future, but OIL was forced to say that it could not negotiate until it was clearly released in writing by PCO. Producers Cotton Oil announced that they would only sell their safflower assets in one package based upon orders from their Dunnavant ownership. On their behalf we solicited offers from Adams Grain, California Oils Corporation, and C. Itoh. After receiving offers, Dunnavant then reversed its decision, and said that it would sell things on a piecemeal basis. Producers Cotton Oil allowed us to act for others on a case-by-case basis for future sales. Since OIL already had a processing agreement with Adams, we chose to act as a broker for Adams Vegetable Oil on certain new crop business. We also began to offer processed cottonseed oil on behalf of J.G. Boswell. All of the parties jockeyed back and forth sometimes talking to PCO through us, sometimes calling PCO directly. No one was left in PCO who had experience in the vegetable oil business, and some misunderstandings developed between PCO and potential buyers as a result. We were caught in the middle and were not able to make any future commitments until the purchase was worked out, so it was very nervewracking for everyone involved. Donald Franson, then President of PCO and previously their attorney, worked valiantly to make things work, even though he had no experience in the business. Finally we received clearance to begin talking to others. Those of us at OIL concluded that C. Itoh would be our best alternative, because we could offer oil milling, refining, and storage; and marketing skills to them. We realized that Cal Oil/Mitsubishi did not want to use our oil mill and really were interested in acquiring Gyulai’s marketing skills in the domestic area. In the midst of all of this, Adams made a proposal to purchase OIL, which was accepted. Subsequently, it was refused when AVO could not satisfy OIL’s payment terms. Adams and Cal Oils battled each other to purchase PCO’s safflower assets, and apparently Cal Oils won. At the last minute Cal Oils tried to change some minor details in its bid, and C. Itoh’s Akira Yoshitomi stepped in with an agreement to buy PCO’s safflower assets, while simultaneously acquiring OIL’s representation. This was confirmed by PCO in February, 1991. We concluded an arrangement with Yoshitomi modeled very closely to the previous deal we had with PCO. We regretted not being able to work again with Mitsubishi, but we had an equally long relationship with C. Itoh, and they needed us much more than Mitsubishi. We have never regretted the move. Subsequently, C. Itoh made a bid to purchase OIL, which was accepted. However, C. Itoh’s bid was conditional on Adams Vegetable Oil’s releasing its option to purchase OIL’s Grimes oil mill. Yoshitomi met repeatedly with Adams to find ways to get Adams to release their option; although C. Itoh had no desire to stop Adams from continuing to process their safflower seed in the Grimes plant, these discussions ended in deadlock. Adams Vegetable Oil would not release its option, so C. Itoh withdrew its offer and instead on February 27, 1991, Isamu Takahashi, C. Itoh America’s Senior vice presi-

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dent, and I signed a long-term agreement committing our two companies to work together closely, and for C. Itoh to process its safflower products in OIL’s plants (23). In 1992, because of the increasing amount of safflower being extracted, and for logistic reasons, OIL on behalf of Itochu entered into a multiyear toll-crushing agreement with Western Cottonseed Services Corporation, the former Anderson, Clayton mill at Chowchilla, California. The first year, Chowchilla processed 5,000 ST of oleic safflower seed from nearby San Joaquin Valley for OIL. To assist C. Itoh in learning more about the U.S. safflower business and to assist OIL in marketing of safflower products to Japan, C. Itoh transferred Keith Nakayama from Tokyo to San Francisco in May, 1991, and he became an employee of OIL. On October 1, 1992, C. Itoh made a number of changes in its corporate structure. This involved changing its name in the English language which reverted to the Japanese version, Itochu Corporation, and its U.S. subsidiary, formerly C. Itoh & Co. (America), Inc., changed to Itochu International, Inc. In November, 1992, Itochu agreed to handle its purchase of San Joaquin Valley safflower exclusively through Shanco Commodities, Inc. As mentioned previously, Don Smith started to provide agronomic advice and field service to PCO and OIL, and this relationship continued with Itochu. Vance Campos, who has a good background in California farming practices, joined our staff in 1993 to assist Don Smith and Itochu with grower contracting and relations. In a similar manner, Itochu has retained Kurt Storz of Woodland and Grimes as a consultant on seed warehousing matters. In 1993, Chuck Crowell, our long-time associate, moved his base of operations to Greeley, Colorado, and now works as a grower relations representative for Itochu in the Great Plains area. In addition, Crowell negotiates purchases and sales on behalf of Itochu in the growing safflower birdseed market. When Woodward stopped working on PCO’s behalf in Idaho and Utah, some growers in Idaho preferred to continue dealing directly with PCO. One of them, Bill Meadows of American Falls, Idaho, established his own integrated business, Mountain States Oilseeds. In addition to farming brassicas and safflower, he provides cultural advice, contracting service, country storage and elevator and seedcleaning services to growers in the intermountain region. For a number of years, PCO and OIL worked with Steve Chambers of the Mountana Vegetable Oil Division of Evans Grain and Elevator Co. in Great Falls, Montana. Evans Grain contracted small acreages of safflower in Central Montana for sale to the birdseed market and supplied crushing stock to PCO as well. In 1988, when PCO began to withdraw from the safflower business, Meadows and Chambers began to work together to contract safflower, and provided contracts to Adams Grain in 1989. Adams was disappointed with the yields in Idaho that year and withdrew, so the Evans/Meadows combine again worked with OIL and Itochu the following season. In 1992, Evans Grain was acquired by Koch Agriculture, Inc., and OIL and Itochu have continued the relationship in the area with Mountain States Oilseeds alone starting with the 1993 crop. In North Dakota and eastern Montana, Itochu contracts through the Atwood Larson Company of Minneapolis. Finally, in February, 1993, a notification date in OIL’s agreement with Adams

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TABLE 17.7 Estimates of Safflower Production for C. Itoh and Oilseeds Internationala California Acres

Arizona

Production (ST)

Year

Mountain States

Great Plains

Acres Production Acres Production Acres Production (ST) (ST) (ST)

1990 2,900 (4,440) 3,700 (5,660) 1991 1,260 (3,500) 1,350 (3,900) 1992 3,500 (27,000) 1,650 (17,900) (1,150) (850) 1993 20,000 (22,550) 18,800 (23,250) (5,000) (5,000) 1994 13,500 (28,200) 13,600 (26,250) (4,000) (2,250)

300 150 450 7,800 2,200 4,790 9,500 2,275 22,000 3,000 9,400 2,820 8,000 3,800 2,100 10,000 4,300

aOleic safflower in parentheses.

triggered action on Adams’ part, and they announced that they were ready to end their Grimes purchase option in return for a 4-year extension of their crushing agreement with the right to cancel with appropriate notice. This was done, but by July 1993, Adams had notified us that they would cancel, and they made an agreement to process their seed for the 1994 season with Cal Oil. At this point it is unknown whether they will continue this arrangement with Cal Oils past 1995 or move forward quickly with a new mill. Personnel have been changing at OIL. Thompson retired from OIL in 1989. Easler partially retired in 1992, although he continued to oversee our ocean-freighting business on behalf of Toshoku, Ltd. Although Itochu was one of the largest trading companies in the world and OIL was quite small, we found working with them to be just as comfortable and rewarding as our long relationship with PCO. Oilseeds International had continued to work very closely with Itochu International. Then, in May of 1994, Itochu purchased the assets of OIL (including the name), retained the employees, and also retained Smith, Kopas, and Easler as consultants with Gyulai as the new president. Tables 17.7 and 17.8 display Itochu’s operations since the transition from PCO took place.

SeedTec International, Inc. SeedTec, in its earlier forms as Western Oilseeds Company and Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., was in the forefront of PVO’s development efforts, both in the United States and abroad. Inevitable changes in structure began to take place after the sudden death of Albert Hoffman in 1962. Claassen became a minority shareholder when Hoffman’s shares were automatically retired, leaving Claassen with approximately TABLE 17.8 Estimates of Safflower Disposition for C. Itoh and Oilseeds International

1990 1991 1992

Exports/ Birdseed

Crush Regular

1,900 700

3,700 6,620 6,300

Source: J. Smith, Personal estimates.

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32%, PVO with 65%, and Don Smith with 3% (awarded to Don Smith when he was elected Vice president for Research in 1963, 5 years after joining POI). Eventually, Claassen sold part of his shares, which allowed PVO to consolidate POI’s earnings, and sold his remaining shares when he retired in 1980. Tensions began to build in POI’s staff, tensions that had been controlled by Hoffman’s calming influence. Although I had served as an unofficial liaison between POI and PVO since POI came into being, and was subsequently elected Secretary of POI in addition to my PVO duties, there was little I could do with POI internal matters on a day-to-day basis. Wayne Wolcott was transferred after Hoffman’s death from POI’s Fresno office, where he had assisted Hoffman, to PVO Richmond, where he assumed a dual role—assisting me as Director of Field Crops and also acting as POI’s Treasure. Even though Don Smith was Research Director, Claassen found it difficult to step back from research involvement, and conflict developed between the two. Disputes also arose between Don Smith’s research function and POI’s field agents, who felt threatened by the concerns that he periodically expressed about adhering to budgets and maintaining cost controls. Once Fred Cartwright entered the picture, tensions continued to mount. Don Smith left POI in 1974, and joined Cal/West to replace Iver Johnson, that company’s Research Director, who planned to retire. Johnson decided not to retire immediately as planned and left Smith in limbo until he did so. In 1976, POI had acquired WAC Seeds, a small corn seed producer in Hereford, Texas, under pressure from Cartwright to grow. Subsequently, Claassen had hired John Talbot, formerly head of Cargill’s field buying for safflower and subsequently the editor of Cargill’s monthly newsletter. Although they had been competitors, Claassen and Talbot had become friends when Talbot was stationed in Woodland, and Claassen respected his abilities. Talbot invested heavily in new processing and storage facilities in Texas and subsequently Ken Rose was hired from Sigco Research to head POI’s sunflower seed sales efforts in North Dakota. He pushed for a huge increase in hybrid seed production, that he optimistically projected would be sold the following season. Claassen had hired Talbot with the idea of elevating him to POI’s presidency when Claassen retired, but this was not to be. In another of the numerous personnel changes that Cartwright made, Peter Rainey was hired in November, 1979, as Vice president of Finance of PVO. Within weeks, Kay Corporation had gained control of POI and Rainey began spending the bulk of his time analyzing the POI situation for Van Ekris. Talbot quickly clashed with Van Ekris and was gone, joining an Arco agricultural subsidiary in Southern California. Van Ekris was anxious to sell off POI, piece by piece if necessary, but he needed some glamour items to attract buyers. Tom Heaton, by then POI’s Research Director, convinced Van Ekris that a genetic engineering combination was needed. Rose advocated, much against Claassen’s advice, a complete change from POI’s traditional method of selling hybrid sunflower seeds by going to direct sales, thereby increasing its unit sales price appreciably. Kay tried to sell POI to Genentech and others in the biotech field, but could interest no one because of his unrealistic valuation of POI’s net worth. Kay also pursued sales prospects for various parts of POI. Dissension within the company continued.

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I encountered this situation when I attended the International Sunflower Conference in Seville, Spain. Because of the company’s internal problems, I sent a telex to San Francisco to see if Mitsubishi would support us in an attempt to start a new seed company that employed all of POI’s key people. Rainey arrived in Spain before we could act, and he was able to calm his co-workers down. In a letter dated June 18, 1980, Claassen announced to his employees that he would be retiring on September 6, 1980, his 65th birthday, and that Rainey would be moving to Woodland immediately to prepare to succeed him as President. Prior to his retirement, Claassen was able to convince Cartwright that POI should changes its focus from being a safflower planting seed arm of PVO to becoming a full-service planting seed company willing to sell its products to all comers. This, of course, made sense when both Cargill and Cal/West began to emphasize their own safflower planting seed operations in the early 1960s. At the same time that Rainey became President, Jack Ponting was seconded from PVO to become POI’s Vice president of Production (POI Press Release, Sept. 8, 1980). Ponting had prior experience in the grain and banking business, joining PVO in Stockton Elevators where he ultimately succeeded Bud Grimes as President. Rainey enjoyed the change from the city to country life, but he set about changing everything that he could about POI. By January, the name of the company was changed to SeedTec International, Inc., the company’s headquarters was repainted, all of the office assignments were changed, every vestige of the POI image was removed and, taking Rose’s advice, switched from POI’s traditional way of selling its hybrid seeds through various dealers to hiring a large direct sales/field staff with attendant offices, automobiles, and other overhead expenses, that was headquartered at Fargo, North Dakota. Rainey also took a hard look at POI’s Semillas Nacionales S.A. subsidiary in Mexico, something that needed changing. Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., had originally made a joint venture with SNSA’s Bob Greening in 1963 to produce and market safflower seed in Mexico. By 1965, POI had purchased a 50% interest in SNSA, increased this to 100% ownership in 1968, and expanded the business to include hybrid corn, sunflower, and sorghum sales. But the change in ownership percentage did little to change SNSA’s profitability. In most years between 1968 and 1976, profits were very small or negative. Still later in 1976, losses began to become more serious. Ken Scarlett, later to become SeedTec’s President, was added to POI’s staff in 1976 because his linguistic skills could help in dealing with SNSA. By November of 1979, SNSA had become insolvent, which triggered a minor banking crisis, and caused PVO’s Board to ask for a report at its next meeting on the way to resolve the matter. In the meantime, Van Ekris of Kay Corporation had made his tender offer for PVO stock, diverting attention away from this minor crisis, and by January Van Ekris had taken effective control of PVO (and POI). SeedTec had begun conversations with the Medina group in Mexico that was interested in buying SNSA. On January 30, 1980, $800,000 of capital was contributed to SNSA, bringing its net worth back to a positive $220,000 and negotiations with the Medina group took on a more serious tone. Then Van Ekris stepped in and said to stop until he could know more about what was occurring. Rainey gave Van Ekris a report that demonstrated that business in Mexico had no good profit

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prospects, and the company was finding it very difficult to do even its poor level of business and still comply with the Corrupt Practices Act. Rainey was terminated on April 20, 1981, when Van Ekris finally realized that he owned a huge unsold inventory of hybrid seed. Four days later a loose agreement of sale for SNSA assets was reached with the Medina group, but it was not consumated until September 5, 1981, and the company was liquidated in December. Ponting was named Acting President of POI immediately and was subsequently confirmed as President by the Board. During the summer of 1981, he was already involved in trying to sell Sepasa, SeedTec’s Spanish subsidiary, and Saffola Seeds (Prop.), Ltd., the South African subsidiary. By August 14, 1981, Saffola Seeds was traded for $9.2 million (Kay Corporation Press Release, August 14, 1981). Sepasa’s sale took longer, and was finally concluded in 1984, long after Ponting was gone. Van Ekris’ desire to trade the pieces of the PVO empire he had acquired was very damaging to the morale and performance of the people involved in the daily operation of the various companies that he constantly offered for sale. SeedTec had to suffer under the problem the longest. Trying to make a small hybrid corn operation profitable, and operate a stumbling sales and production operation in hybrid sunflower at a distance resulted in the various parts of the company working toward opposite goals. The safflower seed business was small compared to the huge volumes in corn and sunflower seed, but it was profitable while the other operations were losing money. Still, Van Ekris was persuaded to place the operating control of the business in the Midwest instead of Woodland, and after a stormy meeting with Ponting, who was against such a move, Carrol Christensen was hired to become President of SeedTec, headquartering in Fargo (SeedTec Press Release, October 1, 1982), and Ponting agreed to stay on 6 months to help with the transition. Christensen convinced Van Ekris that SeedTec could become a strong force in the hybrid corn market but it was not to be. (Ponting promptly left on his 6-month anniversary to join Adams Grain.) As mentioned previously, Evans of PCO and I met with Christensen in 1983 to discuss our fears that SeedTec’s planting seed business might be sold to an unfriendly buyer and we would be cut off from a supply of oleic safflower planting seed. Christensen went to great lengths to assure us that selling SeedTec, or any part thereof, had been put on the back burner, and that research was to be emphasized. He also stressed that it would be impossible for SeedTec’s safflower business to be sold since people involved with sunflower research and production were also working on safflower, and it would be impossible to divide them. By January 30, 1984, however, Van Ekris did just that, in effect selling its sunflower research program to RhonePoulenc Agrochemie of Lyon, France. Both companies would continue to market sunflower seeds in their own spheres of influence. This left SeedTec’s Art Weisker to handle safflower research on his own, together with maintaining a sunflower program to evaluate joint venture seeds. All things considered, SeedTec’s safflower research activity had a low priority and little material came to the market during this period. Producers Cotton Oil Company sponsored a research study at SeedTec, aimed at improving safflower oil content levels. Unfortunately no conclusive results were obtained. Christensen’s efforts foundered and by February, 1987, he was gone. For the next 2 1/2 years, SeedTec was managed by a troika

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of managers located in Fargo, Hereford, and Woodland. In early 1987, I did a study for Mitsubishi International Corporation and their Palmco subsidiary concerning SeedTec, that recommended actions that would enable them to gain control of the safflower planting seed portion of Seed Tec’s business; however, no action was taken at that time. Finally, in May 1988, Scarlett was named as President and headquartered in Woodland, California. Kay was able to sell SeedTec to Mitsubishi’s Palmco (now Premier) subsidiary on July 18, 1989 for $5.8 million, while Rhone-Poulenc’s joint-venture was bought out. This enabled SeedTec to operate as a self-contained unit with an owner that was interested in seeing it succeed rather than looking at it as something to sell off. SeedTec has invested more in research, has concentrated on producing sunflower seeds for others in California, and has returned to profitability. It contiues to pursue the development of a safflower hybrid, but questions how much can be invested to develop new safflower seed types in the face of shrinking safflower production and rising planting seed prices, that encourage growers to save their own seed rather than purchasing new seed. To combat this problem, in the late 1980s SeedTec embarked on a program in Mexico and Argentina of offering its best varieties for sale in those areas, a policy it had consistently avoided earlier because of fear that its lines would be stolen. James Kendall Co. has been employed in Mexico to oversee this program; which has been relatively successful. Mexican buyers are offering substantial premiums for crops produced from SeedTec varieties because of their higher oil content. Cal/West Seeds has adopted a similar program, selling directly to oil millers in Argentina, and through Adams Grain/Tron in Mexico.

Miscellaneous Buyers Several companies have purchased safflower during the last 20 years which have been discussed in detail elsewhere. West Coast Resources of San Francisco was formed by Harley when he left PVO. The company’s primary purpose was to start a rice-milling program that eventually resulted in construction of the Comet facility at Williams, California. West Coast Resources bought and sold quantities of safflower in the 3,000–7,000 ST range in Northern California during the 1970s and then faded away. The National Farmers Organization (NFO) marketed safflower seed for grower members during the 1970s and early 1980s, both in California and North Dakota, primarily in years of rising market prices. The NFO was much more effective during shortages, since it could combine the seed from several members; however, this tactic would not provide any leverage when prices were falling. The NFO also suffered from a lack of credibility with most buyers since it had no strong method of enforcing deliveries from members. Casa Grande Cotton Oil Company, a subsidiary of Toyamenka, purchased and processed small quantities of safflower seed in the 1960s. They entered the market again in the 1990s to offer customers a crop alternative that was not bothered by the white fly infestations affecting other Arizona crops during that period. During the 1980s, Agrex, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi, had its office in Long Beach, California, purchase Arizona safflower through the Pacific Southwest Co. This safflower

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was primarily exported to Japan. In 1984 this program came to a sudden halt after the purchase of a small lot of seed that turned out to be oleic safflower. This was then followed by a much more serious problem when a 3,000-ST tank of safflower was mishanded. Someone had left the manholes in the roof of the tank open prior to a thunderstorm. Rain water entered the tank, caused the seed to heat, and nearly explode. After the seed was removed, orders were given to stay away from safflower handling in the future. The Wilbur Ellis Co., Farmers Marketing Association, and Farmers Investment Corporation are other companies that have purchased limited amounts of safflower seed from Arizona, growers from time to time. During the past 30 years, any number of companies have purchased and resold safflower seed in the western Great Plains States for the birdseed market, and this continues today. Although a few companies have thrived through this entire period as suppliers of many types of bird feed, most of those involved enter the field and leave quickly, so it is very important to investigate a buyer in the field before trading. References 1. OILscoop 1: 1 (1981). 2. OILscoop 2: 2 (1982). 3. OILscoop 3: 1 (1982). 4. J. Am. Oil. Chem. Soc. 60: 924 (1983). 5. OILscoop 3: 1 (1983). 6. “Ogden Corp. Acquires Hain Pure Food Co.,” Wall Street Journal, p. 24, July 27, 1981. 7. Hirschorn, M.W., Wall Street Journal, p. 26, July 8, 1986. 8. “Gras Status Pays Off,” Canola Digest 20: 1 (1986). 9. “European Rape Oil Enters American Market,” Canola Digest 22: (1988). 10. “Loss of Duty-Free Status Affects Safflower Seed Oil,” Washington Correspondence, p. 1, January 6, 1989. 11. Hansen, T., Appeal-Democrat, Marysville-Yuba City, California, B-5, April 3, 1993. 12. OILscoop 2: 1 (1982). 13. OILscoop 8: 1 (1989). 14. “Elders Oilseeds Inc. formerly Allstate Grain Purchases Culbertson Mill,” Feedstuffs, January 1989. 15. “Elders Agribusiness to Divest Grain Division,” Reuters 12: 53, February 23, 1970. 16. Witcher, S.K., Wall Street Journal, March 9, 1990. 17. “SVO Enterprises Purchased from Elders IXL.,” SVO news release, June 18, 1990. 18. Kaushik, S., Chemical Marketing Reporter, p. 11, June 25, 1990. 19. The Business Journal, p. 4, September 11, 1989. 20. “Agrigenetics, Idaho Research Foundation File Patent for High Oleic Lines of Improved Repeaseed,” Seed Trade Industry Journal, October, 1990. 21. “Producers Cotton Oil Co. Closes Oil Operations,” INFORM 1: 626 (1990). 22. “Producers Cotton Oil Co. to Close Fresno mill,” Oil Mill Gazetteer, March, 1990. 23. “C. Itoh Enters U.S. Safflower Market,” Nikkan Yushi, Tokyo, March 12, 1991.

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Chapter 18

Safflower Today, and Where It Is Going Today, as it has throughout 4,500 years of history, safflower continues to exist as a relatively small crop in a number of countries. Most safflower oil that travels across international borders continues to move at premium prices compared to the principal vegetable oils. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s program in the early 1950s made safflower a viable crop in the United States, and the United States has dominated world trade in safflower until recently. The PVO “empire” vanished long ago; practically every remnant has been sold or liquidated. U.S. dominance was based on a triad of strengths: good quality, high oil content planting seeds; an ability to deliver consistent quality products on time, payable in U.S. dollars; and a stable domestic market willing to pay premium prices. Today, while all of these strengths continue to exist, the U.S. dominance may be threatened temporarily by a surge in availability of low-cost safflower seed and oil from Mexico and Argentina. Paul Knowles, in his keynote address before the Second International Sufflower Conference, Hyderabad, India, January 9, 1989, listed a series of high-priority breeding objectives that could cause safflower to change from being a minor crop. “Greater resistance to several foliar diseases that attack between flowering and maturity; greater resistance to cold, permitting production as a winter crop; a short period of seed dormancy at harvest preventing sprouting of seed in the heads; increased earliness for production into some environments; and superior spineless cultivars for areas where the crop is hand-harvested. Also hybrid cultivars, higher oil contents, cultivars with oil having very high levels (above 90%) of either linoleic or olcic acid, and greater resistance to pests.”

For this to really happen, we will need to develop hybrid types that can be produced inexpensively, yield at least 25% better than present open-pollinated types, maintain oil contents of 45% or above, basis 6% moisture, and incorporate disease and sprouting resistance. Today it is very doubtful that either a private company or a government will devote the funds necessary to try to reach such an objective. Safflower plant breeding and cultural work has reached a low point in the United States compared to efforts seen during 1950–75 (see Chapter 6). No federal funds are being expended for production or utilization research by the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA. The USDA continues to maintain safflower seed germ plasm from the world collection at its Germplasm Resources Laboratory at Beltsville, Maryland, and at the USDA Regional Plant Introduction Station, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, as it does for many other seeds. Only one state has a safflower breeding program underway, the Montana State University Field Station at Sidney, Montana. In addition to the cultural work conducted by the MSU Field Station, the Williston Field Station of North Dakota State University continues to 476

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maintain certain yield and cultural trials on safflower. The once broadbased oilseeds research program of the University of California at Davis was basically dismantled in 1982. At U.C. Davis, Steve Kaffka continues to carry safflower as one of his responsibilities, and from time to time, Tom Kearney, the Yolo County Farm Advisor, Woodland, California; the Westside Field Station, Five Points, California; and the U.C. Davis Experimental Farm include safflower trials in their work. Four companies were engaged in safflower breeding: SeedTec International Cal/West Seeds, and Agrigenetics based in Woodland, California; and Cargill, Inc., at Dixon, California. SeedTec International was acquired by Mitsubishi in 1989. The Agrigenetics program was the result of an acquisition in 1988 of Cargill’s hybrid safflower breeding program, plus Cargill’s chief safflower breeder. This program was susequently transferred to Mycogen Corporation, a California company partly owned by Lubrizol interests. Mycogen’s safflower program was suspended in 1995, releastioned A.B. Hill to do safflower research on his own. In addition to the companies mentioned and Hill, some safflower planting seeds are being produced by private individuls or companies in California, Arizona, Utah, and the northern Plains States. Appendix B lists the varieties of safflower that to date have been registered in the United States, Most of the varieties listed were produced many years ago. Release of a new safflower variety has been a rare event in recent years, although SeedTec International and Cal/West Seeds have several new releases underway. The safflower-breeding programs of Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, the People’s Republic of China, and Spain have been described in earlier chapters. Argentina’s surge in production is based on planting seeds imported from the United States and Spain. Agronomic research on safflower in other countries is conducted on minimum budgets by government agencies, except in Australia and Spain, and to some extent in India. Both Australia and Spain have offshoots of what were once PVO/POI programs that continue to do some breeding. We are not seeing any outstanding new types or practices emerging from these relatively modest programs. Very little economic or market research is being conducted on safflower. For bugetary reasons, the California Agricultural Bureau of Crop Statistics dropped safflower in 1989 from the list of crops for which it conducts an annual report of planting acres, production, and price. Similar reports by the states of Arizona, Montana, and North Dakota were dropped earlier Oilseeds International, Ltd., compiles estimates of acreage, production, and disposition of the U.S. crop on a private basis, and publishes these periodically in its OILscoop newsletter. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations publishes safflower area harvested, yield, and production for many countries of the world (1,2). The U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census compiles data on safflower seed and oil exports, reporting monthly on volume, port of customs clearance, and country of destination. Data concerning Japanese imports of safflower oil and seeds is published annually by the Japan Oil and Fat Importers and Exporters Association, Tokyo; and for Indian and Australian acreage and production by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, New Delhi, and by the Department of Primary Industry and Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, Australia, respectively.

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Safflower oil is perceived by a segment of the U.S. population as the oil of preference and this is increasingly true in Japan and northern Europe—particularly West Germany, While some of this market preference was fueled by events chronicled elsewhere in this book, these markets are reinforced and are growing because of a curious blend of medical research, government white papers on advertising and promotion of other food products, and the general environmental trend toward “healthy,” “natural,” “cold-pressed,” or “organic” foods. All of these issues seem to have a side effect that benefits the safflower oil market. Polyunsaturated or “normal (linoleic)” safflower oil’s steady customers in the United States, or gift-pack buyers in Japan, or health-food seekers in Germany, seem to read the parts of research or government pronouncements urging a better ratio of unsaturated fats to saturated fats, and in turn use more safflower oil, while newer buyers tend to read the parts of the research showing that monounsaturates (read oleic safflower) lower LDL while leaving HDL cholesterol alone, Campaigns by Procter & Gamble or Frito Lay emphasizing oils that are lowest in saturates seem to help focus some interest on the two types of safflower as well. The fact that much of the safflower oil produced is processed without added heat through mechanical screw presses and can, in fact, be produced on the farm, under socalled organic or grown-without-pesticide conditions as well, seems to help foment a continuing growth in premium markets for safflower oil (oleic or regular types). The Sokolof campaign against tropical fats (3–6), that followed campaigns by the American Soybean Association (7,8.) and the National Heart Institute has also been a positive factor in driving some food processors to switch to oleic safflower from either animal fats or palm, coconut, or palm kernel oils in processed foods (9). In many of these cases, the switch has been made to much less expensive, partially hydrogenated canola oil, soybean, or cottonseed oils, but oleic safflower oil definitely has gained new markets because of this market change. The public and the media’s search for simple (10) answers to complex dietary problems will ultimately lead to an attack on hydrogenation, and cis versus the trans forms created thereby. Oleic safflower at least, should be able to benefit from this type of attack as well. If additional medical research develops an increased demand for highly monounsaturated oils, such as oleic safflower, two cost factors may work against a huge expansion of markets for oleic safflower oil. One, oleic sunflower oil production is expanding in the United States and abroad. Oleic sunflower oil can be produced at a lower cost in Europe under the existing subsidy programs, and production in the U.S. Great Plains can probably result in lower cost as well, although reliability will be in doubt until acreage is sufficiently widespread to ensure against weather-related problems. Two, a significant part of canola research is aimed at lowering the linolenic and increasing the oleic level of canola oil. If this work is successful, the cost of such an oil would probably be significantly below oleic safflower oil. Oleic safflower does have one cost advantage versus oleic sunflower oil; oleic sunflower oil contains waxes that require a winterizing step to produce salad grade oil, while oleic safflower oil does not. A more serious question about the future of normal and oleic safflower concerns the effects of the U.S. Farm Program, and the price umbrella it creates on all U.S. specialty crops, such as safflower. The price protection prevents the market from

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being overrun by less expensive foreign productions—principally from Mexico and Argentina. In one way or another, U.S. farmers are penalized if they stray from growing their full quota of program crops. The buyer must pay a price for safflower seed that will entice the grower to stray from the program. In turn, this means U.S. safflower prices will remain high. Until the United States turns to a truly market-driven agricultural program, it is hard to imagine that this dilemma will be resolved. Until recently, Mexico was not interested in exporting safflower. Their internal prices were higher than world markets, and all of the production was needed for domestic consumption. While the latter factor still exists, Mexico’s internal price structure has declined under the onslaught of inflation and debt worries, and they are now able to sell safflower oil at a premium price, earning foreign exchange with which to buy back larger quantities of inexpensive soybean, sunflower, and canola oils. Argentina’s production has improved with the introduction of U.S. planting seed types, and costs have been reduced both by having better seed and by growing the crop as a secondary crop following soybeans. Violent inflation has made Argentina a potential source of inexpensive safflower. Both Mexico and Argentina have a way to go in establishing reliability of shipments in terms of timeliness and quality, and both countries are enamored with the premium prices being paid in world markets. By offering oil at lower prices, they will certainly capture significant market shares, but the demand for safflower oil remains inelastic unless it can be priced at levels that remain competitive with soybean oil. Lower prices will create substantial carryovers of inventory, that will be solved by a reduction in plantings the following year. We would expect that the more marginal production areas will eventually be forced to cut back production once they find that the size of safflower oil markets will not increase significantly under the pressure of slightly lower prices. Then U.S. production should return to the levels of the late 1980s. Safflower has survived centuries of history. While we doubt we will see “yellow and orange safflowers transforming the High Plains of the West into a golden sea,” as some were wont to predict in the 1950s (11), we expect that golden safflower oil will be a desired product for centuries to come. References 1. FAO Production Yearbook, Vol. 41, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1988, p. 165. 2. World Crop and Livestock Statistics, 1948–1985, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1987, pp. 349–352. 3. Sokolof, P., New York Times, New York, October 1988. 4. Sokolof, P., Wall Street Journal, New York, April 4, 1990, p. C-22. 5. Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, B-9, December 30, 1988. 6. Toufexis, A., Time, p. 71, January 23, 1989. 7. Maita, S., San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, B-1, October 31, 1987. 8. Freedman, A.M., and M. Waldholz, Wall Street Journal, New York, p. 1, November 11, 1981. 9. Waldholz, M., Wall Street Journal, New York, B-1, October 5, 1987. 10. Hanley, M., The Indianapolis News, Indianapolis, Indiana, C-1, April 12, 1989. 11. Engle, W., American Weekly, Chicago, p. 22, August 15, 1954.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Appendix A

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

Production Estimation of the U.S. safflower crop has always been a difficult task. In California, three published sources existed. The California Crop and Livestock Reporting Service (now California Agricultural Statistics Service) began publishing estimates in 1964 for planted and harvested acres, yield/harvested acre, production and average price received by safflower farmers, and total value of the crop, and continued this through the 1987 crop season when safflower estimates were suspended for budgetary reasons. These reports were not published until May of the year following harvest in order to protect Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation’s marketing position during the years when PVO was the primary producer. This practice was continued after PVO’s near monopoly ended because others in the business requested that the practice be continued for similar reasons. The Reporting Service compiled its “estimate” by asking each known buyer to send in a confidential report of its activity, referencing only seed for which it was the first buyer. So these reports were usually accurate since they represented totals of acres actually contracted, weights received, and price paid rather than true estimates. The only discrepancies that occurred were caused by new buyers appearing in the market-place that the estimators were not aware of or buyers that included the total seed actually purchased (and reported) by someone else acting on their behalf. This did not happen often. When the state of California stopped reporting in 1989, it referred enquiries to Oilseeds International Ltd.’s OILscoop newsletter. However, a budget-buster soon occurred. The 1990 Farm Bill added safflower as a minor oilseed, and all states were required to furnish the USDA with estimates for the crop. A second source came from the reports of the Agricultural Commissioner for each county in California. Those reports began after World War II and list harvested acres, yield, production, average price received on farm, and total value for the major crops in each county. Each county handles its report in a slightly different manner. The estimate is obtained through analysis of all information that comes to the commissioner by spot checks, sample letters, and so on. In the case of many counties where safflower may be a small crop, the Commissioner can not spend much time gathering his estimate. In some counties, the Commissioners may choose not to identify a crop (and instead show it in a miscellaneous category) if the crop is

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less than 500 acres or if he wishes to withhold information that concerns only one, two, or three individual farmers. These reports were also accumulated into a statewide total, compiled and published by the California Agricultural Statistics Service in County Agricultural Commissioners’ Annual Reports, that listed totals of all crops and animals produced in California each year. The statewide total includes confidential acreage that is not reported in the county reports and the totals for 1985 are larger than addition of the individual reports shows because a computerized system was installed at that time that allowed utilization of all confidential data. For budgetary reasons, these annual reports were suspended in 1992, but funds from another source allowed these summary reports to be continued after a short hiatus. Normally in California this figure would not vary much from planted totals, but in 1950, 23,000 acres were seeded but only 10,000 were harvested. The balance were abandoned after farmers had learned that then-available varieties of safflower could not be irrigated haphazardly on extremely hot days. Again in 1990 planted acreage was inflated by 74,000 acres over acreage harvested by a group of unscrupulous farmers planting safflower they never intended to harvest to take advantage of the Federal Crop Insurance program (1–10). The third source was reports that I and my associates produced in the course of our work with safflower. Initially, these estimates were made within PVO and not offered for publication, but were the source of information published by the USDA in the early days of U.S. safflower development. Once Agricom International was started, we began publishing AGRICOMments several times annually, and included a running estimate of the California and U.S. safflower crop acreage, production, and disposition. This was carried on in OILscoop when I moved to Oilseeds International Ltd. This was much more in the nature of a true estimate, particularly in the early months before each year’s crop was planted. As the year progressed the reported figures were adjusted based on personal inspections of crops, observations by other delers and farmers, and finally after harvest, from reports of amounts actually received by some and educated guesses for others. Department of Commerce reports of safflower seed exported were used to make corrections in the figure as the marketing year went on. It was a very inexact science, but by collecting many individual scraps of information, I believe the final figures were reasonably accurate, and often agreed quite closely with the figures later released by the State of California. Estimating safflower yields can be frustrating and at times laughable. In my days at PVO we became anxious to know how many acres of safflower the J.G. Boswell Company had planted. Pacific Oilseeds, Inc., personnel were asked to fly over Boswell’s vast properties at flowering time for safflower and count how many sections of land were devoted to safflower. Soon after this, we found it was much easier just to go to the Boswell ranch superintendent’s office and look at the crop map on his wall that detailed not only the acreage planted for the year in question but how much would be planted the following year. Maps at Boswell are more secure these days. Again, when we were working as Producers Cotton Oil Company’s representative, some years we found it very difficult to determine how much safflower was

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482

Safflower

planted in Montana and North Dakota (contracted to Producers’ competitor, Continental Grain Company). Producers’ twin engine plane was sent to the area in two different years at flowering time and flew back and forth every 10 miles across the width of the eastern half of Montana and the western half of North Dakota, estimating the size of each field of safflower observed from each northsouth sweep across these states. The results were inconclusive; it appeared that the results obtained were low when compared to driving thousands of miles along roads in areas where safflower was presumed to be planted. It is a vast territory, and too many times one was reduced to trying to estimate field potential at the end of a long day’s drive under the glare of headlights. Estimates for the other states producing safflower have been more difficult. This Arizona Crop Reporting and Livestock Reporting Service reported estimates from 1962–84. Again these were suspended for budgetary reasons and it appears some errors crept in the last two years before reporting ended. None of the other states growing safflower have issued estimates of their production except Montana. In 1978–80, the Montana Crop Reporting Service issued a safflower report similar to the California report, but this was suspended when Continental Grain protested that it exposed their position as the dominant buyer in the state. Since then, the only way to obtain an estimate was to poll the individual county Agricultural Stablization and Conservation Service (ASC) offices in the states of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, and ask what acreage totals were reported for safflower. In the early 1990s it became difficult to obtain figures for each county, since clerical time to assemble the figures for safflower became scarce. However, the Agricultural Act of 1990 added safflower to the list of crops eligible for government assistance, and the ASC offices are required to report a figure for safflower along with other minor oilseeds listed in the Act. With persistence, these figures can be obtained, since they are public information. The USDA began issuing a national estimate of safflower acreage and production in 1991 as part of its responsibilities to the Act. To date the individual state estimates have not been made available to the public, USDA is choosing only to release a national figure for safflower until it has gained more confidence in various state estimates. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) annually issues world estimates of hectares harvested, yield/hectare, and tons produced for every crop imaginable, including safflower. While this data is very useful, the figures reported for the United States as part of the world safflower total do not appear to be accurate and appear to be derived from USDA ERS rough estimates made from inside the Washington D.C. beltway and not from field reports. Tables A.1—A.4 show the distribution of the California crop since 1949 as reported by the Agricultural Commissioners on a county by county basis in the four principal regions where safflower is grown in the State—Sacramento Valley, Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta, San Joaquin Valley, and Coastal Hills. For purposes of rough comparison with my own estimates, I have combined certain counties into arbitrary regional groupings. Alameda, Contra Costa, Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Solano counties are combined in the Delta region. Certainly part of Sacramento County’s production is

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in the Sacramento Valley proper Conversely, I have combined Yolo County in the Sacramento Valley region (part of Yolo County is definitely in the Delta area) and hope that on average, these groupings will even out. Table A.5 lists safflower production in other counties that do not fit into the main regions, and Table A.6 combines all into a statewide total. If the county reported commercial safflower and safflower grown for planting seed separately, I have combined these in the figure shown. We have not included Santa Cruz or Mariposa counties in the Coastal Hills compilation since their county reports have not indicated acreage, although we are aware of production in those counties for some years. Similarly, we have not listed Modoc county which has no record of safflower in its records although in the 1950s two large Alturas farmers tried over 1,000 acres in several years without much success, nor Lassen County where again safflower did not succeed in the Susanville area during the early 1950s. Similarly we have not listed Stanislaus or Tulare counties in the San Joaquin Valley region. Although each of these counties has a field or two of safflower each year it is not compiled in the Commissioner’s figures. The same applies to Shasta County in the Sacramento Valley region. The 1950 Imperial County report is obviously incorrect because several thousand acres were planted in that first year of failure. Table A.7 is a summary of the estimates of the State of California Crop Reporting Service (now the California Agricultural Statistics Service) including the average price received by farmers and total value of each year’s safflower crop. Table A.8 is a compilation of the reports by the State of Arizona Crop Reporting Service and Tables A.9—A.11 are my own estimates for California by region and Table A.12 my estimate for the United States by principal areas of production: California, Arizona, Mountain States (Idaho, Utah, sometimes western Colorado, eastern Washington and Oregon), and Plains states (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and sometimes Nebraska, eastern Colorado, Wyoming and Kansas). Undoubtedly some acreage planted in the Mountain States is missing in these totals, but I have been unable to find a source recording them consistently. None of the public estimates differentiate between production of normal (high linoleic) safflower seed and high oleic safflower seed. Tables A.9–A.12 show the breakdown between the two types. Please note that my figures are based on planted acres wherever possible, since I believe planted acreage is more useful in studying a crop than the harvested acreage that reflects end results only. I have not been able to retrieve acreage figures for the 1950–70 period since in most instances these were not summarized in PVO reports—only tonnage estimates. Please also note that a diffentiation for California’s Delta region was not begun until 1977 and prior to that date Delta acreage was included in either the Sacramento or San Joaquin Valley totals. Safflower was planted in the Delta region since the 1950s with mixed success until Treflan became available—since that time the Delta has become one of California’s highest yielding safflower areas. Table A.13 is a compilation based on FAO’s estimates of worldwide safflower production. As mentioned before, I do not feel that FAO’s figures for the United States, are valid and I have therefore used my estimates in place of theirs for the United States. Please see Chapters 5 and 6 for more detailed reporting on production in other countries. FAO does not include estimates for China in its reporting.

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TABLE A.1 California Acreage and Production for the Sacramento Valley Butte Crop Year

Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

Prod. (ST)

Glenn Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Sutter Area (A)

? 1,200 660 1,800 950 700 ? — — 8,650 4,974 1,800 9,470 — — 10,700 7,578 5,000 7,461 — — 10,144 4,068 2,100 2,632 6,500 3,090 12,131 6,388 3,200 13,902 3,130 3,130 19,375 13,494 5,180 23,563 2,300 1,840 12,827 10,414 3,722 2,234 16,000 3,500 2,800 18,600 13,995 10,500 5,500 8,564 5,400 2,700 21,440 17,050 13,000 7,612 25,000 15,900b 9,562 27,000 18,900 21,500 9,405 25,000 15,750b 11,028 32,000 19,200 18,000 10,060 25,775 12,200b 9,890 30,000 27,000 21,500 10,535 28,500 16,800b 12,620 32,200 29,000 16,400 12,300 28,600 11,100b 5,550 26,000 23,400 10,500 6,300 22,900 12,930b 9,886 36,400 32,800 13,500 10,100 26,000 7,200b 5,710 40,000 36,000 12,800 6,140 23,000 5,200 3,900 20,000 18,000 12,600 6,550 14,600 3,700 2,550 12,400 8,800 2,810 2,190 7,640 6,400 9,600 19,000 17,100 12,900 10,800 14,000

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Prod (ST)

Tehama Area (A)

123 1,589 180 6,420 324 5,771 350 2,152 200 12,406 1,000 24,375 40 16,500 — 10,000 — 25,000 — 23,750 465 28,350 465 28,500 912 40,500 720 27,000 — 36,000 850 32,200 1,060 12,800 745 7,640 90 14,700

Prod (ST) 50 170 140 206 700 10 — — — 232 186 547 504 — 638 445 484 126 —

Yolo Area (A) 792 660 6,250 10,400 5,000 10,519 23,700 17,900 23,800 29,000 35,000 33,000 30,000 29,300 29,100 28,500 31,500 25,000 21,800 28,300

Total Sacramento Valley

Yuba Prod (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

353 495 3,750 5,450 2,866 9,200 20,145 5,230 21,420 24,350 31,500 19,800 37,500 26,400 29,100 42,800 31,500 20,000 24,000 31,100

— — 70 110 20 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

— — 53 54 20 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

792 4,340 24,764 29,021 17,996 44,052 69,808 52,749 64,964 93,840 124,865 124,990 123,112 124,020 99,600 118,180 115,560 78,145 48,440 80,600

476 4,384 17,067 23,993 11,412 34,984 66,334 36,218 53,715 76.712 93,349 88,624 113,962 121,324 91,350 132,224 111,995 61,734 45,306 83,300

Safflower

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

Area (A)

Colusa

4,800 6,730 5,530 7,700 8,600 3,500 Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma 1,804 1,513

4,080 5,380 4,420 7,300 6,020 2,555 Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

18,400 19,700 15,000 23,300 26,000 8,000 8,100 24,960 17,200 10,500 10,000 9,000 5,200 5,600 6,440 5,750 4,250 3,650 3,500 4,050 4,000 3,900 Ma 8,690 1,570 12,950 984 10,900

17,100 17,700 14,700 19,200 33,800 10,000 9,720 22,460 13,760 8,190 9,000 6,750 5,200 3,920 5,150 4,890 3,825 4,015 4,200 4,050 4,400 3,900 8,279 14,245 13,080

14,200 10,600 7,700 6,200 6,100 2,745 5,484 3,125 6,484 4,648 1,892 1,248 888 649 2,684 1,874 4,199 3,275 5,942 4,099 4,850 4,122 3,598 2,446 1,775 1,385 1,740 1,344 1,574 1,149 Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma a M Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma a M Ma Ma M M

22,900 23,504 20,381 15,110 13,994 13,961 8,470 20,384 5,834 6,032 5,395 2,511 3,963 3,520 10,720 8,800 1,478 5,000 2,675 3,549 10,617 5,505 Ma 14,056 M 8,336 M 12,689

20,670 400 26,385 1,100 23,420 860 14,906 700 14,827 355 14,236 300 9,128 Ma 26,710 Ma 6,490 Ma 6,060 Ma 6,977 Ma 2,692 Ma 3,878 Ma 3,984 Ma 11,060 Ma 9,235 Ma 1,478 Ma 5,000 500 3,076 500 7,468 550 11,775 400 6,659 350 16,819 300 9,836 700 13,275 750

360 750 960 420 200 170 Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma 325 550 160 140 420 588 788

aM indicates that the county produced less than 500 acres or choise not to disclose an estimate for reasons of confidentiality. Source: Annual Reports by County Agricultural Commissioners.

32,350 30,000 25,500 25,500 23,130 29,000 11,000 21,560 33,560 17,062 6,950 6,960 15,400 18,018 12,650 12,351 17,000 15,000 13,500 20,900 27,710 21,822 33,298 47,938 40,005

42,100 34,500 25,500 24,000 25,400 31,320 12,100 22,640 30,940 16,038 8,062 7,168 16,786 13,717 12,650 11,733 11,500 14,900 13,770 20,402 29,096 18,922 31,178 44,582 42,005

— — 600 854 195 470 — 280 881 280 230 91 226 333 530 692 285 238 577 335 Ma Ma Ma M M

— — 348 214 98 230 — 294 1,498 294 253 109 260 400 451 692 291 176 519 335 Ma Ma Ma M M

93,050 88,734 73,971 78,648 78,758 57,123 17,458 69,868 61,674 39,816 27,425 22,160 26,564 29,211 31,914 18,793 21,535 19,388 18,077 25,835 32,110 31,637 56,344 71,728 65,857

94,910 90,915 72,093 69,165 84,993 59,759 31,597 73,978 55,963 34,681 28,414 19,165 27,509 23,365 30,460 26,550 17,094 24,091 21,890 32,805 45,431 29,621 56,696 70,821 70,072

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

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California Safflower Acreage and Production for the Delta Region Alameda

Crop Year

Prod. (ST) Area (A)

Prod. (ST)

— — — — — — — — — — — 544 675 1,470 500 851 715 85.5 250 Ma Ma Ma

— — — — — — — — — — — ? 805 972 493 757 822 855 190 Ma Ma Ma

340 4 40 31 — 22 — — Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

110 0 30 3 — 22 — — Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

— 250? 480 325

— 605 322 713

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Sacramento Area (A) Prod. (ST) — — — — — — — — 4,800 6,540 6,800 7,800 14,600 22,270 16,700 16,870 18,900 21,700 16,600 18,900 10,900 14,800

— — — — — — — — 4,800 6,540 6,800 11,700 25,550 27,838 29,875 18,557 28,350 18,445 24,900 30,240 16,350 25,900

San Joaquin

Solano

Area (A)

Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

416 880 931 111 240 450 245 210 300 — 523 2,212 6,060 6,690 3,330 5,370 8,700 9,510 5,300 6,200 4,420 4,600

212 320 575 45 120 139 86 95 178 — 941 3,100 9,090 8,360 4,950 7,250 13,000 12,400 7,400 8,100 5,880 6,900

— 380 1,415 1,854 850 875 1,500 1,100 4,000 7,300 8,400 5,300 5,500 5,000 4,500 4,200 4,100 3,900 3,700 4,250 5,530 4,500

Total Delta

Prod. (ST) Area (A) Prod. (ST) — 95 762 655 327 641 1,625 1,375 3,650 6,475 8,820 6,360 7,150 5,000 5,400 5,900 5,330 4,290 4,440 4,675 7,189 5,850

416 1,260 2,686 1,969 1,130 1,356 1,745 1,332 9,100 13,840 15,723 15,856 26,835 35,430 25,030 27,291 32,415 35,965 25,850 29,600 21,330 24,275

212 415 1,447 700 477 783 1,711 1,492 8,628 13,015 16,561 21,160 42,595 42,170 40,718 32,464 47,502 35,990 36,930 43,620 29,741 39,363

Safflower

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1963 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971

Area (A)

Contra Costa

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TABLE A.2

450 500 1,560 1,375 — M Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

203 390 998 963 — M Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

— Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

— Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

M M

M M

Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma

M Ma Ma Ma

M Ma Ma Ma

— — — — 385 Ma 480 470 200 — — — 2,770 1,560

— — — — 472 Ma 328 601 175 — — — 2,090 1,040

17,100 13,600 21,500 3,510 3,600 7,300 11,300 11,000 11,400 6,700 3,500 3,800 5,850 2,200 3,300 5,000 5,500 4,700 6,300 1,400 5,400 14,800 9,000

27,360 17,680 27,950 5,265 3,600 9,490 12,430 9,900 13,680 10,050 5,250 6,080 5,850 3,080 4,290 7,000 7,250 5,950 7,200 2,520 7,560 26,640 18,000

7,700 6,130 17,570 7,000 700 9,130 13,700 11,800 2,487 2,550 6,800 4,600 5,690 5,090 6,400 3,840 10,200 9,410 9,000 5,050 12,200 21,900 17,430

9,600 7,970 17,500 6,860 917 14,500 18,100 11,700 3,651 3,040 9,860 5,150 8,300 7,240 9,130 4,410 13,400 15,500 11,900 8,200 18,800 33,300 21,600

aM indicates that the county produced less than 500 acres, or chose not to disclose the amount for reasons of confidentiality. Source: Annual Reports by County Agricultural Commissions.

4,800 5,700 6,800 3,675 1,350 1,950 4,100 3,800 5,500 5,040 9,488 6,767 7,070 2,645 2,162 1,359 3,300 4,400 6,049 1,899 7,651 10,971 10,500

5,280 5,700 6,800 4,778 1,350 1,950 3,280 3,230 7,186 4,788 10,338 6,700 7,238 2,512 2,811 1,862 3,564 5,720 7,122 1,519 8,799 12,624 15,750

30,050 25,930 47,430 15,560 5,650 18,980 29,100 26,600 19,387 14,290 19,788 15,167 18,610 10,320 11,862 10,679 19,470 18,710 21,349 8,349 25,251 50,447 38,490

42,443 31,740 53,248 17,866 5,867 25,940 33,810 24,830 24,517 17,878 25,448 17,930 21,388 13,304 16,231 13,600 24,815 27,345 26,222 12,239 35,159 74,654 56,390

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

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Fresno Crop Year

Prod. (ST)

6,714 3,900 3,200 617 160 410 Ma Ma Ma Ma

4,089 4,095 3,100 750 197 410 Ma Ma Ma Ma

375 7,788 59,137 105,906 90,570 80,578 130,806 135,500 115,415 95,400

480 6,128 73,875 126,906 135,570 96,652 117,729 135,450 138,237 95,380

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Kings

Madera

Merced

Total San Joaquin Valley

Area (A)

Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

20 6,000 20 — — — 20 220 490 2,757 1,543 3,338 8,210 11,300 12,900 4,540 5,570 17,500 9,120 5,280 6,150

10 3,000 3 — — — 25 220 490 3,186 2,753 4,895 13,900 13,400 14,100 7,730 6,500 23,000 10,300 6,920 9,100

— — — — — — — 160 260 3,433 3,177 7,866 17,800 24,400 27,500 29,500 53,800 50,300 35,400 30,000

— — — — — — — 144 192 1,408 2,573 8,023 21,716 26,596 32,725 41,005 54,338 50,300 49,560 30,900

— — 160 — — — — — — 115 — 110 530 560 — — 500 540 300 115

— — 80 — — — — — — 127 — 99 477 560 — — 500 400 129 49

— – — — — 34 — — — — 50 110 645 6,244 1,450 3,600 8,800 5,900 3,500 2,200

— — — — — 71 — — — — 30 77 774 3,746 1,015 3,600 8,800 5,900 3,500 2,420

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

20 10 12,714 7,089 3,920 4,098 3,360 3,180 617 750 160 197 464 506 220 220 650 634 3,017 3,378 5,091 4,288 6,940 7,978 24,084 28,227 89,412 110,442 150,010 171,908 124,060 177,040 119,248 147,757 211,406 204,367 201,360 202,350 159,895 198,346 133,865 137,849

Safflower

1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

Area (A)

Kern

488

TABLE A.3 California Safflower Acreage and Production for the San Joaquin Valley

80,000 26,000 24,000 23,800 10,000 19,000 5,500 8,970 13,000 14,700 11,600 8,349 9,600 11,600

88,000 32,500 28,800 29,000 10,000 22,800 7,420 7,270 14,700 39,000 30,800 11,100 13,800 21,600 11,500 7,130 0 18,100 11,700 9,250 15,200 11,200 4,000 0 18,200 0 17,000 17,500

8,940 4,420 5,200 4,200 Ma 4,000 1,200 1,600 Ma 7,400 1,640 5,620 Ma 4,350 Ma Ma a M Ma

10,900 5,300 5,200 4,830 Ma 4,800 985 1,120 Ma 5,580 1,690 3,950 Ma 4,470 21,865 11,723 — — 41,535 — — 29,451 Ma Ma 34,169 5,918 10,000 54,380 5,504 7,980 35,734 6,625 6,900 34,734 8,019 3,610 32,000 13,510 10,300 46,485 7,311 9,700

25,000 47,300 24,000 36,800 33,800 36,600 17,500 29,500 39,200 38,800 31,750 31,325 35,390 6,680 20,334 14,654 51,503 43,882 51,595 82,114 48,598 41,681 39,680 52,528 32,213

25,500 280 280 80,410 1,500 1,500 36,240 400 280 32,384 250 325 41,912 — — 51,240 200 200 19,250 Ma Ma a 32,450 M Ma a 50,176 M Ma 37,248 Ma Ma 31,115 Ma Ma a 27,879 M Ma a 38,929 M Ma 8,283 Ma Ma Ma Ma 2,630 2,946 a M Ma 1,960 1,764 Ma Ma 402 667 Ma Ma 360 234 Ma Ma 460 575 a M Ma 846 1,277 Ma Ma 665 750 Ma Ma 603 560 Ma Ma 3,280 3,000 M M 3,760 3,760 45,420 M M

unty produced less than 500 acres or chose not to disclose an estimate for reasons of confidentiality. rts by County Agricultural Commissioners.

2,100 3,803 4,138 840 3,028 4,190 565 3,050 2,463 2,615 617 824 2,690 340 31,695 17,643 55,837 36,311 39,629 70,644 48,503 46,162 58,299 79,455 2,960

2,100 116,320 126,780 2,852 83,023 122,780 4,138 57,738 74,658 630 65,910 67,149 3,028 46,828 54,940 4,910 63,990 83,950 565 24,765 28,220 3,050 43,120 43,890 2,118 54,663 66,994 2,877 63,515 84,705 1,111 45,607 64,716 931 46,118 43,860 3,416 47,680 56,145 428 22,970 35,081 34,780 23,548 70,270 55,816 61,420 108,591 68,528 53,141 64,490 83,588 3,790 53,084 76,410

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983

489

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

TABLE A.4 California Safflower Acreage and Production for Coastal Hillsa San Benito

San Luis Obispo

Total Coastal Hills

Area (A)

Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

1962 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

1,000

500

245

110

3,288 2,700 400

894 1,890 136

– –

– –

– – – – – 580 Mb 3,228 4,993 4,161 4,291 2,500 3,615 1,665 2,165 4,225 2,772 2,500 1,500 750 1,600 6,740 6,400 2,070

– – – – – 93 Mb 839 1,332 1,540 1,545 875 1,482 333 736 1,944 708 950 525 263 640 2,026 2,432 592

500

150 938 490 250 180

– – Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb

1,000

300 1,250 700 500 300

– – Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb

580 300 4,478 5,693 4,661 4,591 2,500 3,615 1,665 2,165 4,225 2,772 2,745 1,500 750 1,600 10,028 9,100 2,470

93 150 1,777 1,822 1,790 1,725 875 1,482 333 736 1,944 708 1,060 525 263 640 2,940 4,322 728

aYears not listed had negligible production. bM indicates that the county produced less than 500 acres or chose not to disclose the amount for reasons of confidentality. Source: Annual Reports by County Agricultural Commisions.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Safflower

Crop Year

490

Monterey

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

491

Price As mentioned previously, Table A.7 includes the State of California estimates for average prices received by farmers in California for safflower seed. Table A.14 reports prices paid to farmers in California and in other states; these are not officially recorded prices but are taken from my records of what I believed has happened since 1950. I have not included prices paid for safflower seed in the Mountain States; they normally reflect California price less freight and elevation. I also have not indicated any differential between prices paid for normal safflower versus oleic safflower. For the first 10 years that oleic safflower was produced the farmer was paid a $5–10 premium since per acre yields were slightly lower. In more recent times, oleic types have been purchased at the same price because current varieties yield as well as normal types. Safflower seed has been, of course, exported from the United States since 1953, and Japan has been the principal buyer. Table A.14 also lists my record of the prices charged for this business. Safflower seed is traded on both an ex spout U.S. export elevator basis or cost and freight Japanese main ports terms. Prices for safflower oil have been reported in the Oil Paint and Drug Reporter and the Chemical Marketing Reporter and compiled from these reports by the Commodity Yearbook. While these reports provide a good record of the monthly flow of reported prices, they are just that—reported prices. For a small product, like safflower oil, the personal bias of the reporter can enter into the picture, and secondly the prices are reported on a basis of drums, FOB New York City. Of course, most safflower oil is sold in bulk, in truck tank wagons, railroad tank cars, or oceangoing vessels’ tanks, and most sales are contracted on an FOB oil mill basis or on a delivered ocean bulk-terminal basis. Table A.15 is my own listing of prices for U.S. nonbreak safflower oil since 1950 compared with prices for crude soybean oil. Since it cost $0.03/lb to move soybean oil to the West Coast and additional funds to convert crude soybean oil to nonbreak grade, it is easy to see that in its first two decades of production in the United States, safflower and soybean oil prices were very competitive. Since then, safflower oil has moved in its own orbit with little relationship to prices for other oils. Table A.15 also lists California safflower meal prices. Prices for safflower meal in California have been reported by the U.S. Crop and Marketing Service for many years and are compiled in Feedstuffs magazine and the Commodity Yearbook. These prices tend to be high, since they come from market reporters that have a natural bias in wishing to report higher than actual prices. This compilation is a combination of these figures and my own data of meal values for 20–25% protein safflower meal and decorticated safflower (38–42% protein) meal, when it was offered in volume. Table A.16 lists the prices for safflower oil ex tank Rotterdam for any origin oil (as opposed to safflower oil that was crushed within the EEC and there-by was free of having to pay an import duty to enter the EEC).

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Imperial Area (A)

1950 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1972 1973 1974

– – – – – – 480 6,560 500 800 1,690 5,000 450 – – – – –

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Prod. (ST) – – – – – – 497 7,870 700 1,280 1,520 6,000 500 – – – – –

Lake

Sonoma

Santa Clara

Total Other

Area (A)

Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

? – – – – – 1,160 850 – – – 1,500 140 700 800 260 – –

632 – – – – – 1,075 972 – – – 1,500 140 350 1,200 270 – –

– 174 1,055 933 303 315 750 445 – Mb Mb Mb

– 216 905 700 335 282 290 334 – Mb Mb Mb

–

– Mb Mb 400 566 282

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

–

– Mb Mb 380 615 268

– – 350 300 650 354 500 200 – – – – – – – – – –

– 129 150 260 142 250 60 – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Area (A) 174 1,405 1,233 953 669 2,890 8,055 500 800 1,690 6,500 590 700 800 640 615 268

Prod (ST) 632 216 1,034 850 595 424 2,112 9,236 700 1,280 1,520 7,500 640 350 1,200 670 566 282

Safflower

Crop Year

Riverside

492

TABLE A.5 California Safflower Acreage and Production for Other Countiesa

– – – – – – – – – Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb

– – – – – – – – – Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb

211 – – Mb Mb 110 – 239 110 – 150 – –

255 – – Mb Mb 55 – 139 77 – 50 – –

– – –

– – –

–

–

916 3,303

385 1,321

480 153 40 300 450 270 175 135 20 –

538 148 42 295 405 367 180 149 18 –

Mb Mb Mb – Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb

aYears not listed had negligible production. bIndicates that the county produces less than 500 acres or chose not to disclose an estimate for reasons of confidentiality. Source: Annual Reports by County Agricultural Commissioners.

Mb Mb Mb – Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb Mb

– – – – – – – – – Mb Mb

– – – – – – – – – Mb Mb

750 30 424 400 650 990 1,155 1,490 M

1,500 30 636 600 975 660 1,040 1,490 M

691 153 40 300 450 380 175 374 130

793 148 42 295 405 422 180 288 95

150 750 30 424 400 650 990 1,155 2,306 3,303

50 1,500 30 636 600 975 660 1,040 1,875 1,321

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

493

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

494

TABLE A.6

California Safflower Acreage and Production

Sacramento Valley Crop Year

792 4,340 24,764 29,021 17,996 44,052 69,808 52,749 64,964 93,840 124,865 124,990 123,112 124,020 99,600 118,180 115,560 78,145 48,440

Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

476 4,384 17,167 23,993 11,412 34,984 66,334 36,218 53,715 76,712 93,349 88,624 113,962 121,324 91,350 132,224 111,995 61,734 45,306

416 1,260 2,686 1,969 1,130 1,356 1,745 1,332 9,100 13,840 15,723 15,856 26,835 35,430 25,030 27,291 32,415 35,965 25,850

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

San Joaquin Prod. (ST)

212 415 1,447 700 477 783 1,711 1,492 8,628 13,015 16,561 21,160 42,595 42,170 40,718 32,464 47,502 35,990 36,930

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

20 12,714 3,920 3,360 617 160 464 220 650 3,017 5,091 6,940 24,084 89,412 150,010 124,060 119,248 211,406 201,360 159,895

10 7,089 4,098 3,180 750 197 506 220 634 3,378 4,288 7,978 28,227 110,442 171,908 177,040 147,757 204,367 202,350 198,346

Coastal Hills Area (A)

1,000

Prod (ST)

500

Other Area (A)

174 1,405 1,233 953 669 2,890 8,055 500 800 1,690 6,500 590

Total California Prod (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

632

20 13,922 9,520 30,810 31,607 19,286 45,872 71,773 54,905 78,486 114,004 148,481 165,599 243,249 317,515 249,190 265,519 361,071 321,970 234,775

642 7,777 8,897 21,794 25,443 12,086 36,273 68,265 38,560 66,755 94,824 118,524 138,435 269,648 344,638 309,808 313,725 365,384 307,574 281,222

216 1,034 850 595 424 2,112 9,236 700 1,280 1,520 7,500 640

Safflower

1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

Area (A)

Delta

80,600 93,050 88,734 73,971 78,648 78,758 57,123 17,458 69,868 61,674 39,816 27,425 22,160 26,564 29,211 31,914 18,793 21,535 19,388 18,077 25,835 32,110 31,637 56,344 71,728 65,857

83,300 94,910 90,915 72,093 69,165 84,993 59,759 31,597 73,978 55,963 34,681 28,414 19,165 27,509 23,365 30,460 26,550 17,094 24,091 21,890 32,805 45,431 29,621 56,969 70,821 70,072

29,600 21,330 24,275 30,050 25,930 47,430 15,560 5,650 18,380 29,100 26,600 19,387 14,290 19,788 15,167 18,610 10,320 11,862 10,679 19,470 18,710 21,349 8,349 25,251 50,447 38,490

43,620 29,741 39,363 42,443 31,740 53,248 17,866 5,867 25,940 33,810 24,830 24,517 17,878 25,448 17,930 21,388 13,304 16,231 13,600 24,815 27,345 26,222 12,239 35,159 74,654 56,390

133,865 116,320 83,023 57,738 65,910 46,828 63,990 24,765 43,120 54,663 63,515 45,607 46,118 47,680 22,970 31,695 17,643 55,837 36,311 39,629 70,644 48,503 46,162 58,299 79,455 53,084

137,849 126,780 122,562 74,658 67,149 54,940 83,950 28,220 43,890 66,994 84,705 64,716 43,860 56,145 35,081 34,780 23,548 70,270 55,816 61,420 108,591 68,528 53,141 64,490 83,588 76,410

700 800

580 300 4,478 5,693 4,661 4,591 2,500 3,615 1,665 2,165 4,225 2,772 2,745 1,500 750 1,600 10,028 9,100 2,470

93 150 1,777 1,822 1,790 1,725 875 1,482 333 736 1,944 708 1,060 525 263 640 2,940 4,322 728

640 615 268 691 153 40 300 450 380 175 374 130 150 750 30 424 400 650 990 1,155 2,306 3,303

350 244,765 1,200 231,500 196,032 670 162,399 566 171,103 282 173,284 793 137,364 148 48,606 42 131,708 295 150,215 405 136,074 422 97,460 180 87,334 288 96,906 95 71,093 83,884 50 49,071 1,500 94,209 30 69,180 636 80,345 600 117,089 975 103,362 660 88,738 1,040 151,077 1,875 213,036 1,321 163,204

265,119 252,631 252,840 189,864 168,620 193,463 162,368 65,925 144,000 158,839 146,443 119,859 82,808 110,265 77,953 86,961 64,188 107,039 94,245 109,821 169,866 141,419 96,301 160,325 235,260 204,921

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

Source: Annual Reports by Agricultural Commissioners.

495

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

496

TABLE A.7

California Safflower Acreage, Yield, Production, Price, and Value Acreage

Yield/acre

Planted (A)

Harvested (A)

Harvested (lbs)

Production (ST)

Price per Tona ($)

Value of Production ($)

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

23,000 17,000 42,000 46,000 32,000 54,000 86,000 76,000 87,000 148,000 176,000 211,000 274,000 314,000 264,000 288,000 352,000 311,000 170,000

10,000 15,000 41,000 45,000 25,000 53,000 84,000 74,000 84,000 135,000 167,000 198,000 261,000 301,000 259,000 284,000 341,000 300,000 165,000

1,400 1,000 1,150 1,160 1,160 1,360 1,690 1,540 1,400 1,750 1,620 1,430 2,110 2,010 2,070 2,110 2,000 1,850 2,170

7,000 7,500 23,500 26,000 14,500 36,000 71,000 57,000 59,000 158,000 135,000 142,000 275,000 302,000 268,000 299,000 341,000 278,000 179,000

69 97 93 77 74 74 76 76 76 76 81 91 90 80 79 87 98 87 82

483,000 728,000 2,186,000 2,002,000 1,073,000 2,664,000 5,396,000 4,332,000 4,484,000 8,968,000 10,935,000 12,922,000 24,750,000 24,160,000 21,172,000 26,013,000 33,418,000 24,186,000 14,678,000

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Safflower

Crop Year

228,000 214,000 248,000 241,000 151,000 160,000 147,000 55,000 135,000 180,000 150,000 106,000 75,000 105,000 75,000 111,000 91,000 130,000 107,000

216,000 201,000 242,000 235,000 145,000 159,000 146,000 54,000 130,000 170,000 145,000 105,000 72,000 98,000 69,000 101,000 90,000 127,000 106,000

2,000 1,870 1,959 1,710 1,697 1,950 2,219 2,148 2,138 1,529 1,655 2,400 2,444 2,245 1,536 2,059 2,133 1,921 2,302

217,000 188,000 237,000 201,000 123,000 155,000 162,000 58,000 139,000 130,000 120,000 126,000 88,000 110,000 53,000 104,000 96,000 122,000 122,000

85 95 104 113 166 354 243 243 246 230 255 280 360 298 252 264 251 219 221

18,445,000 17,860,000 24,648,000 22,713,000 20,418,000 54,870,000 39,366,000 14,094,000 34,194,000 29,900,000 30,600,000 35,280,000 31,680,000 32,780,000 13,356,000 27,456,000 24,096,000 26,718,000 26,962,000

aSeasonal average price received by farmers is based on delivery to plant, 1950–63; based on first delivery point, 1964–89 (1988 price = $250; 1989 price = $312). Sources: 1950–63 based on data originally supplied to USDA/Calif, Reporting Service by Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, From 1964 onward, data was published by the California Crop & Livestock Reporting Service, Sacramento, California, in the May of each year following harvest.

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987

497

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

498

TABLE A.8 Arizona Safflower Acreage, Yield, Production, Price, and Valuea Acreage

Yield/acre

Production

Planted (A)

Harvested (A)

Harvested (lbs)

(ST)

1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1977

3,500 13,000 54,000 56,000 6,000 12,000 38,000 96,000 9,000 25,000 11,000 20,000 33,000 23,000 15,000 45,000 10,500

2,500 13,000 52,000 55,000 5,500 12,000 38,000 96,000 – – – – – – 14,000 44,500 10,500

2,500 2,600 2,570 2,300 1,710 2,500 2,170 2,450 2,650 2,200 2,500 2,800 2,400 1,950 14,000 2,450 2,050

4,400 16,900 66,800 63,300 4,700 15,000 40,300 117,600 11,900 27,500 13,800 28,000 39,600 22,400 17,600 54,500 10,800

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Price per Tona ($) 74 78 101 72 73 90 89

Value of Production ($) 326,000 1,318,000 6,747,000 4,558,000 343,000 1,350,000 3,587,000

75 70 105 122 285 240

15,533,000 2,592,000

Safflower

Crop Year

6,000 11,200 3,700 1,500 4,600 3,600 6,100

6,000 11,200 3,700 1,500 4,600 3,600 6,100 2,500 2,500

200 1,400 200 300 3,850 19,500 8,000 9,000

2,500 1,900 1,973 2,300 2,480 1,888 1,800 2,000 2,000

7,500 10,700 3,650 1,725 5,700 3,400 5,490 2,500 2,500 200 1,500 200 400 2,300 24,000 7,250 6,000

aYears for which there was negligible production are not listed. bReporting Service points out that these estimates came from incorrect data. Sources: 1960–87, Arizona Crop & Livestock Reporting Service, Phoenix; after 1987, J. Smith, personal records.

230 245 270 300 275 250 300 225 180

1,725,000 2,622,000 986,000 518,000 1,568,000 850,000 1,647,000 563,000 450,000

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1986b 1987b 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

499

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Sacramento Valley Crop Year

Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

San Joaquin Valley Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Coastal Hills Area (A)

Total Prod (ST)

322a

53,200

104,000 53,500

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

101,780

135,725 107,690

120

3,500a 150a

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Few 23,000 17,000 42,000 45,000 24,700 53,000 84,000 73,700 84,000 140,000 180,000 210,000 266,000 301,000 259,000 284,000 341,000 299,000 155,100 194,800

Small 7,000 7,500 23,500 26,000 14,550 36,150 70,905 68,040 60,508 107,285 128,372 134,800 263,500 307,163 260,913 265,400 289,175 243,225 161,340 179,632

Safflower

1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

Area (A)

Delta

500

TABLE A.9 California Linoleic Safflower by Region, Acreage, and Production

29,870 47,333 15,000 16,825 14,700 16,000 19,550 17,111 17,812 20,600 20,800 24,100 30,100 25,280 6,160 18,000 31,285 25,562

40,000 47,333 21,000 22,554 15,500 16,600 24,500 20,518 22,000 25,100 22,800 29,100 35,300 38,420 7,708 23,450 44,350 34,010

78,185 63,500 46,100 24,650 35,100 19,900 22,300 21,057 66,934 24,368 22,700 49,000 6,000 8,600 7,276 33,800 33,600 34,000 35,100 104,648 38,700 39,030 50,400 24,342

77,785 68,400 41,150 27,950 40,400 18,700 27,000 20,807 54,907 26,066 23,250 49,100 6,500 10,000 8,550 27,200 48,300 46,700 41,200 36,711 40,710 30,360 49,430 30,721

345a 1,000a 100a 500 5,700 700 500 5,300 – 500 4,500 2,500 5,200 1,640 1,640 1,350 1,800 1,600 2,800 1,500 1,500 1,150 2,500 –

385a 1,200a 100a 400 3,000 150 250 2,650 – 170 1,700 900 950 350 355 500 200 500 1,100 500 500 350 650 –

186,500 188,250 162,800 137,700 113,300 73,700 43,600 108,170 116,103 111,934 56,362 67,900 95,000 44,600 60,851 56,805 90,150 96,600 99,000 120,300 161,103 66,467 88,295 131,185 78,523 72,000

167,300 181,200 164,600 122,200 120,415 84,300 41,850 118,550 112,642 105,907 64,068 64,025 93,100 46,075 67,118 60,905 85,100 109,400 117,500 126,400 105,207 68,666 86,475 143,580 91,804 70,000

aImperial Valley.

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1970 1971 109,720 103,030 1972 98,300 95,000 1973 97,500 80,950 1974 88,150 92,065 1975 32,900 40,900 1976 23,000 23,000 1977 55,500 51,300 1978 42,443 41,852 1979 30,000 30,000 1980 14,669 15,278 1981 26,000 23,575 1982 27,500 24,500 1983 13,850 14,125 1984 33,500 36,250 1985 30,077 30,000 1986 36,400 32,300 1987 40,400 38,100 1988 39,300 41,200 1989 52,300 48,800 1990 29,675 29,576 1991 20,107 19,748 1992 30,115 32,315 1993 47,000 49,150 1994 28,679 27,073 1995

Sources: Pacitic Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; Agricom International, unpublished data; Oilseeds International, Ltd., unpublished data; and J. Smith, personal records.

501

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

TABLE A.10

Acreage and Production of California Oleic Safflower by Region

Sacramento Valley

18,210 9,350 14,650 9,500 6,400 3,700 3,241 5,530 8,573 2,048 40 1,000 2,000 4,500 7,140 4,750 3,500 1,500 2,700 5,466 8,296 19,150 17,350 18,508

Prod. (ST)

17,520 7,500 7,800 9,500 6,900 3,100 1,900 4,749 6,000 2,127 50 1,000 2,000 5,000 7,150 5,500 3,500 1,500 2,800 5,972 7,700 18,800 19,825 20,713

Area (A)

– – – – – – – 2,644 – 660 40 – – – – – – 2,000 800 52 2,000 10,110 7,560 11,469

Prod. (ST)

– – – – – – – 2,644 – 978 50 – – – – – – 2,500 800 40 2,400 11,585 11,250 17,261

Area (A)

15,055 12,500 23,600 16,200 28,800 19,500 19,767 23,403 37,000 26,154 23,000 11,000 10,150 24,040 19,016 24,000 7,100 16,500 23,200 19,961 11,400 19,300 34,875 37,166

Prod (ST)

18,770 14,900 18,900 13,434 30,500 22,900 24,800 15,569 33,632 29,788 27,150 13,000 11,900 29,200 23,358 29,140 9,000 18,800 28,800 26,336 12,800 16,700 38,725 44,962

Coastal Hills Area (A)

– – – 3,000 4,600 600 700 4,423 – 3,313 – – – – 920 – – – – – 2,215 5,700 7,135 4,067

Prod (ST)

– – – 2,200 3,000 100 350 2,277 – 1,145 – – – – 350 – – – – – 886 1,475 3,050 300

Total Area (A)

Prod (ST)

1,000 12,900 21,200 14,500 33,265 21,850 38,250 28,700 39,800 23,800 23,708 36,000 45,573 32,175 23,080 12,000 12,150 28,540 27,076 28,750 10,600 20,000 26,700 25,479 23,911 54,260 66,920 71,210 78,000

1,050 12,160 25,368 14,300 36,290 22,400 26,700 25,134 40,400 26,100 27,050 25,239 39,632 34,038 27,250 14,000 13,900 34,200 30,858 34,640 12,500 22,800 32,400 32,348 23,786 48,560 72,850 83,236 85,000

Sources: Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data: Agricom International, unpublished data; Oilseeds International Ltd., unpublished data; and J. Smith, personal records.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Safflower

1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1972 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

Area (A)

San Joaquin Valley

502

Crop Year

Delta

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

503

Consumption and Export Data Table A.17 portrays Japan’s history of imports of safflower seed and oil as reported by its Ministry of Finance. Note that the tonnages shown are for calendar years rather than crop years on which subsequent tables are based. Table A.18 is a compilation of U.S. customs data, for August to July crop years, for exports of safflower seed and the country for which it was destined. This data began to be reported separately in 1969; data for earlier years is from my own records. As we can see, Japan has been the principal buyer. Taiwan was an importer of safflower seed in the late 1960s and early 1970s for extraction purposes. Since then, Taiwanese imports have gone principally to the feeding of ducks. Canada has shown a regular custom of imports from the United States in recent years; again these imports are for bird-feeding or planting seed purposes. Finland was a purchaser of safflower seed from PVO and Agricom in the 1960s and 1970s and later imported small quantities of safflower oil until costs went too high. German purchases reflected toll crushing by Agricom in the 1970s. Portugal was a significant importer of safflower seed after losing the African colonies in the 1970s; the oil resulting from its crushing was used as a replacement for African peanut oil. The exports to Mexico and Algeria consisted principally of planting seed. The Algerian government conducted a program during the 1970s of providing seed to poor farmers in its dry interior. Safflower was a crop with which the farmer could obtain some production in even the driest years. The seed was generally mixed with other oilseeds and crushed in the government oil mill. United States Customs data did not segregate safflower oil exports or imports from movements of other minor vegetable oils until harmonizing of reporting took place in recent years. Table A.19 is a summary of U.S. exports of safflower oil from available data and the principle countries to which they were destined, based on U.S. August to July crop years. Japan has become the principal destination. Table A.20 lists U.S. imports of safflower oil that have only been reported by Customs recently, small imports from Australia in the 1960s and 1970s were unreported.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

504

TABLE A.11 Acreage and Production of California Combined Linoleic and Oleic Safflower by Region Sacramento Valley Crop Year

Area (A)

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Area (A)

San Joaquin Valley Prod. (ST)

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Coastal Hills Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Total Area (A)

Prod (ST)

Few 23,000 17,000 42,000 45,000 24,700 53,000 84,000 73,700 84,000 140,000 180,000 210,000 266,000 301,000 259,000 284,000 341,000 300,000 168,000 216,000 201,000

Small 7,000 7,500 23,500 26,000 14,350 36,150 70,905 68,040 60,508 107,285 128,372 134,800 263,500 307,163 260,913 265,400 289,175 244,275 173,500 205,000 181,600

Safflower

1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970

Prod. (ST)

Delta

– – – – – – 29,870 49,977 15,000 17,485 14,740 16,000 19,550 17,111 17,812 20,600 20,800 26,100 30,900 25,332 8,160 28,110 38,845 36,971

– – – – – – 40,000 49,977 21,000 23,532 15,550 16,600 24,500 20,518 22,000 25,100 22,800 31,600 36,100 38,460 10,108 35,035 55,600 51,271

93,240 76,000 69,700 40,850 63,900 39,400 42,067 44,460 103,934 50,522 45,700 60,000 16,150 32,640 26,292 57,800 40,700 50,500 58,300 124,609 50,100 58,330 87,566 61,508

96,555 83,300 60,050 41,384 70,900 41,600 51,800 36,376 88,539 55,854 50,400 62,100 18,400 39,200 31,908 56,340 57,300 65,500 70,000 63,047 53,510 47,060 88,155 75,683

345a 1,000a 100a

385a 1,200a 100a

3,500 10,300 1,300 1,200 9,723 – 3,813 4,500 2,500 5,200 1,640 2,560 1,350 1,800 1,600 2,800 1,500 3,715 6,850 9,635 4,067

2,600 6,000 250 600 4,927 – 1,315 1,700 900 950 350 705 500 200 500 1,100 500 1,386 1,825 3,700 300

221,515 184,650 175,950 142,000 113,500 67,400 131,878 144,049 157,507 88,537 90,980 107,000 56,750 89,391 83,881 118,900 107,200 119,000 147,000 186,582 90,378 142,555 198,105 149,733 150,000

217,490 187,000 48,900 145,549 124,700 67,950 145,600 137,881 145,539 98,106 91,275 104,175 59,975 101,318 91,763 119,740 121,900 140,300 158,800 137,555 92,452 135,035 216,430 175,240 155,000

aImperial Valley.

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1971 127,930 120,550 1972 107,650 102,500 1973 160,150 88,750 1974 97,650 101,565 1975 39,300 47,800 1976 26,700 26,100 1977 58,741 53,200 1978 47,973 46,601 1979 38,573 36,000 1980 16,717 17,405 1981 26,040 23,625 1982 28,500 24,575 1983 15,850 16,125 1984 38,000 41,250 1985 37,217 37,150 1986 39,150 37,800 1987 43,900 41,600 1988 40,800 42,700 1989 55,000 51,600 1990 35,141 35,548 1991 28,403 27,448 1992 49,265 51,115 1993 64,350 68,975 1994 47,187 47,786 1995

Sources: Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; Agricom International, unpublished data; Oilseeds International, Ltd, unpublished data; and J, Smith, personal records,

505

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

California Crop Year

Arizona Prod. (ST)

Few Small 23,000 7,000 17,000 7,500 42,000 23,500 45,000 26,000 24,700 14,550 53,000 36,150 84,000 70,950 73,700 68,040 84,000 60,508 140,000 107,285 180,000 128,372 210,000 134,800 266,000 263,500 301,000 307,163 259,000 260,913 284,000 265,400 341,000 289,175 299,000 (1,000) 243,225 155,100 (12,900) 161,340

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

(1,050) (12,160)

Mountain States

Area (A)

Prod. (ST)

Few 1,000

Small 500

6,000 13,000 52,000 55,000 5,500 12,000 38,000 96,000 9,000

400 6,840 13,664 64,540 61,046 5,750 14,200 40,300 97,200 11,900

Area (A)

Prod (ST)

– 2,000 2,000 16,500 3,620 1,800

– 1,450 734 6,450 1,330 400

500 1,500

100 658

Safflower

1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

Area (A)

506

TABLE A.12 U.S. Safflower Acreage and Production

194,800 186,500 188,250 162,800 137,700 113,300 73,700 43,600 108,170 116,133 101,934 56,362 67,900 95,000 44,600 60,850 56,805 90,150 96,600 99,000 120,300 161,103 66,467 88,295 131,185 78,500 72,000

(21,200) (14,500) (33,265) (21,850) (38,250) (28,700) (39,800) (23,800) (23,708) (36,000) (45,573) (32,175) (23,080) (12,000) (12,150) (28,540) (27,076) (28,750) (10,600) (20,000) (26,700) (25,479) (23,911) (54,260) (66,920) (71,200) (78,000)

179,632 167,300 181,200 164,600 123,200 120,415 84,300 41,850 118,550 112,642 105,907 64,018 64,025 91,100 46,075 67,118 60,905 85,100 109,400 117,500 126,400 105,207 68,666 86,475 145,580 91,800 70,000

(25,368) (14,300) (36,290) (22,400) (26,700) (25,134) (40,400) (26,100) (27,050) (23,189) (39,632) (34,038) (27,250) (14,000) (13,900) (34,200) (30,858) (34,640) (12,500) (22,800) (32,400) (32,348) (23,786) (48,560) (72,850) (83,250) (85,000)

24,200 10,700 20,000 33,000 23,050 13,400 39,000 300 10,500 6,000 5,150 2,800 1,500 4,600 3,600 6,100 – 1,900 200 200 1,400 200 300 2,700 (5,000) 4,000 5,000

(3,300)

(1,400) (800)

(1,150) 16,500 (4,000)

26,000 11,550 28,000 36,000 22,400 15,000 53,600 300 10,800 7,500 6,863 2,839 1,725 5,700 3,000 6,100 – 2,505 200 200 1,500 200 400 2,700 (7,500) 4,000 6,000

–

–

3,200

1,000 (8,800)b

(3,850)

(1,087) (520)

(600) 41,500 (3,250)

(3,450)b

950

710

3,000 3,000 3,000 4,470 4,470 3,890 3,400 12,800 10,200 11,300 10,000 22,300 18,500

1,500 1,500 2,000 3,000 3,000 1,890 1,400 5,300 3,800 3,800 2,500 9,100 5,100 5,000

20,000 20,000

6,600 8,000

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

aOleic in parentheses. Sources: Pacific Vegetable Corporation, unpublished data; Agricom International, unpublished data; Oilseeds International, Ltd,, unpublished data; and J, Smith, personal records,

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

507

bTexas.

U.S. Safflower Acreage and Production-continued—continued Plains States

Crop Year

Area (A) 2,000 6,000 10,000 40,000 50,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 – 3,000 3,000 – 72,000 102,163 140,000 200,000 217,500 133,500 60,000 25,000 21,500 2,700 5,000

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Total Linoleic Prod. (ST)

500 1,500 2500 8,000 10,000 2500 2,500 2,000 – 1,000 900 – 12,132 16,784 32,736 28,016 40,700 26,134 14,652 8,860 5,350 1,000 800

Area (A) 2,000 6,000 10,000 40,000 74,000 27,000 57,000 65,000 24,700 58,000 89,000 90,200 159,620 243,963 322,500 411,300 536,000 491,000 324,500 321,000 400,500 397,700 169,100

Prod. (ST) 500 1,500 2,500 8,000 17,500 10,000 26,000 28,000 14,550 38,600 72,584 74,490 73,970 124,869 167,948 176,480 368,840 395,001 281,315 288,460 334,825 341,425 174,040

Total Oleic Area (A)

(1,000) (12,900)

Prod (ST)

(1,050) (12,160)

Combined Total Area (A)

Prod (ST)

2,000 6,000 10,000 40,000 74,000 27,000 57,000 65,000 24,700 58,000 89,000 90,200 159,620 243,963 322,500 411,300 536,000 491,000 324,500 321,000 400,500 398,700 182,000

500 1,500 2,500 8,000 17,500 10,000 26,000 28,000 14,550 38,600 72,584 74,490 73,970 124,869 167,948 176,480 368,840 395,001 281,315 288,460 334,825 342,475 186,200

Safflower

1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

508

TABLE A.12

8,000 14,000 12,000 21,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 13,000 108,600 160,200 180,000 90,000 48,000 45,000 11,300 97,000 106,000 201,000 115,200 80,000 42,000 39,300 (2,550) 70,000 (3,000) 105,000(30,000) 77,800 (17,317) 38,000 (3,000) 53,500

3,000 5,600 5,000 5,000 3,700 5,000 7,500 7,800 32,600 61,406 73,500 19,250 16,500 16,500 35,500 26,005 27,800 38,800 43,800 16,000 11,700 12,850 11,000 15,750 1,500 13,000 20,350

(620) (1,350) (4,500) (1,500) (1,000)

227,000 211,200 220,250 220,000 170,750 141,700 132,700 56,900 227,270 283,043 287,084 152,162 120,400 147,600 63,970 168,420 166,695 296,450 224,800 189,400 175,000 210,603 159,067 214,495 264,985 140,500 150,500

208,632 184,450 214,200 206,600 149,300 140,415 145,400 49,950 161,950 182,258 186,270 87,607 83,750 115,300 87,575 102,223 90,595 127,805 158,700 137,500 143,400 120,757 89,166 110,025 168,500 115,400 104,350

(21,200) (14,500) (33,265) (21,850) (38,250) (28,700) (51,900) (23,800) (23,708) (36,000) (46,973) (32,975) (23,080) (12,000) (12,150) (28,540) (27,076) (28,750) (10,600) (20,000) (26,700) (28,029) (26,911) (83,110) (89,237) 78,200 (78,000)

(25,368) (14,300) (36,290) (22,400) (26,700) (25,134) (47,700) (26,100) (27,050) (23,189) (40,719) (34,558) (27,250) (14,000) (13,900) (34,200) (30,858) (34,640) (12,500) (22,800) (32,400) (32,968) (25,136) (53,660) (81,850) (87,500) (85,000)

248,200 225,700 253,515 241,850 209,000 170,400 184,600 80,700 250,978 319,043 334,057 185,137 143,480 159,600 76,120 196,960 193,771 325,200 235,400 209,400 201,700 238,632 185,978 297,605 354,222 218,700 258,500

234,000 198,750 250,490 229,000 176,000 165,549 193,100 76,050 189,000 205,447 226,989 122,165 111,000 129,300 101,475 136,423 121,453 162,445 171,200 160,300 175,800 153,725 114,302 163,685 250,350 202,900 189,350

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

509

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

TABLE A.13 World Safflower Seed Production by Crop Year 510

1948– 1950 1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963

1964

1965

500

300

481

1 694

1 457

3 540 2

5 486 2

2 479 1

4 431 2

2 709 2

8 701 5

19 658 13

24 409 10

Argentina Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Australia Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

India Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Iran Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Israel Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Mexico Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

44 443 19

45 444 20

45 467 21

45 467 21

45 489 22

45 489 22

46 500 23

46 500 23

48 500 24

48 500 24

50 500 25

51 510 26

52 501 26

54 501 27

55 499 27

56 500 28

370 134 50

390 136 53

400 140 56

406 140 57

410 139 57

415 145 60

420 131 55

425 141 60

430 140 60

433 145 63

435 140 61

440 150 66

445 151 67

450 151 68

455 136 62

460 155 72

375

375

375

375

385

1 654 1

1 563 1

1 286

1 325

3 440 1

1 400

1 400

1 429

1 429

1 429

1 500

1 667 1

1 667 1

1 667 1

1 667 1

1 667 1

26 33 37 36 36 59 1,248 1,260 1,270 1,298 1,325 1,354 32 41 47 47 47 80

Safflower

Ethiopia Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

211

1 768 1

1 815 1

1 727

1 516

1 603

1 833

1 721

1 712 1

1 720 1

1 625 1

1 603 1

30 533 16

11 23 818 1,043 9 24

26 10 23 36 37 65 962 1,300 1,522 1,833 1,838 1,031 25 13 35 66 66 67

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

12 417 5

10 450 5

10 450 5

10 450 5

10 450 5

11 255 5

458 198 91

460 191 88

482 222 107

491 222 109

479 190 91

497 245 122

517 290 150

523 296 155

560 284 159

599 349 209

658 422 278

709 430 305

768 633 486

761 675 514

710 582 413

746 615 459

99 131 1,111 1,160 113 152

1 706 1

1 677 1

2 955 2

1 1 1 730 1,000 1,000 1 1 1

166 217 199 964 1,539 1,799 160 334 358

131 130 1,947 2,015 255 262

511

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

3 3 3 2 1,000 1,071 1,077 1,042 3 3 3 3

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

Morocco Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Pakistan Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Portugal Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Spain Area harvestedd Yieldb Productionc Turkey Area harvesteda Yieldb Productiona United States Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Former U,S,S,R, Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc World total Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

1967

1968

Argentina Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

667

700

2 707 1

5 610 3

7 620 5

8 957 8

4 849 3

8 780 6

3 741 2

2 745 2

2 852 1

1 900 1

1 778 1

38 649 25

42 376 16

19 551 10

11 385 4

28 338 9

34 455 15

11 393 4

12 551 7

36 842 31

40 457 18

13 488 6

39 675 26

75 773 58

54 559 30

18 442 8

33 588 20

Ethiopia Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

57 500 29

59 513 30

60 530 32

61 552 34

62 580 36

64 616 39

63 381 24

64 379 24

64 469 30

64 391 25

64 469 30

64 469 30

64 469 30

64 469 30

65 477 31

65 477 31

India Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

462 149 69

478 151 72

513 152 78

578 162 94

580 245 142

588 262 154

598 218 131

423 193 82

614 311 191

648 327 212

674 354 238

683 322 220

707 266 188

703 297 209

733 381 279

720 465 335

385

385

388

648

1 700 1

1 750 1

1 750 1

1 750 1

1 753 1

1 753 1

1 753 1

1 758 1

1 758 1

1 755

1 755

750

500

1 513

2 503 1,563 1 1

500

1 526

3 884 2

3 722 2

5 494 2

4 895 1,304 4

1 339

1 323 1

1 905 1

1 896 1,596 1 1

Iran Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Israel Area harvesteda Yieldb Productiona Mexico Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

165 100 86 145 175 265 199 198 192 1,432 1,486 1,191 1,443 1,645 1,550 1,364 1,504 1,422 236 149 102 209 288 411 271 298 272

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

363 185 404 429 528 1,466 1,299 1,284 1,435 1,201 532 240 518 616 635

416 1,152 480

391 952 372

Safflower

Australia Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

512

1966

2 938 2

21 850 1

1 775 1

1 813 1

1 840 1,000

641

667

712

786

833

873

900 1,114

927 1,090

27 813 22

29 520 15

35 316 11

22 332 7

28 451 12

31 474 15

14 188 3

8 460 4

3 433 1

3 717 1

1 425

20 985 20

12 358 4

55 545 30

70 797 56

55 714 39

11 501 5

14 590 8

22 609 13

16 494 8

34 583 20

34 480 17

34 475 16

36 560 20

29 463 13

15 993 15

17 843 14

1 737 1

1 788 1

1 808 1

1 982 1

1 769 1

1 711 1

2 682 1

2 659 1

2 632 1

2 675 1

2 727 2

2 694 1

1 968 1

1 904

162 161 74 100 91 103 98 85 1,877 1,932 2,284 2,120 1,978 2,204 2,122 1,882 304 311 169 212 180 227 208 160

69 2,174 150

13 392 5

11 518 6

14 464 7

11 482 5

15 433 7

17 371 6

13 592 8

955 734 701

925 695 643

812 543 441

939 603 566

968 1,126 1,039 695 791 651 673 891 676

10 440 4

7 429 3

874 1,054 704 676 615 713

2 910 2

1 1,070 1,000 1

75 33 102 129 135 75 58 2,333 2,090 1,676 1,441 1,519 1,480 1,741 175 69 171 186 205 111 110 6 333 2

10 460 5

8 462 4

11 536 6

7 429 3

6 467 3

6 533 3

1,269 1,057 1,350 1,443 1,516 1,340 1,289 789 578 733 768 745 701 675 1,001 632 989 1,108 1,125 936 870

513

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

2 2 952 1,067 2 2

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

Morocco Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Pakistan Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Portugal Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Spain Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Turkey Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc United States Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Former U,S,S,R, Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc World total Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

Argentina Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

1 969 1

2 802 2

3 800 2

3 800 2

14 743 10

15 733 11

15 733 11

50 649 33

50 700 35

Australia Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

12 458 20

55 558 31

44 727 32

44 636 28

30 648 19

38 666 25

46 891 41

33 636 21

Ethiopia Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

66 485 32

66 485 32

66 485 32

66 485 32

67 489 33

67 493 33

68 496 34

India Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

749 563 422

782 506 396

831 603 501

870 572 497

911 382 348

750

758

758

750

750

Israel Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Mexico Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc Morocco Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

1993

1994

50 15 700 1,019 35 16

21 329 7

12 267 32

19 566 10

37 649 24

32 656 21

55 23 418 1,086 23 25

68 500 34

69 500 34

69 504 35

69 507 35

70 511 36

69 507 35

892 1,052 395 439 353 462

816 546 445

842 578 487

821 398 327

501 405 203

707 484 342

800 478 430

750

1 500

1 500

1 500

1 500

353 1,000 1,000 1,000

968 1,136 1,000 1,000 1,000

900

957 1,000 1,000

189 1,168 221

349 793 277

227 924 209

190 947 180

204 787 161

94 941 88

91 727 59

750

200 200 794 1,233 219 247

150 157 947 1,014 142 159

69 58 855 1,190 59 69

Safflower

Iran Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

1992

514

1982

4 1,041 4

Portugal Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

3 538 1

1 298

2 501 1

Spain Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

20 653 13

19 688 13

20 714 14

Turkey Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

1,064 1

United States Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

65 31 80 1,800 2,968 1,550 117 92 124

Former U.S.S.R. Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc World total Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

5 260 1

4 4 4 1,076 1,095 1,068 4 5 5

1,061 1,042

11 573 6

13 220 3

553

355

414

495

521

521

1 679 1

2 508 1

1 500 1

500

891

1 500 1

1 500 1

1 500 1

1 500 1

19 848 16

15 884 13

12 874 11

18 722 13

7 1 858 1,029 6 1

889

1 909 1,053 1,092 1,071 1

849

78 132 95 85 82 97 1,410 1,114 1,632 1,706 1,939 1,433 110 147 155 143 159 139 11 364 4

11 455 5

12 317 4

14 529

11 773 9

11 545 6

1,114 1,320 1,290 1,288 1,385 1,331 1,478 1,219 1,248 747 646 693 680 532 609 641 697 700 832 853 894 876 737 811 960 850 873

1 667

1 500 2

829 1,071

953

953

862

897

900

797

75 120 143 89 1,387 1,233 1,587 2,067 104 148 227 184 12 542 7

32 735 23

55 782 43

23 565 13

1,160 1,199 1,087 1,165 534 575 678 678 620 690 737 790

aThousand ha. bkg/ha.

data; Oilseeds International, Ltd., unpublished data; and J. Smith, personal records.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

515

cThousand MT. Sources: World Crop & Livestock statistics, (1); Yearbook Production, FAO statistical series 104 (2); Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation, unpublished data; Agricom International, unpublished

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

Pakistan Area harvesteda Yieldb Productionc

Crop Year

California ($/ST)a

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

70.00 97.28 93.00 77.35 74.50 74.00 76.00 76.00 76.00 76.00 80.00 86.00 90.00 80.00 83.84 87.00 98.00 87.00 82.00 85.00 95.00 104.00 113.00 166.00 354.00e 300.00

74.00 78.00 101.00 72.00 73.00 90.00 89.00

75.00 70.00 105.00 122.00 350.00f

Ex Spout Calif. CAF FOYNKd b,c Plains States ($/ST) Terminal Elevators ($/MT)c ($/MT)c

70.00 65.50 65.00 75.00 80.00 75.00 69.50 75.00 80.00 80.00 75.00 82.50 81.00 95.00 230.00 230.00

105.00

123.00 115.50 120.00 113.00

87.00 94.00 97.00 112.00 125.00 126.00 143.00 377.00 267.50

121.50 110.50 102.00 118.00 126.00 102.60 116.00 110.00 126.00 138.00 137.50 181.00 398.00 265.00

Safflower

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975

Arizona ($/ST)b

516

TABLE A.14 Average Prices for Safflower Seed Purchases and Sales

243.00 246.00 230.00 255.00 280.00 360.00 298.00 250.00 275.00 250.00 235.00 215.00 255.00 310.00 260.00 227.50 300.00 325.00 300.00 300.00

245.00 230.00 250.00

235.00 238.00f 300.00f 280.00 225.00 310.00

175.00 170.00 165.00 170.00 185.00 230.00 200.00 170.00 210.00 200.00 160.00 140.00 205.00 220.00

320.00 277.50 250.00 320.00 325.00 462.00 295.00 295.00 275.00 275.00 257.00 253.00 325.00 360.00

172.00 215.00 230.00

240.00

aPrices, basis delivered at the oil mill until 1969; thereafter, FOB truck, grower’s fieldside. bDelivered at the local elevator. cPrice based on 34% oil content, clean basis, with a 2% reciprocal allowance for each 1% variation in oil content, fractions in proportion. dPrices basis CIF until 1970; all basis Yokohama, Nagoya, or Kobe, Japan, at the buyer’s option. eHigh price of $431/ST paid this season. fDelivered at the California mill/elevator.

290.00 300.00 320.00 412.00 345.00 295.50 370.00 319.00 330.00 282.50 370.40 410.00 380.00 310.00 420.00 430.00

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

Source: The Japan Oil and Fat Importers and Exporters Association (3a); J. Smith, personal records.

517

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

518

TABLE A.15

Safflower Product Prices

Safflower Oil (¢/lb)a

Soybean Oil (¢/lb)b

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972

15.40 16.00 15.80 15.20 16.80 17.10 16.10 15.90 16.00 15.50 15.50 17.20 16.10 12.30 15.40 15.60 15.50 14.20 15.50 12.25 14.25 15.00 16.25

17.80 11.30 12.10 13.50 11.90 12.50 12.70 10.80 9.50 8.30 11.30 9.50 8.90 8.50 11.30 11.80 10.10 8.40 8.40 11.20 12.80 12.80 10.40

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Normal Safflower Meal (¢/lb)c

HIgh-Protein Safflower Meal ($/ST)d

Safflower Hulls ($/ST)e

Safflower Meal ($/ST)f

12.50 13.50 13.00

53.00 51.50 65.00

50.00 50.00

Safflower

Crop Year

29.50 29.79 29.20 37.50 33.00 29.25 36.25 34.50 27.90 33.90 37.50 43.20 40.00 40.00

68.00 60.00 85.70 85.30 156.70

74.00

26.00 51.00 36.25 45.00 38.00 38.00 40.00 47.00 46.00 40.00 38.00 42.00 42.50 38.00 37.00 43.00 46.00 41.00 37.00 46.50 53.50 52.50

19.90 35.80 25.40 18.80 23.70 25.70 27.60 23.50 21.00 18.40 30.50 30.70 29.50 18.00 15.35 26.45 21.10 22.30

77.00 87.00 68.00 88.00 72.00 71.45 77.00 100.00 105.00 109,00 115.00 90.00 77.00 87.00 69.99 82.50 87.00 100.00 80.00 67.00 78.00 71.00

162.00 116.70 140.00 173.00 127.50 176.50 162.25

130.00

120.00

aPrices are for nonbreak grade or equivalent, 1950–69 FOB NY; from 1969 on, FOB West Coast mills. bPrices are for crude oil, FOB Decatur, Illinois. cBasis 20% protein until 1981; from 1981 on, basis 25% protein, FOB mill. dBasis 38–42% protein, FOB mill. eBasis 6–10% protein, FOB mill.

70.00

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

fBasis 20% protein/fat combined, CIF Japanese Main Ports.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

519

Sources: Economic Research Service (4a); Commodity Yearbook (5a); J. Smith, personal records.

520

Safflower

TABLE A.16

Safflower Oil Prices, Ex Tank Rotterdam

Crop Year

Safflower Oil $/MT

1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993

359

Source: J. Smith, personal records.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

435–600 710–1,375 605–800 875 800 940 1,300

950–975 940–1,000

900–1,150 800–650 700–1,000 1,000–1,400 900–1,000

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

521

TABLE A.17 Japan: Imports of Safflower Seed and Oila Seeda Calendar Year 1951 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

Australia

Canada

China

United States

Total

352 16,528b 22,056b 26,709b 67,844b 94,811b 72,897b 63,219b 195,823b 199,411b 113,440b 147,189b 126,826b 63,226b 34,682b 37,840b 6,344

14 194 978 1,347 4,257 90 486 744 731 8,829 5,756 14,461 9,019 5,600 11,702 7,176 14,949

402 522 1,697 1,902

1,934

33,293 63,724 40,171 20,581

41,571 63,724 799 40,970 1,575 22,156 18,691b 410 5,356 6,186 636 12,495 13,131 573 21,122 21,757 445 26,973 27,661 268 18,596 19,842 843 12,949 15,139 2,130 11,082 17,479 4,894 16,838 21,882 2,273 23,690 26,368 3,368 25,827 30,341 7,519 28,378 36,628 4,663 23,939 37,953 4,618 26,768 38,839 2,614 38,242 55,317 4,856 26,921 42,698 4,422 42,739 52,761 4,275 46,820 62,797 3,209 54,971 65,373 1,477 53,385 69,811 34,683

aYears not listed had negligible importation. bOrigin detail missing;mostly United States and Mexico (see Chapter 16). Source: The Japan Oil and Fat Importers andExporters Association (13). Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

2 2,348 147 189 2,050 6 492 1,645 3,093 3,756 4,533 7,194 10,511 8,764 9,001 13,833 13,773 16,337 20,995 23,570 30,993

Oil (MT)

Crop Year

1,135

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Japan

36,505

Mexico Netherlands

302

Portugal

Taiwan

Total

3,000

1,361 2,270 4,082 8,165 2,270 3,175 7,711 — 16,329 27,397 24,585 30,845 67,132 98,884 66,225 199,784 238,097 125,325 106,777 134,265 102,548 32,867 60,714

Comments

Safflower

1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

Canada

522

TABLE A.18 U.S. Exports of Safflower and Oleic Safflower Seed and Countries of Destinationa

Includes 8,257, Australia; 9,819, Spain; and 1,606, Finland.

87 — 14 97 332 1,053 980 668 2,857 612 638 1,190 1,733 2,652 843 146 4,336 6,501 3,432 4,058 91 164 288 169 172

49,988 44,741 34,458 36,407 13,718 25,283 4,962 21,038 20,340 25,827 9,629 9,118 18,666 21,686 28,493 26,295 21,245 26,522 31,405 45,987 54,451 34,014 39,984 47,470 40,106

1,884 15 37 13 10 580 771 142 214 1,074 785 4 — 1 630 1,764 910 922 547 36 37 643 682 4,514 675

aExports are in MT. Source: Bureau of the Census (16); and J. Smith, personal records.

1,295 7,189 4,400

9 2,897 14,545 7,945 23,714

6,327 5,523 3,261

5,250 15,750 14,506 7,104

255 1,577

688 16,278

2,983

3,098 4,808 3,131 470 596 207 1,156 210 601 569 574 241 789 36 4 488 —

71

56,215 52,613 46,767 52,008 34,945 60,440 6,873 34,345 46,248 45,885 19,201 10,881 21,128 25,746 49,653 28,242 29,558 35,314 35,456 50,280 54,703 35,050 41,012 52,153 40,953

Includes 622, Spain. Includes 3,012, Spain. Includes 2,073, Australia; and 1,400, Finland. Includes 750, Germany; and 149, Algeria. Includes 1,581, Finland; and 3,600, Germany. Includes 4,746, Spain. Includes 160, Algeria. Includes 455, Algeria. Includes 251, Algeria. Includes 356, Algeria. Includes 349, Algeria.

Includes 20, Algeria.

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

523

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

524

Safflower

TABLE A.19 U.S. Exports of Safflower Oil and Countries of Destinationa Crop Year

Aust./ New Z. Germany

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1984c 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990d 1991d 1992d 1993 1994

3,095 3,382 3,135 695 1,420 4,900 27 114 128 142 231 125 82

NetherLands

Japan

All Europeb 420 525 8,082 16,950 5,015 3,500

7 15 564 942 2,371 5 3 4

91 23

2,968 6,050 5,189 10,710 14,280 10,011 5,534 6,838 8,060 705 144

3,432 6,044 4,427 9,541 11,400 8,760 13,149 20,573 25,976 24,964 42,576

Other

300 600 1,600 517 851 812 1,877 2,391 1,763 1,945 780 1,877 514 546

Total 3,515 3,807 11,517 17,645 7,035 11,000 6,951 13,074 11,120 23,212 30,673 20,664 20,713 28,195 35,913 35,489 44,305

aExports are in MT. bIncludes Germany and The Netherlands. cData covers the period of February to July 1985 only; in prior months, safflower oil was not reported separately. dCensus figures show several thousand tons of “;refined” safflower oil exported each year, However, I believe that 90% of “refined” is actually prepress crude oil shipping to Japan, The Netherlands or Germany; the balance is shipments of drums of refined oil to miscellaneous buyers in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, etc. e3075 tons in 1993 and 1017 tons in 1944 of “refined” safflower oil included only in Total column. Source: Bureau of the Census (17); Trade Inflo, Frederick, MD; and J. Smith, personal records.

TABLE A.20 Crop Year

U.S. Imports of Safflower Oil and Countries of Origina Argentina

1988b 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

856 5,601

Mexico

Total

6,135 15,396 30,245 16,371 23,223 22,303 23,393

6,135 16,873c 35,707 16,398 23,597 22,561 23,464

aImports are in MT. bReporting commenced January 1989. In prior years, safflower oil was included in a general category. cIncludes 568 MT from Colombia, which is doubtful; it probably originated in Argentina. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census (18).

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

U.S./World Acreage, Production, Price, Consumption, and Export Data

525

References 1. OILscoop 9: 1(1990). 2. OILscoop 10: 2 (1990). 3. Hall, R.D.,and R. Goble, The Fresno Bee, Fresno California, March 30, 1990, pp. A1, A8. 4. Goble, R., The Fresno Bee, Fresno California, April 1, 1990, pp. D1, D8. 5. Hall, R.D.,“Safflower Policy Error Admitted,” The Fresno Bee, Fresno California April 6, 1990. 6. Hall, R.D., The Fresno Bee,Fresno, California, May 15, 1990, pp. A1–A2. 7. Hall, R.D.,The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, May 16, 1990, p. D4. 8. Hall, R.D., The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, August 10,1990, p. C8. 9. Hall, R.D., The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California,September 23, 1990, pp. D1,D3. 10. “Congress Investigating Crop Insurance Payments,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco,California, August 6, 1991, pp. C1,C6. 11. World Crop & Livestock Statistics, 1948–1955, FAO Process Statistics Series 1, Table 31, FAO, Rome, 1987, pp. 329–332. 12. Yearbook Production, FAO Statistical Series 104, Vols, 40–46, 48, Table 44, p. 119, 1987; p. 165, 1987; p. 165, 1988; p. 165, 1989; p. 116, 1991; p. 126, 1992; p. 115, 1995. 13. The Japan Oil and Fat Importers and Exporters Association, “Summary of Customs Clearances,” in Statistics for 1970–1994 of Oilseeds, Oils, and Oilcakes, The Japan Oil and Fat Importers and Exporters Association, Tokyo, 1970–1994, pp. 3,6. 14. Economic Research Service, USDA, and Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C. 15. Commodity Yearbook, Commodity Research Bureau, Inc., New York, 1962–1995. 16. U.S. Bureau of the Census, EM545 U.S.Exports of Domestic and Foreign Materials by All Methods of Transportation, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 17. U.S. Bureau of the Census, EM522 Schedule B Oil U.S. Exports of Domestic and Foreign Merchandise by All Methods of Transportation, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 18. U.S. Bureau of the Census, IM 145 U.S. Consumption Imports of Safflower Oil and Fractions Thereof, Refined but not Chemically Modified, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Wahington, D.C.

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Appendix B

North American Safflower Variety Descriptions

Table B.1 is a listing, in the approximate order that they were released, of most of the varieties of safflower seed that have been of importance in the development of the crop on the North American continent. Also shown, where available, are the flower color at bloom and after the flower has dried, hull color and type of hull, percent oil content, linoleic and oleic fatty acid percentages, and comments.

526

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

TABLE B.1 North American Safflower Variety Descriptions

Pre-1950

Indian

Pre-1950

N-55

Pre-1950

N-6

Pre-1950

N-8

1948

N-852

1952

WO-14

1953

N-10

1955 1957 1958 1959 1959 1962 1964 1964 1965 1965 1965

Pacific-1 Pacific-7 Gila US-10 Ute Saffola 313 Saffola 414 Frio Saffola 515 Saffola 999 Carmex

Flower Color Originator Univ. of Neb./ Claassen Univ. of Neb./ Claassen Univ. of Neb./ Claassen Univ. of Neb./ Claassen Univ. of Neb./ Claassen Pacific Oilseeds Claassen Pacific Oilseeds Claassen Pacific Oilseeds Pacific Oilseeds USDA/Arizona AES USDA/California AES USDA/Utah AES Pacific Oilseeds Pacific Oilseeds USDA/Arizona AES Pacific Oilseeds Pacific Oilseeds Cargill

Hull Color/ Bloom/Dry

Approx. Oil Type

Linoleic Content (%)

Oleic (%)

(%)

Comments

White/normal

28.0

PS

Yellow/orange

White/normal

29.0

PS

Yellow/orange

White/normal

32.3

PS

Yellow/orange

White/normal

34.2

PS

Yellow/yellow

White/normal

32.0

PS

White/normal Yellow/yellow

White/normal

36.2

Yellow/orange Yellow/orange Yellow/yellow Yellow/orange

White/normal White/normal White/normal White/normal White/normal

34.7 40.6 35.7 35.0 36.5

Yellow/orange

White/normal

38.9

Striped Yellow/orange

40.8 39.8

PT, AS, BS 79.6

10.8

78.3

13.6

DW (continued)

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

527

Variety Name

North American Safflower Variety Descriptions

Approx. Release Date

TABLE B.1 North American Safflower Variety Descriptions (continued)

528

Variety Name

Flower Color Originator

Hull Color/ Bloom/Dry

Approx. Oil Type

1965 1966 1967 1968 1968 1968 1968 1968 1969 1970 1970 1970 1970 1970 1974 1976 1976 1976 1976 1976 1977 1977 1977 1979 1979 1980 1979

CW111 Saffola 161 UC-1 Leed Dart Saffola 208 Rio Saffola 301 Cargill 88 UC-84 Saffola 296 B-54 AC-1 Royal Saffola 304 CW-74 Kino-76 Oleic Leed Cargill 44 AC-2 Saffola 317 Saffola 400 Sidwill Saffola 541 Saffola 742 Ole Hartman

Cal/West Pacific Oilseeds Cal AES USDA/Utah AES USDA/Arizona AES Pacific Oilseeds USDA/Arizona AES Pacific Oilseeds Cargill Cal AES Pacific Oilseeds Boswell Anderson Clayton USDA/Arizona AES Pacific Oilseeds Cal/West Mexico USDA/California AES Cargill Anderson Clayton Pacific Oilseeds Pacific Oilseeds Montana/ND AES Pacific Oilseeds Pacific Oilseeds USDA/Arizona AES Montana/ND AES

Yellow/yellow Orange/orange Yellow/yellow Yellow/orange Yellow/yellow Yellow/orange Yellow/yellow

White striped Partial hull White/normal White/normal Gray stripe White/normal Gray stripe

Yellow/yellow

Gray/white

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Linoleic Content (%) 45.3 45.0 36.0 32.0 40.5 43.6 41.0 36.5

Yellow/yellow White/stripe 42.0 Yellow/orange White/normal 40.5 Yellow/yellow Stripe 42.5 Red orange/deep red Purple stripe 38.5 Yellow/yellow White/normal 43.1 DW

Yellow/yellow Gray stripe Yellow/yellow White stripe Yellow/yellow Yellow/orange Gray stripe Red orange/red Yellow/yellow

Gray stripe

41.0 43.7 32.8 45.0 low 40.5 DW

Oleic (%)

(%)

Comments DW

15.2

78.3

First oleic variety.

AS, BS Oleic type

76.0 75.0

13.0

Oleic type FMT

45.4 Oleic type 78.0

12.4

15.5

76.4

FT, AMS, BMS FT

78.0 78.0

12.2

AS, BMS Ornamental Oleic type AT, BT

Safflower

Approx. Release Date

Rehbein Mante-81 Noreste-84 Oker Saffire Girard UC-26 CW 4440 MT 3697 Saffola 555 Cienega Saffola 517 Saffola 518 Sahuaripa 88 Quirego 88 Finch San Jose 89 Montola 2000 Centennial CW 88 OL AC Sterling AGIO 29 Saffola 501

Montana/ND AES Mexico Mexico Montana/ND AES Agric. Canada Mont/ND AES Cal AES Cal West Mont/ND AES SeedTec Mexico SeedTec SeedTec Mexico Mexico Mont/ND AES Mexico Montana AES Montana AES Cal/West Agric. Canada Adams Seed SeedTec

Yellow/yellow

Gray stripe

42.6 DW

Yellow/orange Purple stripe 39.8 DW 75.2 Orange/red White/normal 32.2 Yellow/lt. orange Gray stripe 39.9 DW Red orange/deep red low Yellow/yellow 43.3 78.9 Yellow/orange base White/normal 40.1 DW Yellow/yellow Cream/gray 40.5 stripe Yellow/orange Gray stripe 41.9 13.2 Yellow/orange 41.9 Yellow/red 38.5 74.1 Yellow/yellow 38.1 55.4 Yellow/lt. orange White/normal 38.0 DW Low in linoleic acid. White/partial hull44.5 DW Yellow/lt. or. basePurple striped 44.6 79.6 Yellow/yellow Yellow/yellow

White/normal

35.0 46.2

AMT, BMT

14.1

11.8 19.9

AT, BMT, early ripening AS, BS birdseed type AT, BT Ornamental 72.4 FT

AT, BMT

79.0 81.5 16.7 35.4 AMT, BT, birdseed type. 80.5 10.8

AS, BMS, Oleic type. AMT, BMT VT, Oleic type VT Early ripening

aThe oil content percentage is on an as is basis except where DW (= dry weight basis) is indicated.

North American Safflower Variety Descriptions

1979 1981 1984 1985 1985 1986 1987 1987 1987 1987 1987 1987 1988 1988 1988 1989 1989 1989 1989 1989 1991 1991 1992

bTolerence level to particular diseases is indicated by the abbreviations: A, Alternaria Leaf Spot; B, Bacterial Blight; F. Fusarium; P. Phytophthora; V. Verticillium; MS, Moderately susceptible; MT, Moderately tolerant; S. Susceptible; and T, Tolerant.

529

Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

Appendix C

Recommended Cropping Practices

California Now that safflower has been cultivated in California for the past 40 years, most growers are somewhat familiar with the important factors necessary for growing a decent safflower crop. Even so, as new generations come along, some of them are finding it necessary to relearn a few of the important steps that their grandfathers used in earlier years in California, methods that were abandoned by many safflower growers during the late 1970s and 1980s. California will surely continue to be faced with a permanent and increasing shortage of water no matter what the weather gods contribute–there are too many people with too many varied demands for water, and their political decisions will reduce the farmers’ access to water as time goes on. California’s increasing population also has already removed some of the best land from agricultural use, and this growing population will only place more and stricter demands on farmers to protect the ecological system. Since safflower can thrive with less water than some other major crops and needs no insecticides, this may help safflower to compete in future years. The State of California has not published a new circular on safflower production since 1965 (1). Steve Kaffka, Extension Agronomist stationed at UC Davis, is organizing an effort to publish a new bulletin in 1995. Tom Kearney, Farm Advisor for Yolo County, Woodland, California, published a review of good practices that apply to most situations in California (2). I will not try to improve on Kearney’s wording but will rather add some comments that apply to other areas of the state [in brackets]. Water The major limiting factor in safflower yields is usually moisture. Non-irrigated safflower should not be planted unless the soil is wet to at least 4 feet. The most consistent yields have been obtained in high water table areas where the plants tapped into a continual moisture supply. [Under these conditions, or where subirrigation is employed, yields commonly range from 3,200–4,000 lbs/acre.] On deep, well drained soils safflower can extract moisture to 10 feet. Reasonably good production [2,200–3,000 lbs/acre] can be obtained by pre-irrigating deep soils to 10 feet with no subsequent irrigations. [In the foothills of the Sacramento Valley, moisture limitations hold yield expectations to 1,500–1,800 lbs/acre in years of normal or above average rainfall and to only 900–1,200 lbs in dry seasons. In the coastal hills of San Luis Obispo and Monterey Counties, yield expectations range from 700–1,000 lbs

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Recommended Cropping Practices

531

in most seasons. Planting should be avoided in years when moisture is much below normal by March.]

Irrigation In recent years more acreage of safflower has been planted on beds [in the Sacramento Valley] and irrigated from one to three times. Irrigation of safflower is very tricky due to its susceptibility to phytophthora root rot disease. Irrigated safflower should be planted on high five foot beds with deeper than normal furrows. On clay soils, such as Capay silly clay, two rows 22 inches apart with 38 inch furrows should provide the safest conditions for irrigating. On loam soils such as Yolo silt loam, a five foot tomato bed with two or three rows of safflower should be satisfactory. The following practices have been helpful in reducing root rot from irrigation: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Do not allow the crop to be stressed for moisture or the soil to be dry before irrigation. Plant on high beds; the field should have good fall and good drainage. Irrigate as rapidly as possible, no longer than 8 hours. Do not soak beds; try to keep tops of beds dry. Remember safflower is a very deep rooted crop. Reduce irrigation runs to 1/8 mile if necessary. Do not irrigate when it’s hot. Consider night irrigation when days are warm. Early irrigations are safer than after the crop has reached the flower stage.

An average ¼ mile furrow irrigation with a 10 to 12 hour set applies 6 inches of water. For safflower, a good irrigation scheme would be to apply 4 inches of water at the rosette stage, stem elongation stage and last irrigation at bud formation stage. If rainfall has not wet the soil to 6 feet before planting, a pre-irrigation should be applied. [In the San Joaquin/Sacramento Delta area, growers who were not able to preirrigate their land have been able to germinate or maintain solid drilled fields in dry years by employing one or more sprinkler irrigations. On the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, growers who plan to irrigate usually plant either solid drillings or three rows on top of 36–60 inch beds and irrigate five to six times depending upon summer temperatures. The key for obtaining maximum yields is to prevent individual plants from stressing and to keep all leaves of the plant green until flowering is completed.]

Soils Safflower is adapted to a wide range of soils. It is a deep rooted crop and should be grown on soils five feet or more in depth. It is only slightly less tolerant to salinity than barley or sugar beets.

Planting Date The normal range [in the Sacramento Valley] is February through April. In the Delta area, good yields have been obtained with May plantings. A March 1st planting will mature in 160 days, a May 1st planting will mature in 120 days. March 15th to April 15th is a good planting period. February plantings produce very large plants which often produce very disappointing yields. [Plantings in the San

532

Safflower

Joaquin Valley are generally 15–30 days earlier than the Sacramento Valley and the Coastal Hill Country. Farmers in all areas have learned that later plantings into moisture in drier years are generally more successful. In an emergency, safflower can be planted in June in areas that have high water tables, such as the Sacramento River Flood By Passes or the Tulare Lake Basin and yields of 1,800–2,000 lbs can be expected.]

Seeding Rate General range is 18 to 40 pounds per acre [in the Sacramento Valley. Many growers in the Delta and in the San Joaquin will plant up to 70 lbs/acre in solid drillings, whereas in the dry coastal hills the moisture will only support solid drillings of 15–18 lbs/acre. Row plantings generally require 18–25 lbs/acre.] A good stand should have 5 to 12 plants per foot of row. Common row spacings range from 6 to 30 inches. Safflower has the ability, particularly with early plantings, to compensate for population and row spacing quite well. As the planting date gets later, it is more important that the row spacings are closer and the plant populations are higher.

Planting The best planters for planting into moisture are the shoe type planters commonly used for corn. Hoe-opener drills are used for solid plantings and are usually satisfactory. Plant into about 1 inch of moisture which should place seed 2 to 2 1/2 inches deep. Safflower will emerge from 4 inches provided the soil is loose and not compacted from rain, a press wheel or a roller. [The most serious planting problems come from safflower that has not been placed into moisture or where the soil has been crusted by a hard rain and driving winds. This problem can sometimes be overcome by going over such a field with a rotary hoe. In the Coastal Hills area, it is important to use more modern types of planters that will compensate for side hill planting conditions, ensuring that all shoes of the planter are in moisture at all times.]

Fertilization Nitrogen is the most important fertilizer element for safflower. With irrigation or with good moisture supplies suggested rates would be 60–175 pounds of N per acres. For limited moisture and low yield areas use 30–60 pounds of N per acre. Preferred method of application is deep injected at planting or preplant. Following rice, it may be necessary to use phosphorus, particularly if a field has been in rice for several years. The phosphorus tie up can still be a problem even if the field was fallow for a year. Phosphorus should be drilled with or below the seed at a rate of 40 to 60 pounds of P2O5 per acre. Use a low nitrogen, high phosphorus starter to prevent seed burn.

Diseases The main disease problems are phytophthora root rot, fusarium wilt and rust. Phytophthora root rot is only a problem when irrigating. Methods to minimize this disease was covered under irrigation. [Most varieties of safflower have resistance to phytophthora, but the comments under irrigation still cannot be ignored.] Fusarium wilt is soil borne and has only been found in certain areas: Elkhorn, West Sacramento, Clarksburg and the Yolo Bypass. This disease can cause severe

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damage and yield reductions. Late plantings in warm soil have been the most seriously damaged. Resistant varieties are available for some of the fusarium races. Most safflower will be infected with rust, but it is usually not too serious unless safflower is grown two years in a row and the seedlings are infected. Therefore, the general recommendation is not to grow safflower two years in a row because of the danger of rust. Safflower rust is seedborne and is the major reason for treating planting seed.

Weed Control The most serious weeds in the past have been lambsquarter, pigweed and watergrass. The most commonly used herbicide is Treflan; it controls these weeds very effectively. One of the most troublesome weeds that Treflan does not control is velvetleaf. With late spring plantings, safflower is often grown without herbicides because the weeds are killed in the seedbed preparation. Row planted safflower is often cultivated for weed control. Other registered herbicides are Dual, EPTAM and Paraquat.

Insects Safflower is rarely treated for insect problems. Early plantings normally escape serious damage from lygus. [Thirty years ago lygus was considered to be a serious problem, but it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the damage it inflicts is less than the cost of treatment. However, safflower harbors lygus that move into adjacent cotton fields in the San Joaquin Valley and accordingly, many growers treat lygus in their safflower to protect their cotton.]

Flowering Flowering begins in early June in the San Joaquin Valley and progresses to about June 20 in the Sacramento Valley and on into July in the Delta and Coastal Hill counties. Safflower yields can be downgraded if temperatures in excess of 105°F occur during flowering combined with a period of high humidity. This appears to cause abortion of florets opening on such days. Harvesting Safflower is ready to harvest when most flower heads have lost all greenness and you can bend the stem of a flower head and it crimps but does not break. Another practical way to tell is to cut a plant and beat it on the ground; when the seed flies from the heads easily, it is ready. Safflower must be under 8% moisture to be safely stored. Most California safflower, after the first days of each year’s harvest comes in at 5–8% moisture level. A quick test is go grab a handful of harvested seed, squeeze and open your fist, palm down. If most of the safflower falls from your palm, the seed is probably ready. It only takes a minute to check the moisture on a meter and this can save a long ride and possible rejection if moisture is too high. The combine cylinder speed should be reduced below the levels used for wheat. This usually means 435–550 rpm, depending on the type of harvesting. This prevents cracking of the seed coat. Small cracks and broken pieces of the seed coat are classed as dockage. Some growers prefer to harvest without a reel; if a reel is used, it should

534

Safflower

turn 25% higher than ground speed. Harvesting early in the morning when there is a slight amount of dew present generally results in less shattering and breakage of steins and stalks. The ideally adjusted combine appears to hardly touch the harvested plants, yet a close inspection will reveal that seed heads are devoid of seed. Either standard or rotary combines handle safflower well. The operator should attempt to cut just below the lowest heads on the plants. The operator should watch radiators and air intakes to prevent the buildup of sterile hairs from threshed heads. These can be a fire hazard. If a weedy field is being cut, the operator should monitor the temperature of seed in his bin or truck. Weedy, wet safflower can begin to heat on hot days if left standing for many hours. Harvesting generally begins in the San Joaquin Valley in late July and progresses into the Sacramento Valley around August 10, and into the Delta and Coastal Hills by early September.

Arizona Cropping practices in Arizona are similar to those on the west side of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Most safflower in the Yuma area is planted on beds following lettuce, preferably in January to very early March. In Central Arizona it is often planted on narrower beds. Plantings into April will result in reduced yields and lowered oil contents and linoleic acid values. All Arizona safflower is grown as a fully irrigated crop. Harvest can begin as early as June 15 for safflower planted in early January but most matures by the 4th of July.

Idaho, Utah, and Colorado The last bulletins published by government authorities in this area were issued in 1981 (3,4). The recommendations contained therein are still valid today; however most production in the state is now centered in the most southern areas of Idaho, around American Falls and the most northern section of Utah. Small amounts of safflower are grown in isolated mountain valleys of Colorado’s western slope and some attempts periodically take place on Colorado’s eastern plains. The best printed information currently available concerning Southern Idaho/Northern Utah safflower production is contained in the Safflower Production Guide, published by Bill Meadows of Mountain States Oilseeds in American Falls, Idaho. Much of the information in the latest Canadian bulletin is applicable to this area (5). The general recommendations for California cited previously apply here as well, but the more severe weather limits some choices. Safflower needs a minimum of 120 days to mature, so planting above the 5,900 foot elevation is not recommended. It requires 2,200 degree growing days. Since safflower feeds at different levels from other crops, good results have been obtained on both recrop lands following a grain crop and on summer fallow; generally summer fallow land will produce slightly higher yields, but available

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moisture is the paramount factor. Safflower needs to be planted on well-drained soils–waterlogged fields can cause injury to young plants by encouraging an attack of pythium, verticilium, or phytophthora, or other forms of damping off. Safflower can be produced successfully either as a dryland crop or under irrigation in this region. Dry land, in years of normal moisture and growing season, produces yields of 750–1,200 lbs/acre. Irrigation can result in yields of 2,000–3,500 lbs/acre. Because of the cooler temperatures experienced in the area, proper incorporation of Treflan or other trifluralin products prior to planting is of prime importance. Since much of the planting seed used in this area is produced locally or saved by the grower, it is important to stress the need for selection of planting seed from clean, disease-free fields and to treat planting seed with approved fungicides to protect against seed- and soil-borne rust and damping off organisms. As cited previously, safflower needs moisture down to the four foot level to produce a reasonable crop and further to produce maximum yields. If the farmer is able to preirrigate to achieve these types of levels, it is recommended particularly in the late fall prior to planting. Much of the irrigation in the area is of the sprinkler variety and safflower responds to this form of irrigation as long as it is stopped once the plant reaches bloom stage. Safflower tends to mellow the soil, so it should be followed by crops that can benefit from this characteristic. In general, safflower should not be planted more than once every four years in the same field, to avoid disease problems. Planting If weeds or volunteer grain are going to be a problem, safflower should be planted in cultivated rows since it is slow growing until it begins to emerge from the rosette stage. Volunteer grains should be eliminated by cultivation before planting, if possible. Harrowing just before emergence or once safflower has emerged and is between 3–6 inches tall, can be effective as an emergency control for weeds. Harrowing such a field at an angle makes for ragged looking plants, but they survive this quite well.

Figure C.1. Safflower being planted.

536

Safflower

Figure C.2. Safflower seedlings.

Figure C.3. Irrigated safflower in rows on beds.

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Figure C.4. Harvesting safflower.

Figure C.5. Arizona safflower being irrigated with siphons.

537

538

Safflower

Safflower should be planted as early as possible once ground temperatures reach plus 40°F. In any event, planting later than May 15 is not recommended. Emerging safflower plants are quite frost tolerant. Dryland fields should be planted at a rate of 10–15 lbs of seed/acre, trying to achieve a population of 6 plants/sq. foot. For irrigation, a seeding rate of 20–30 lbs/acre is recommended aiming for a population of 11 plants/sq. foot. Seed should be placed 1/2 to 1 inch deep in firm soils in 6–14 inch row spacings. Narrow rows tend to promote better weed competition if moisture is adequate to support the additional plants. In this area, both hoe and disk openers seem to perform equally well and contrary to California practice, the use of press wheels or packers seems to improve seedling emergence (probably because of the fluffy nature of local soils). Irrigation As mentioned previously, it is necessary to maintain moisture levels to below four feet and to prevent plants from stressing at any time if maximum yields are to be attained. Bed irrigation can also be successful. Compared to spring wheat, it is probably likely that the first two or three irrigation cycles can be skipped and then safflower should be watered like grain until first blooms appear in late July. Irrigating after this point only encourages disease and delays maturity. Fertilization Generally 10–15% less fertilizer than is required for wheat on a given field will be satxsisfactory. These quantities are recommended by Mountain States Oilseeds (testing for exact quantities necessary always makes sense): Nitrogen Phosphorus Sulphur

Dryland 30–50 lb 10–15 lb 10–12 lb

Irrigation 125–150 lb 30–40 lb 40–50 lb

Disease Problems Rust is the most prevalent disease, but as in California it normally is not a serious problem unless safflower is planted following safflower using untreated seed. Then seedling root girdling can result in serious yield reduction. Sclerotinia head rot, bacterial blight (pseudomonas), and alternaria leaf spot can be a problem, but their occurrence is unusual in the Idaho/Utah area because prolonged rainfall during July/August is quite rare. Insect Problems Wire worms and cutworms can attack safflower if they are infesting grain crops in the same field. Grasshoppers and Mormon crickets will attack safflower. The damage from grasshoppers is more visually dramatic than actual.

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Harvesting The recommendations for California apply. However, it can rain in this area prior to harvest. Prolonged rain will cause seed to sprout in the head, lowering quality and in severe cases can lead to rejection.

Northern Great Plains Although the Northern Plains is a tough area in which to grow safflower, researchers in the area have continued to produce bulletins (6–11) designed to help growers, the latest being released in 1985 (12). In addition, Neil Riveland of the North Dakota State University Williston Experiment Station has continued to publish unbiased reports of performance of various safflower varieties (13–19). The Williston Station has now been placed under the control of the Eastern Montana Station at Sidney in a very unusual arrangement that may affect future reports. Perhaps Riveland’s greatest contribution to safflower research has been his findings on postemergence herbicides. He has developed good data on postemergence herbicides that do well in controlling weeds in safflower and that display no residual problems in the seed (see Chapter 6). If these chemicals could only be qualified by the companies producing them in the states interested in growing safflower, it would be a great boon to safflower production. However, the cost of qualifying a new chemical has become so prohibitive that there is very little chance because of the small size of the safflower crop. An attempt is being made in Idaho to get one of the materials Riveland has tested approved on a provisional basis. The Northern Great Plains states have very short growing seasons ranging from 116–143 days in the areas where safflower appears to be adapted. The longer growing season areas in Central Montana are capable of producing better safflower yields, but other crops also do better in this area, creating tougher price competition. In general, safflower requires a growing season of 120 days in length and should not be planted until ground temperatures read 40°F. Trying to grow safflower east of a north-south line running through Minot and Bismarck, North Dakota, becomes a problem, since the higher humidity and moisture levels to the east can reduce seed set and induce the onset of leaf and head rot diseases. Safflower should not be planted in fields in close rotation with other crops susceptible to sclerotinia, such as dry beans, sunflower, mustard, and rapeseed. Safflower has a deep tap root that draws water from a broad layer of soil, so it is important to allow for a sufficient recharge of moisture for crops following safflower. The production of an alternate crop, such as safflower, in the Northern Plains is almost entirely in the hands of the USDA policy makers and the Congress of the United States. Farmers like to think of themselves as the last of the independents, but to a large degree their lives in this area are shaped each year by government decisions about wheat pricing. In order to be eligible for wheat subsidies, it appears that farmers will be forced to adopt more and more conservation practices dictated by Washington. Safflower is perceived by the bureaucracy as a crop that has poor soil-holding ability after harvest; safflower stubble breaks down quickly and safflower leaves the soil mellow because of its deep root structure.

540

Safflower

Much of this perception is not based on research, but belief. Some important research is being done by soil scientists at the USDA Research center at Mandan, North Dakota. Scientists, such as Donald Tanaka, are attempting to grow crops in typical rotational patterns using various cropping methods, such as conventional tilling, low-till, and no-till methods, to determine what actually happens to soil after a number of years of farming. This is a program that requires many years of continuous study to be useful, but it appears to be showing that there are ways in which safflower can be farmed in the area by combining it with other crops that result in good control of soil erosion (20). Very little safflower is irrigated in the Northern Plains. Yields can vary from 400–1,500 lbs/acre, depending primarily on moisture. The average is 700 lbs/acre in western North Dakota and eastern Montana. In isolated fields in the Billings area and triangle region of Montana, bounded by Havre, Great Falls, and Shelby, yields can reach 1,500–2,000 lbs/acre, but wheat can do relatively better so little safflower is found there. Most of the factors outlined under Utah/Idaho apply to the Plains region as well. Planting April 20 to May 10 is the ideal time to plant in the Plains. Planting later than May 20 increases risk of frost damage before the crop is mature; reduced daily heat units toward the end of the season may result in disease and sprouting in the head that could delay harvest. The Williston Station recommends planting rates of 20–25 lbs/acre, but many have found 17–20 lbs sufficient. There is no point planting deeper than 2 inches; 1–1.5 is sufficient. Fertilizer Nitrogen is generally the primary need, particularly on recrop land; phosphorus is often required on fallow. The Williston station points out the danger of planting more than 10 lbs of actual nitrogen/acre in drill row applications or seedling injuries can result. As in California, banding of phosphorus is a recommended application procedure. Potassium should only be applied if a soil test indicates a need. Weed Control As in the Mountain States, good incorporation of Treflan is of paramount importance. Planting in 7 inch or grain drill spacings will help control weeds. Also, as in the Mountain States, harrowing can be used if weeds emerge before safflower. Diseases The primary control is to plant disease-free seed treated with approved fungicides in fields where the rotation has not placed safflower under pressure from the prior crops’ problems. Almost all diseases associated with safflower have been found in the Plains at one time or another, but alternaria carthami, pseudomonas syringae,

Recommended Cropping Practices

541

and sclerotina sclerotorium are the primary problem diseases, particularly in years of above normal rainfall with periods of extended humidity. As Bergman has pointed out, alternaria spores are triggered by a proper combination of temperature, humidity, and wind in little microclimates in a field, and can suddenly start multiplying exponentially when the conditions hit a certain critical combination. Sclerotinia can cause the heads of safflower plants to rot and be dislodged from the plant in severe cases. Alternaria leaf spot and pseudomonas bacterial blight appear quite similar and can produce similar losses by attacks on the plant’s upper leaves, producing reactions like drought. In more serious cases, the heads of the plant can rot. Fields attacked by alternaria develop a characteristic chocolate brown to almost black color. Other Problems Hail is a regular problem for safflower in this area. If hail hits safflower in the early stages, the field may appear to be decimated, but a portion of the plant will regenerate branches and continue growing. More mature safflower survives hail better than grain but, of course, can be seriously damaged. The best thing about hail is that it generally is confined to a relatively narrow band, so a particularly strong storm usually affects only a very limited number of fields. Grasshoppers can attack safflower in all stages. Generally they are prevalent when safflower is in flower or approaching maturity. The insects generally attack the edges of a field most severely, eating the bracts of the heads in particular instead of the supposedly more succulent leaves. In severe cases, the grasshoppers will eat all parts of the head, leaving the seeds balancing on top of a few fibers. Although grasshoppers can be widespread in western North Dakota/eastern Montana, their overall impact is not large. Blowing dust storms or driving rain can cause problems for emerging safflower by alternatively blowing seedlings out of the ground or compacting the soil so that plants lose too much energy trying to survive. Harvesting Conditions as described for the Mountain States apply in the Plains as well. Safflower is generally ready for harvest in early to late September. In 1992 and 1993, a high percentage of the crop was unable to reach maturity because of excessively cool summer temperatures, that led the crop to try to mature in periods when the day length was too short to cause the plant to dry out. It is often necessary for growers to wait for frost in normal years to bring moisture levels down below 8%. Without an onset of frost, artificial drying may be necessary. If safflower is caught by rains that persist for several days prior to harvest, sprouting in the head can occur. In severe cases, sprouting can reduce oil content as much as 30–40%, increase FFA and oil color to rejectable levels, and impact structural integrity of the seed, making extraction difficult or impossible.

542

Safflower

Whether safflower is grown in California, in the Mountain States, or on the Plains, it competes against wheat on a similar basis. Curiously in each of these areas, wheat produces yields of about two to two and one-half times the yield of safflower per acre. The following section deals with methods of estimating safflower yields. Estimating Safflower Yields A number of scientific studies have been conducted aimed at finding a way of estimating the yield of a safflower field before it is harvested. They have studied head size, plant height, number of seeds per head, number of heads per plant, amount of branching, counting heads per square foot, but have produced no surefire answer (21–25). Ashri has shown that the number of heads per plant is the most important breeding factor affecting yield of safflower, but this does not help us directly in trying to estimate yields of a safflower crop (26). Over time, many people have concluded that safflower’s general appearance has little to do with the actual results obtained by the farmer. Yet, estimating what kind of crop will result is important with a small, specialized crop such as safflower. (I always made a practice of trying to see or have seen every field of safflower contracted to my company and in turn, trying to see as much as possible of the balance of the crop in order to estimate overall production.) So, how do you estimate safflower yields? If you are a local, familiar with the history of every field in a given region, you are way ahead of the game. “Safflower has always produced at least 2,800 lbs/acre on the Jones piece just past Robinson’s corner.” If you do not have that advantage, here are some suggestions. 1.

2.

Know what the limitations are in a particular area that can affect yield. For example, in the Northern Great Plains, it is very rare for a field to produce more than 1,500 lbs/acre, no matter how good the weather, whereas in parts of California’s San Joaquin Valley westside, safflower on beds can easily produce 3,500 lbs/acre if it receives water judiciously. The best time to make a good guess on the yield is to see the field when it is in full flower, or just after. By that time, the field will have reached the maximum potential it will achieve–-no improvement is possible after this point. a. If the canopy of seed heads completely obscures any view of soil under neath, the first premise toward a full yield has been satisfied. A field planted in 20-inch rows can yield just as much as a field that has been drilled solidly, if this condition is satisfied. b. If the plant is green and succulent all the way to the ground and no leaves have dried up or fired, the second condition toward a full yield has been satisfied. c. If enough of the season remains to allow full development of the seed to maturity (usually 45 days after flowering) without risk of frost or begin ning of a rainy season, the third condition toward attaining a full yield potential has been satisfied. d. If no evidence of disease (alternaria or pseudomonas on the heads or upper leaves), no fusarium on the lower leaves, or no head rot is showing, the fourth condition toward a good yield is there.

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543

e.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

Finally, one must assess the potential of the type of field upon which the crop is planted and the presence of weeds–-particularly weeds that can continue growing prior to harvest. Safflower does not need to be tall or have many branches to produce a good yield. Extremely tall safflower wastes energy in producing vegetative growth, and generally falls short of full potential. Tall safflower can lodge, particularly if it is irrigated in windy areas. Generally safflower that is 18 inches to four feet tall has the best chance for easy harvesting and maximum yield. Big heads, many heads, bushy plants–-none of these necessarily mean higher yields. Some varieties seem to have the ability to produce a layer of heads and to then thrust up an additional layer above them, and this produces truly maximum yields–if there is sufficient moisture available to allow the seeds in this second layer to fill properly. If you have a chance to see a field more than once in a year, your chances of estimating correctly go up, and, of course, it helps if you have seen safflower under similar conditions in prior years. Nothing replaces looking at all sides of each field, getting up high on top of a truck, or a ditch bank, to see if there are any blank spots or light streaks (indicating sandy or alkaline soils that tend to cause plants to mature too soon) in the field, writing down your idea of yield and moving on to the next field. If you have to look at fields before flowering, observe the color of the plants. They should be deep green, indicating adequate nitrogen–-a lighter green color indicating a deficiency can cut yields 20%. Finally, analyzing the effects of the weather in a particular year is most important.

If safflower is planted later than normal, it will normally be exposed to warm air temperatures as the crop emerges, will go through the rosette stage more quickly than normal and consequently produce a shallower than normal root system. If it is then exposed to extremely hot weather, it will need ideal moisture conditions to prevent it from being stressed. Although safflower does well in hot, dry regions of the world, extreme temperatures can cause problems. When the Gila safflower variety was first introduced, many farmers in the Sacramento Valley of California were disappointed with the variety because temperatures at flowering time exceeded 110°F and humidity was also very high. This combination of high temperature and high humidity can cause seeds to abort and fail to fill. The crop appears normal until the combine operator notices that half of the seeds are empty and are blowing out of the back of his machine. In 1992, much of the safflower, as well as other crops, in the northern Great Plains States was planted late and experienced the coolest summer in history. Many fields bloomed one month or more late and, because of continuing cool weather, found it difficult to mature. The region experienced temperatures as low as 28°F in August, which did not appear to have harmed the safflower. However, after a more severe frost in early September which finally forced many fields to maturity, it was apparent that the earlier frost (perhaps combined with the cool weather) had result-

544

Safflower

ed in many fields producing very low test weights and yields one-half or less of what the farmer expected. Many individual seeds failed to fill, producing only an empty hull. In 1993 the safflower crop in the Northern Plains faced similar problems, resulting in a near total crop failure for the region.

Insurance The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation of 1980 was initially written to provide all risk coverage for wheat, corn, cotton, grain sorghum, rice, and barley. Eventually, coverage was provided for safflower, but it has had strange results. In the Great Plains, where insurance would truly be helpful to the average farmer, the premium rates established initially were considerably in excess of the amount a grower could recover, because the yields allowed were only 300 lbs/acre. In the 1990s, these inequities were removed in some locales. In California, the opposite has happened. In 1990, 74,094 acres of safflower were insured under this program by growers with no intention of harvesting their crop, who had planted on non-irrigated land. A total of $14.5 million was paid out at the rate of more than $100 per acre higher than production costs (27–34). New rules are being considered to provide coverage in the event of disaster and in turn to stop the government from making payments in case of natural events such as drought, flood, or tornado. It is doubtful that politicians will take this step.

Historical Sample Costs to Produce Safflower California’s Farm Advisors produced a number of bulletins (Tables C.1-C.6) illustrating the costs required to produce a good safflower yield in the districts in which they served. Although costs for water, labor, energy, and interest continually change, and each farm has its own unique problems or advantages, these cost studies are useful in reminding us of the operations required in the various areas of California where safflower is grown.

TABLE C.1 Sample Costs to Produce Safflower in Glenn-Butte Counties (1989) Labor rate: Interest rate: Yield(lbs/acre):

$8.50/hr skilled labor 12% 1,750

Operation

aRoadside into semi-trucks. Hauling costs paid by contracting company.

0.20 0.10 0.12 0.40 0.25

1.87 0.94 1.12 3.74 2.34

4.10 2.15 3.32 11.06 4.12

0.25

2.34

4.31 4.00

1.32

12.34

33.06

0.40 0.40

3.74 3.74

15.33 15.33

20.00 6.05 11.50 9.38

2.00 1.50 1.50

46.93

5.00

Total Cost ($) 5.97 3.08 26.44 22.35 19.46 9.38 6.65 4.00 7.90 105.23 19.07 19.07 15.00 54.69 1.42 1.14 72.25 196.55 11.23

Annual cost Per acre Depreciation Interest @ 12% 284.70 25.10 17.08 25.10 17.08

42.18 42.18 238.73 13.64

545

Investment: Equipment and buildings Total investment costs Total costs per acre Total cost per cwt @ 1,750 lbs/acre

Cash and Labour Costs/Acre Fuel and Material Custom/ Repairs ($) Cost ($) Rent ($)

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Cultural costs: Chisel Springtooth Disk/fertilize (100 lbs. N) Disk/apply herbicide 2x Drill, 25 lbs. seed @ $0.46 75 lbs. N-P starter fert. Chop stubble (post harvest) Charges for pick-up use Interest on operating capital @ 12% Total cultural costs Harvest costs: Combine Totla harvest costsa Cash overhead Office & business costs Land rent: 25% share of 1,750 lbs @ $250/ton Building and equipment taxes Equipment insurance Total cash overhead costs Total cash costs Total cash cost per cwt @ 1,750 lbs/acre

Labor Hours Cost/A($)

Table C.2

Sample Costs to Produce Safflower in Lower Sacramento County (1996–87)

Crop Yield/acre in tons Market value/ton

Safflower 1.5 $175.00

Cultural costs: Fuel Cost/A ($) Chop corn stubble 0.28 Disc 2x 1.08 Plow 1.00 Disc 2x 1.08 Preplant nitrogen aqua/ringroller 0.70 Float ringroller 0.54 Herb. application 0.76 Float ringroller 0.54 Plant 0.80 Pickup 3.40 Reclamation 15.00 Total 25.18 Chemicals/seed: Nitrogen 150# 28.50 Treflan 1.0#/A 8.03 Seed 40#/A 17.00 Total 53.53 Harvest: Harvester (fuel) 1.25 Labor: Cultural 11.11 Harvest 1.25 Shop mechanic 10.00 Total 22.36 Cash overhead: Share rent (15%) 39.38 Mgmt. sal/benefits 21.73 Employee benefits (30%) 6.71 Taxes on equip. 2.57 Repairs/maint. 54.25 Office/mgmt. exp. 10.86 Insurance 5.00 Total 140.50 Debt service: Interest on loan 35.00 Interest on Equip. 4.50 Total 39.50 Total gross income: 262.50 Cash expense: 282.32 Net loss x19.82 Noncash costs: Equipment depreciation 37.50 Interest on buildings 10.67 Building depreciation 4.44 Total 52.61 aIncluded in labor budget. Source: Pemberton and Orr (36).

Gross Income/Acre Total Cash Cost/Acre Net Loss/Acre Labor ($) 1.42 1.66 1.25 1.66 1.00 0.53 0.76 0.53 2.00 – – 11.11a

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547

TABLE C.3 Sample Costs to Produce Safflower in the Delta Area of San Joaquin County. Yield: 1.5 Tons Operation Cultural costs: Plow Disc 2x Furrow out for preirrigating Open and close syphon ditches Hand ditch work and irrigate Prefertilize

Hours/ Fuel and Description of Acre Labor ($) Repairs ($) Materials

Total Materials ($)Total ($)

0.5 0.5

0.97 0.97

1.23 1.25

2.20 2.22

0.33

0.64

0.72

1.36

0.15

0.29

0.32

0.61

1.0 0.33

1.76 0.64

– ½ A./ft. @ $3.75 1.87 0.40 Applicator rent @ 0.50 9.00 per acre (85# N. @ 0.10/lb.)

Disc 2x with harrow behind Plant with 12’ grain drill

0.5

0.97

1.40

0.5

0.97

0.75

50# of seed/A. @ 9.40/100 lbs.

Harrow for weed control 4x

0.8

1.54

1.26

(some growers use herbicides)

4.70

3.63 10.04

6.42 2.80

Total cultural costs 8.75 7.33 Harvest costs: Combine Contract @ $8.50/t Haul Contract @0.10/100 lbs Total harvest costs Cash overhead: Misc. office Taxes on equipment Rent 1/3 of Crop 1/2 ton @ $85/t Total cash overhead Management: 5% of 1 ½ tons @ $85/t

24.07

31.65 12.75 3.00 15.75 2.80 0.50 42.50 93.20 6.38

Annual cost Investment and equipment: Per annual use of acre $98.74 Total cost/acre Cost per ton @ 1.5 ton yield Source: Kegel and Parsons (30).

Depreciation 10.73

Interest 2.96

13.69 113.27 75.50

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TABLE C.4 Cost Analysis for Safflower Production in San Luis Obispo County (1976)a Sample Costs Per Acre ($) Preharvest cash costs: Disc or plow 2 x 0.60 hr labor and tractor Cultivate fallow, 2 x 0.30 hr labor and tractor Preplant tillage, 0.15 hr labor and tractor Fertilize: preplant 45 lbs. N @ 0.16 + $0.50 applicator + 0.3 hr tractor Drilled with seed, 100 lbs ammonia sulphate @ $76.56/ton Plant and ringroll: 0.10 hr labor and tractor Seed: 18 lbs @ $0.35/lb Misc. labor, materials, machine time Truck: $0.36/mile total cost Repairs except truck and tractor County taxes (2 years) Ag Preserve $2.25/year Office and business costs Total preharvest costs Harvest costs: Combining: custom cost $10/A to 1,000 lbs then 0.45 cwt over 1,000 lbs Haul to storage: $4/ton Total harvest costs Total cash costs Depreciation: Tractor: 1.45 hrs @ $2.82 Other equipment: $8 value, 8 yrs life x 2.00 Storage and buildings: $6 value 15 yrs life x 2 Total depreciation Interest on investment @ 8% Tractor: 1.45 hrs @ $2.10 Other equipment: $4 average value @ 8% x 2 Storage and buildings: $3 value @ 8% x 2 Land: $400/A x 2 Total interest on investment Total cost of production Less value of stubble pasture Net cost of production Sample costs of production per cwt. at varying yields Yield: lbs/acr 600 1,000 Net cost of production/cwt. $21.89 $13.22

Per Cwt($)

5.90 2.95 1.48 11.00 3.83 0.98 6.30 2.00 0.36 3.50 4.50 3.30 46.10

4.61

10.00 2.00 12.00 58.10

1.20 5.81

4.09 0.80 6.89

0.69

3.05 0.64 0.48 64.00 68.17 133.16 1.00 132.16 1,400 $9.63

6.82 13.32 13.22 1,800 $7.63

2,200 $6.36

aCosts are based on dryland faming practices with the land in crop and fallow in alternate years and producing 1,000 pounds of safflower in the crop year. Labor costs $4.00/hr total; 70 hp crawler tractor/hr cash costs; $5.90; depreciation; $2.82; and interest $2.10. Source: Cawelti and Yeary (38).

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TABLE C.5 Sample Costs per Acre to Produce Safflower for the Tulare Lake and Westside Areas (1970)a Labor @ $1.90 and $2.20/hr, including Social Security and Compensation Insurance. Tractors: heavy track, $3.20/hr; depreciation, $2.60; interest, $1.15. Sample costs Per acre ($) Preharvest cash and labor costs: Land preparation: 1.5 hr man and tracklayer Irrigate: 1 pre and 1 crop, 3 man-hours Water: Power to pump 3.5 acre feet @ $5.50b Fertilizer: 100 lbs nitrogen at $0.05 applied with subsoiler Plant: (grain drill) 2 men and tractor 0.1 hr Seed: 40 lbs @ 12.5 cents Weed control: material application County taxes Repairs (except tractors): irrig-system, equip. Miscellaneous expenses, including office, auto, capital, etc. Total preharvest cash costs Harvesting and hauling costs: Combine harvest: contract @ $6.50 + $0.10/cwt. over 1,000 lb Haul @ $2.15/ton Total harvesting and hauling costs Total cash costs Depreciation: Irrigation system: cost $100 over 12 yrs Tractors: 1.6 hr @ $2.60 Equipment (except tractors): cost $40 over 10 yrs. Total depreciation Total cash and depreciation costs Interest on investment @ 7% Irrigation system: on 1/2 cost ($50.00) Tractors: 1.6 hrs @ $1.10 Equipment (except tractors): on 1/2 cost ($20.00) Land @ $400 Total interest on investment Total cost of production Cost/cwt at varying yields: Yield lbs/acre 2000 2500 Cash and dep. cost/cwt $4.80 $3.88 Total cost/cwt $6.53 $5.27 aBased on a yield of 3,000 lbs/acre. bWestside water costs would be higher. Source: McCutcheon and Yeary (39)

Per cwt ($)

8.10 5.70 19.25 5.00 0.73 5.00 6.00 2.00 8.00 5.50 4.57 69.85

2.33

8.50 3.22 11.72 81.57

0.39 2.72

8.33 4.16 4.00 16.49 98.06

0.55 3.27

3.50 1.76 1.40 28.00 34.66 132.72

1.15 4.42

3000 $3.27 $4.42

3500 $2.83 $3.82

4000 $2.50 $3.37

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TABLE C.6 Sample Costs and Production Cost Data for Imperial Valley (1981) Mechanical operations at custom rates. Labor at $5.25/hr ($4.15 plus Social Security, unemployment insurance, and fringe benefits). Yield 1.50 tons/acre Custom Materials Hand Labor Sample Costs Operation Rate ($) Type Cost ($) Hours ($) ($/acre) Land preparation: Disc 2x 13.00 Float 2x Fertilize List Total land preparation Growing period costs: Plant

6.50 6.00 6.00200lb.N-NH328.00

10.00 15lb. seed @ 38.5¢ 5.78 Water 6 ac ft 31.50 3.75 Insecticide 7.50

Irrigate 12x Insect control Total growing costs: Land rent (new lease) partial year Cash overhead: 10% of preharvest cost and land rent Total all costs Harvest costs: Combine 28.00 Haul 4.00/ton Total all costs

12.00 34.00 8.00 67.00

5.50

28.88

15.78 60.38 11.25 87.41 125.00 27.94 307.35 28.00 6.00 341.35

Notes: Cost per ton = $227.56. General information: The average yields for safflower have ranged from 0.9–1.6 tons/acre. Soil requirement: Safflower is adapted to all soils in Imperial Valley. It is moderately salt tolerant; however, for best results it should not be grown in very saline fields. The important factor is that the soil be well drained, not only on the surface but internally. Safflower will not tolerate standing water due to the susceptibility to phytophthora root rot. Land preparation: Fields must be level enough to prevent standing water. The crop can be planted on beds, either in a mulch or in dry beds and irrigated up. It can also be planted flat in borders either in mulch or dry and irrigated up. Planting: Optimum planting dates range from December 15th to January 15th. When planting on double row 40 inch beds, 15 lbs of seed will be adequate. When safflower is drilled in flat, 30 lbs of seed should be used. Seven or 14 inch drill rows should be used. When safflower is planted in a mulch, the seed should be placed 1/2–2 inches deep. A one-inch planting depth is recommended for dry plantings. Safflower planted in a mulch emerges several days earlier than when planted dry and irrigated up. Fertilization: Safflower requires 200 lbs of nitrogen/acre for maximum yield. Imperial Valley soils usually contain sufficient phosphorus for safflower production. Phosphorus applications may be warranted when the safflower crop is grown on coarse soils not following vegetable crops. Source: Hagemann (40).

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References 1. Knowles, P.F., and M.D. Miller, Safflower, Circular 532, California Agricultural Extension Service, Davis, California, January 1965. 2. Kearney, T., in Farm Advisor Notes, Cooperative Extension Office, Woodland, California, 1993, 3 pp. 3. Auld, D.L., G.A. Murray, J.A. Benson, E.F. Mink, B.W. Struder, and C.G. Van Slyke, Safflower–-A Potential Crop for Northern Idaho, CIS No. 435, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, April 1978 (revised July, 1981), 2 pp. 4. Murray, G.A., D.L. Auld, and G.A. Lee, Safflower Production in Northern Idaho–Varieties, Nitrogen Fertilization, and Herbicides, CIS No. 559, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, 1981, 4 pp. 5. Mündal, H.-H., R.J. Morrison, R.E. Blackshaw, and B. Roth, Safflower Production on the Canadian Prairies, Agriculture Canada, Lethbridge, 1992, 29 pp. 6. Kapusta, G., E.W. French, and C. Swallers, Farm Research 22: 4 (1962). 7. Shaw, A.F., and L. Joppa, Safflower, an Oilseed Crop, Circular 289, Cooperative Extension Services, Montana State University. Bozeman, Montana, November, 1963, 16 pp. 8. Hartman, G.P., and C.W. Crowell, in Summary of Data Obtained in Agronomic and Soils Experiment Trials, Eastern Montana Branch Station, Sidney, Montana, 1965, pp. 81–85, 123–125. 9. Hoag, B.K., E.W. French, G.N. Geiszler, and A.A. Schneiter, Safflower in North Dakota, Bulletin No. 477, Agricultural Experiment Stations, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, January, 1969, 15 pp. 10. Bergman, J.W., G.P. Hartman, and A.L. Black, Safflower Production Guidelines, Montana Agricultural Experiment Station Capsule Information Series, No. 8., Bozeman, Montana, 1975. 11. Bergman, J.W., G.P. Hartman, A.L. Black, P.L. Brown, and N.R. Riveland, Safflower Production Guidelines, Montana Agricultural Experiment Station Capsule Information Series, No. 8. (revised), Bozeman, Montana, 1979, 25 pp. 12. Helm, J.L., N. Riveland, A.A. Schneiter, and F. Sobolik, Safflower Production, Circular A-870, North Dakota Cooperative Extension Service, Fargo, North Dakota, September, 1985, 4 pp. 13. Riveland, N., and E. French, 1972 Progress Report, Williston Agricultural Experiment Station, North Dakota State University, Williston, North Dakota, 1972, pp. 15–16. 14. French, E., N. Riveland, G. Bradbury, R. Helgeson, M. Krogen, and A. Greaves, Performance of Field Crop Varieties, Williston Agricultural Experiment Station, Williston, North Dakota, No. 23, 1980, p. 7. 15. French, E., N. Riveland, G. Bradbury, R. Helgeson, M. Krogen, and T. Krogen, Performance of Field Crop Varieties, Williston Agricultural Experiment Station, Williston, North Dakota, No. 29, 1986, p. 9. 16. French, E., N. Riveland, G. Bradbury, R. Helgeson, M. Krogen, and T. Krogen, Performance of Field Crop Varieties, Williston Agricultural Experiment Station, Williston, North Dakota, No. 30, 1987, pp. 10, 13. 17. French, E., N. Riveland, G. Bradbury, R. Helgeson, M. Krogen, and T. Krogen, Performance of Field Crop Varieties, Williston Agricultural Experiment Station, Williston, North Dakota, No. 31, 1988, p. 11.

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18. French, E., N. Riveland, G. Bradbury, R. Helgeson, M. Krogen, and T. Krogen, Performance of Field Crop Varieties, Williston Agricultural Experiment Station, Williston, North Dakota, No. 32, 1989, pp. 11, 13. 19. Hoag, B.K., M. Miller, L. Nelson, J. Hennessy, and L. Sundsbak, 1990 Annual Report, North Central Research Center, North Dakota State University, Minot, North Dakota, 1990, pp. 5–6. 20. Black, A.L., D.L. Tanaka, et al., Ninth Annual Progress Report, USDA and Area IV Soil Conservation District, Mandan, North Dakota, 1992, pp. 19–23. 21. Ashri, A., A.L. Urie, and D.E. Zimmer, Euphytica 25: 225 (1976). 22. Rao, V.R., M. Ramachandram, and V. Arunachalam, Theo. Appl. Genet. 50: 185 (1977). 23. Karve, A.D., and A.K. Deshmurch, Proceedings of the First International Safflower Conference, University of California. Davis, California, 1981, pp. 92–96. 24. Ramaghandram, M., and J.V. Guud, Genetica Agraria 35: 211 (1982). 25. Rachunatham, C.A., and A. Satyanarayana, Abstracts of the Second International Safflower Conference, Hyderabad, India, p. 37. 26. Ashri, A., Divergence and Evolution in the Safflower Genus, Carthamus tinctorus L., Final Report PL 480, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel, August, 1973. 27. Hall, R.D., and R. Goble, The Fresno Bee, Fresno California, March 30, 1990, pp. A1, A8. 28. Goble, R., The Fresno Bee, Fresno California, April 1, 1990, pp. D1, D8. 29. Hall, R.D., “Safflower Policy Error Admitted,” The Fresno Bee, Fresno California, April 6, 1990. 30. Hall, R.D., The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, May 15, 1990, pp. A1–A2. 31. Hall, R.D., The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, May 16, 1990, p. D4. 32. Hall, R.D., The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, August 10, 1990, p. C8. 33. Hall, R.D., The Fresno Bee, Fresno, California, September 23, 1990, pp. D1, D3. 34. “Congress Investigating Crop Insurance Payments,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, August 6, 1991, pp. C1, C6. 35. Sailsbery, R.L, and J. DuBruille, Safflower Production Costs–-Glenn–-Butte Counties, County Cooperative Extension Service, Orland, California, February 1989, 4 pp. 36. Pemberton, W., and J.P. Orr, Economic Management, 1986–87 Crop Cost Studies, Coop. Exten., University of California, Sacramento, California, November 1986, pp. 34–35. 37. Kegel, F.R., and P.S. Parsons, Sample Costs to Grow Safflower in San Joaquin County, Ag. Exten. Ser., Stockton, California, March 1994, 3 pp. 38. Cawelti, W.E., and E.A. Yeary, Safflower Production in San Luis Obispo County–-1976, Ag. Exten Ser., San Luis Obispo, 1976, 1 pp. 39. McCutcheon, O.D., and E.A. Yeary, Sample Costs Per Acre to Produce Safflower–Tulare Lake and Westside Areas, Ag. Exten. Ser., Hanford, California, 1970, 2 pp. 40. Hagemann, R.W., Sample Costs and Production Cost Data Sheet No. 21, Ag. Exten. Ser., El Centro, California, March 1981, 4 pp.

Appendix D

Legal and Technical Regulation of Trade

Contracts Philosophical differences in the way a transaction is recorded definitely exist in this business. The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation always believed that the seller should write a contract of sale and send it to a buyer for acceptance and signature. A typical Contract of Sale Form, modeled on the PVO style follows (Figure D.1). Many of the large conglomerates involved in vegetable oil purchasing believe they should record a purchase and that their purchase order should constitute the document of record. Producers Cotton Oil Company took yet another stand. They reasoned that the broker who negotiated a sale between buyer and seller should write a confirmation, confirming the base terms of a trade to both buyer and seller and that the trading rules applying to the product eliminated the need for a fully worded contract. All three methods work. Sometimes personality conflicts create quite a battle deciding whose version should be the definitive method for recording a trade. The most important thing is to write a contract, purchase order, or confirmation quickly and distribute it immediately to all concerned so that any misunderstanding is apparent before too much damage is done.

Grading, Standards, and Trading Rules Safflower Seed—United States Most of the factors in grading safflower seed were put into the trading rules or standards because a one-time problem that was not covered by standards existed before it occurred. Safflower seed trading started with a very simple contract. The seller simply sold safflower seed without specifying any standards. In 1950, PVO requested that the State of California act as a third party to conduct sampling and analysis of safflower seed received from farmers. The specific size of seed parts that are classed as part of dockage was incorporated in the State of California Official Standards for Safflower Seed because this was the size of the screen in PVO’s San Francisco expeller oil mill, and anything smaller would be lost into screenings. The standards for damage and heat damage were put into the rules after violent objections resulted from when Anderson Clayton sent a large shipment of rain-damaged seed to Japan. Standards for test weight were used for a number of years in Midwestern contracts as

553 Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

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CONTRACT

Buyer’s Purchase No. Seller’s Purchase No.

Contract made at San Francisco, California, this

between

day of

(a California Corporation), hereinafter called the Seller, and

hereinafter called the Buyer.

The Seller hereby sells and agrees to deliver and the Buyer hereby purchases and agrees to receive the amounts and on the terms and conditions herein set forth:

COMMODITY: QUANTITY: QUALITY: SHIPMENT: PRICE: TFRMS: REMARKS: CLAUSE PARAMOUNT: This contract is subject to the published rules and regulations in effect at contract date, which are hereby made a part hereof, except insofar as such rules and regulations conflict with any of the terms of this contract, including those upon the reverse hereof, in which said terms shall govern.

BUYER

SELLER

PLEASE RETURN ONE FULLY EXECUTED COPY TO SELLER AT ABOVE ADDRESS.

Figure D.1. Sales Contract Form.

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TERMS AND CONDITIONS (1) Sales made upon a delivered basis are based upon present freight rates and any increase or decrease in freight rate shall be for Buyer’s account. (2) Any tax/duty or charge imposed after the date of this agreement by any governmental body upon the production and/or sale and/or shipment and/or importation and/or use of the material herein specified shall be for the amount of Buyer. (3) In the event that the performance of the obligations of Buyer or Seller under this contract, shall be prevented during the contract period by war, blockade, prohibition of export, acts of God, fire, strike, lock-out, riot, rebellion, civil commotion, acts or restrictions imposed by any governmental authority, or by any other cause beyond the control of the disabled party, the time for performance of the contract shall be extended for a period equal to the duration of the disabling circumstances, but not to exceed a period of one hundred twenty (120) days after the expiration of the contract. (4) Weight certificate at point of shipment shall govern, unless otherwise specified. Determination of quality shall be made by analysis at time of shipment, which analysis shall be final, unless otherwise specified. (5) If after the acceptance of any goods, Buyer fails to give notice to Seller of the breach of any promoise of warranty within five (5) days after Buyer knows or ought to know of such breach, the Seller shall not be liable therefore. Seller neither warrants nor guarantess against damage resulting from the use and/or application of the commodity sold and is hereby expressly relieved from liability thererfore. Unless expressly stated herein, Seller shall not be deemed to have any knowledge of any particular purpose for which the goods sold hereunder are required. (6) In case of default in payment of any installment of purchase price when due, or in case the financial resources of Buyer become impaired or unsatisfactory to Seller during the life of this contract, Seller may either declare the whole sum payable by Buyer, immediately due and payable and further delivereds by Seller against the contract shall be made only for cash in advance, of Seller may at its option cancel the contract. The option hereby given to seller shall be in addition to any other remedy provide by law. Should any sum due Seller from Buyer be delinquent in payment, Seller will charge Buyer a past due service charge with the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, as amended. (7) Seller represents that materials and/or services covered by this contract were, nor will be, produced in conformity with the Federal Fair Labor Standrads act, as amended. (8) Any alteration of the terms of this contract made by the Buyer and/or Broker shall not be binding on the Seller unless agreed to in writing by the Seller. A copy of this contract, with alterations if necessary, signed by the Buyer shall be returned to the Seller within fourteen (14) days of the date of this contract, otherwise the contract shall be final as written. (9) Unless the sale is upon a delivered basis, Buyer is obligated to furnish without demand instruction for each shipment hereunder, in ample time to enable Seller to deliver within the time specified. If Buyer fails or refuses to provided shipping instructions and/or accept shipment, Seller may at his option, extend the shipping time and ship withhm the extended time; resell any item for Buyer’s account all or any undelivered portion of the contract; cancel the contract. Buyer shall be liable for all loss resulting from extensions, resales, or cancellations. (10) This contract shall be deemed to be made and performed in California and is to be governed by the laws thereof. (11) If Buyer does not unload any rail car within forty-eight (48) hours after receipt thereof (except Sundays and Holidays) or within the trip lease period thereof, Buyer shall be liable to Seller for reasonable detention charges of Seller’s then current rate for each whole day or fraction thereof after the forty-eight (48) hours or after the trip lease period, whichever is applicable. If the products are delivered by Seller’s truck, buyer agrees to pay the reasonable charges at Seller’s then current rate for waiting time should Buyer fail promptly to unload said truck.

Figure D.1. Sales Contract Form (continued). Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

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an indirect measure of oil content. References to FFA and color of oil in seed came about after damaged seed had been encountered, particularly from the Great Plains and from Australia. References to safflower seed of “storable, millable” quality, and subsequently, reference in California’s Department of Agriculture Manual for the allowable quantities of stones were caused by growers and shippers delivering safflower seed that contained sand (this can require relining of an expeller barrel after running one or two days if undetected), by growers trying to harvest very short safflower plants and digging into hillsides with one edge of the combine header, resulting in the inclusion of clods of dirt, or by growers or dealers piling safflower on the ground before delivery and then picking up the seed (and a layer of dirt underneath) with a front-end loader scoop. The definition for “safflower seed” in the California Standards as containing at least 50% safflower seed was occasioned by safflower seed being delivered that contained more barley than safflower. It occurred because some fields in which barley volunteered heavily were harvested; the seed could not be rejected at the time, but caused huge cleaning problems for the receiver. More recently, after the heavy sprout damage suffered in the Montana and North Dakota harvest of 1986, most domestic contracts make some reference either to percent of sprout damage or color and FFA of oil from seed that appears to be sprout or heat damaged. Percent of sprout damage is not a very good measure by itself; it only indicates that there may be a problem. Safflower seed can contain a lot of dark color and high FFA problems and exhibit relatively low visible sprouting. On the other hand, a rather high percentage of sprouts can occur and not produce oil discolorization or higher FFA levels if the sprouting occurred quickly and then just as quickly was stopped by hot, dry weather. It may help to look at some of the principal factors that created the main body of today’s NIOP Safflower Seed Trading Rules. In the summer of 1967, I received a call from Dale Dybbro, PVO’s Los Angeles Manager, saying that Howard Wallace (owner of Los Angeles Harbor Grain Terminal) had told him that a nearby elevator had a huge pile of safflower seed outside the elevator and that it had rained hard on it. In fact it had rained three times–a most unusual occurrence for that time of year in California. Unwisely, the pile had been restrained at the base by piling a layer of gunny sacks filled with safflower seed. During the rain this barrier prevented water from draining down through the pile and running off. It raised the moisture of the bottom layers of the pile, and caused the seed to start heating as the moisture triggered the germination process. In addition to a world-class menagerie of birds roosting and gorging themselves on top of the pile, the bottom was burning to a crisp, resulting in big, black chunks of charcoal-like remains. We asked Wallace to obtain photographic evidence of what was going on, which he did. Surprisingly, the owner of the seed, Anderson Clayton, did nothing and proceeded to load a shipload of safflower seed for Japan. The seed was run over a grating to remove large blackened chunks up to 3–4 feet in diameter, and then over a seed cleaner; this still left white safflower seeds mixed with millions of kernels ranging in color from tan to coal black. We never knew whether Anderson Clayton’s people in Phoenix knew how bad it was, but the point is that

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someone made a tragic error in shipping classically damaged goods to Japan. It nearly cost California the entire market for safflower seed that we had worked years to build up. Anderson Clayton’s buyer (Marubeni) reacted angrily upon receiving the shipment and filed a huge claim. Anderson Clayton reacted defensively, claiming that the Japanese were overreacting, and denying the claim since neither their contract nor the NIOP rules specifically prohibited heat-damaged safflower seed. It was true. The National Institute of Oilseed Products rules up to that point were very simple and so were the contract wordings. Those of us who had tried to build a safflower business had tried at every step to ensure that safflower was treated as a quality product. For example, the original rules for buying safflower had purposely been drawn to provide for payment of seed on a clean (dockagefree) basis so as to eliminate the thinking in the U.S. grain trade that permitted shipment of grain with a certain percentage of admixture allowed. Marubeni filed for arbitration and surprisingly the first panel of arbitrators ruled in favor of Anderson Clayton. It was a ruling based on a very narrow view of the contract and NIOP rule itself. Luckily, upon appeal, the second panel took equity into account and ruled in favor of Marubeni assessing Anderson Clayton with a huge penalty for damaged seed. Marubeni never purchased safflower seed again, and Anderson Clayton never was able to sell to Japan again. But this was not the end of it. The Japanese Oil Millers Association threatened all kinds of actions through the various Japanese trading company offices in San Francisco. They wanted George W. Gooch Laboratories Co. of Los Angeles, a NIOP-certified laboratory for safflower analysis, that had innocently provided the analysis in the previously mentioned shipment, permanently barred from the safflower analysis business, wanted all future sales (if there were to be any) to be handled by sampling and analysis in Japan, much stricter standards established for safflower seed, and the oil content basis to be changed from 34% to some higher level, such as 38% or 40%. The NIOP Board met, and I was asked to meet with the Japanese Millers Association in my capacity as President of NIOP, on a trip I had already scheduled to Japan (April, 1968). The Board felt that it could not agree to remove any laboratory already certified from its livelihood, nor did it want to agree to sampling and analysis in Japan. (Previous comparisons had shown that Japanese analyses consistently produced oil content results several percentage points below U.S. lab results, plus higher amounts of dockage than measured by the State of California Bureau of Field Crops). I first met with individual members of the Japanese Millers Association first while in Tokyo and then at a formal meeting of its Board, chaired by Minoru Honda of C. Itoh. A compromise was proposed for revised wording in both the NIOP rules (1,2), plus changes in the State of California Official Standards for Safflower seed (3). In effect, the State of California would have police powers to stop the loading of a poor shipment in the future. On shipments exceeding 1,000 tons, a separate sample would be drawn representing each 1,000-ton lot (or fraction thereof for the last lot), separate oil content and dockage analyses would be performed on each lot, and the results then averaged in an

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overall official certificate. This would dampen the effect of small errors in sampling or analysis since statistically this gave a much better measurement of the whole. There was no question that this was true. Until then a 12,000–15,000 ton cargo was represented in the State’s dockage laboratory by one 2-lb sample, and in turn this sample was split after dockage analyses into smaller samples going to the NIOP labs for oil content analyses where it was split down to two samples weighing 5–10 g each. A 1% variation in oil content could easily mean a difference of $15,000–25,000 for a buyer, Sellers naturally resisted the idea because their cost of sampling and analysis would be increased severalfold, but they eventually agreed, particularly after one of their members (Bill Davis of Kingsburg Cotton Oil Co.) began to complain about having large sales of safflower on an ex spout basis being subject to the same problem. This solution papered over a practice that had been common since the start of safflower exports. Individual shippers of safflower seed would ask the State of California to split samples of safflower into as many as seven identical samples and then ship these samples to all of the NIOP approved laboratories. The buyer would get the results from each laboratory over the telephone and then use the certificate from the laboratory with the highest analysis for his official documentation. The other analyses would be discarded. This resulted in higher sampling and analysis costs, but the return was well worth it, since sellers soon found that variance between laboratories was as much as 5%. Not all sellers engaged in this practice. Some sellers specified a particular laboratory for one reason or another and never realized the opportunity that existed. Others discarded the highest and lowest analyses received, and used the highest of the remainder. In return the Japanese agreed to continue to buy basis grades and analyses based on samples taken at time of shipment on a 34% oil content basis with a two for one reciprocal allowance for variation, fractions in proportion. Most of us opposed changing from the 34% basis, feeling it would tend in time to cheapen the price for safflower seed, particularly as new sellers came into the market that might be unfamiliar with the fact that California seed generally sold for a premium of more than 10% because of its high oil content. The knotty Gooch Laboratories question was solved by NIOP taking no official action, but instead asking those trading with Japan in the future to agree to include the words “determination of oil content by NIOP certified laboratory (except Gooch) designated by Seller” in individual contracts of sale. I talked to Roger Miller of Gooch, who said it did not matter to him. At this time he was getting so few samples of safflower seed for analysis (since most sellers were using northern California laboratories) that it meant little to his business. After more discussion back and forth by telex and cable, these changes were incorporated in the NIOP Rules of 1969–70 (1). But safflower seed trading was never quite so simple again. Rule 110 j, covering oleic seed, was adopted in 1968 and the pioneering work of Dick Purdy of PVO and Lance Chao of J.G. Boswell in working out a practical method for indirect measurement of iodine value by a handheld refractometer was incorporated as part of the rules. As discussed in Chapter 11, another change in the NIOP safflower trading rules was put into effect in 1978 after complaints from Japanese buyers. They were able

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to show that the oil content analyses upon which they were paying were not being reflected in the results obtained by NYKK (Nippon Yuryo Kentei Kyokai, the official Japanese laboratory) nor, more importantly, by the actual results in their oil mills. They again demanded sampling and analyses by NYKK to be final or at least to involve them in an averaging of results. U.S. shippers uniformly opposed this. They all felt that NYKK was a buyer’s laboratory. Whether this was true or not, I felt we had to listen to the problems being experienced by the mills. At the time, I was the NIOP Director representing the minor oilseeds segments of the business. The NIOP Sampling and Analysis Committee was asked to study the matter. After much thought and work, particularly by the Committee’s chairman, Clem Burton-Smith, some solutions were proposed. The Sampling and Analysis Committee monitored the way each laboratory was performing its preparation and analysis of the samples received from the State of California. It was apparent that differences in procedure had crept into the methods employed at each laboratory, and this could produce variances between laboratories analyzing the same sample. Until NIOP conducted its extensive campaign to monitor and correct the differences in lab procedure, variances were quite wide. Afterward, a variability still existed, and some sellers continued to pick and choose between laboratory results. Japanese buyers may have guessed what was going on, but sellers always avoided questions on the matter. Eventually after more complaints were aired, most sales of safflower seed evolved to the system first proposed by Cal West-Seeds and used by all traders today, in which samples are openly sent to several laboratories, the high and low results are discarded and a mathematical average of the remaining oil content analyses is used for settlement purposes. Safflower seed shipped to Europe usually was traded on somewhat different terms than sales to Japan or Taiwan. European buyers insisted on purchasing on a CIF (cost of seed, insurance, and freight included in the price) basis. Japanese buyers preferred to buy CAF (cost of seed and freight, but not insurance included in the price) giving them the right to use their favorite Japanese underwriter. European buyers generally insisted on paying for the goods after arrival and discharge on the basis of shipped weights and landed analysis final or, in some cases, landed weights and analysis final. Japanese buyers were generally willing to pay for 90–95% of shipped weights upon presentation of vessel’s mates’ receipt and to pay the balance as soon as sampling and analysis certificates were presented. The European terms meant that the seller had to wait an additional 45 days to receive payment, and generally sellers found that the resulting oil content analysis by the European laboratories involved were lower than those obtained by their U.S. counterparts. Some claimed that this was a result of the European laboratories being “buyer’s” laboratories, beholden to a huge company. It was more likely that the oil content analysis of safflower seed was a relatively rarely performed procedure in Europe, and if the laboratory did not take the extra time to carefully clean the sample (such as removing all empty or partially filled seeds) the resulting analysis would be lower. Weight claims were almost always involved as well, and one simply had to allow for a weight claim in the calculation of a selling price so as not to be surprised.

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It is well to also notice that the basic cleanliness standard for safflower is “dockage.” Dockage can contain “foreign matter” or “admixture,” but dockage also contains parts of the safflower plant including parts of safflower seed (empty hulls or broken hulls or meats small enough to pass through a 4 1/2/64-inch screen). In general, sales to Europe also were made under the North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) No. 2 printed contract form with NIOP Rule 110g applying only for determination of quality. In some instances, when safflower seed was first traded to Europe, dealers much more familiar with the large trade in sunflower seed than with safflower rules suffered serious losses. They purchased safflower seed ex spout U.S. ports basis shipping weights and NIOP analysis to apply, and sold on a normal sunflower rule with landed weights and FOSFA analysis to apply. This meant the trader would make payment for the full load, including foreign material, but with oil content measured on the loaded sample after first removing “dockage” before analysis and the trader would sell on the same weight basis. The oil content would be determined on a sample containing all foreign matter and could result in a big dollar loss, and most traders learned quickly from it. The NIOP’s rules that apply to safflower seed are Rule 1.3–GIF (Cost, Insurance, and Freight), Rule 1.4 C and F (Cost and Freight), Rules 1.5 and 1.8–F.O.B. Vessel (Free On Board Vessel and Ex Warehouse, respectively), Rules 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, and 7.7, that are specific to safflower and oleic seed only, in modifying the previously mentioned rules, and Rules 7.1(g),(h), and (i), that cover Description and Grade of U.S.A. Origin Safflower Seed (Export Terms), Safflower Seed (Domestic Terms), and Oleic Seed, respectively (Figure D.2). Rule 7.](g) was called Rule 110(g) for many years, but was renamed in 1992 when an Ad Hoc Trading Rules Committee finished a yeoman job started by Al Mogerley of completely revising and reediting all NIOP rules. Many other NIOP rules apply to safflower trades in general, such as rules on shipment, weighing, arbitration, payment, and so on (2). The NIOP Domestic safflower seed rule does not require oil content analyses, since it is based primarily on California conditions where the variation in oil content from year to year by variety is negligible. Buyers in Montana or Great Plains states where variations can be considerable, and who use the California Standards and NIOP Rules, usually add a clause in their local contracts applying premium/discount scales generally revolving around a 36%, 38%, or 40% oil content basis. Figures D.3 and D.4 are examples of typical Safflower Production Contracts for safflower seed purchased in California and the Great Plains, respectively. The current State of California Official Standards for Safflower Seed are listed in Figure D.5 (3). The State of California Seed Inspection Manual (1994 Draft) contains exact instructions on sampling and analysis of safflower (4). The California Grades were intentionally kept as simple as possible so that all concerned could clearly understand them. When the grades were originally drawn up through consultation between PVO and the Bureau of Field Crops, it was agreed that the standard would be simply Safflower Seed, and not several numbered grades as are found in most Grain or Soybean Standards. We wanted a quality product. It either was or it was not. If it did not meet the grade it would be declared Sample Grade.

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RULE 7.1—U.S.A. Origin Safflower Seed (Export Terms) (1) Safflower Seed shall be sold under the terms of the grade “Safflower Seed” as established under the Official Standards of the State of California, Department of Agriculture, effective June 1, 1965, and as subsequently amended; basis 100%, clean seed, all dockage deductible. Oil content shall be 34% clean basis, without moisture adjustment. Free fatty acids in the extracted oil shall not exceed 1.0% shall be guaranteed by shipper, but does not need to be set forth in analysis certificates for export shipment nor shall the I.V of the extracted oil exceed specifications in Rule 6.11 A, 1., e.q. 140 minimum, 155 maximum; seed shall not contain more than 3.0% total dockage. (2) Safflower Seed which is graded “Sample Grade Safflower Seed” under the Official Standards of the State of California because it contains more than 3.0% damaged kernels or more than 0.1% heat damaged kernels, or which contains more than 3.0% but less than 6.0% total dockage, or Safflower Seed in which the free fatty acids in the extracted oil exceed 1.0% but do not exceed 4.0% shall be tenderable under the following conditions or allowances. (a) If seed contains more than 3.0% damaged kernels or more than 0.1% heat damaged kernels, Seller shall be required to set forth analysis for free fatty acids in certificate. (b) If free fatty acids are in excess Of 1 .0% Seller shall make allowance on the basis of 1/2% of contract price for each 1% over 1% and up to 2.5% of FFA, and on the basis of 1% of contract price for each 1% over 2.5% and less than 4.0% all proportionally for any fra,tion thereof. Seed containing over 4.0% free fatty acids shall be subject to rejection. (c) If total dockage exceeds 3.0%. the Seller shall make allowance of 1 .0% of contract priLe for each I % of dockage up to and including 3.0% and 1.2% of the contract price for each 1 % over 3.0% up to and including 6.0% fractions in proportion. Seed containing over 6.0% total dockage shall be subject to rejection. (3) Safflower Seed which is graded Sample Grade Safflower Seed for reasons other than those above, or is graded Weevily Safflower Seed, shall be considered objectionable and not ten c1prable and shall be (onclitioned to a endurable condition by Seller prior to shipment. (4) Safflower Seed shall be rejectable: (a) If it contains treated seed. (b) If it contains toxic seed, chemicals or other materials which are normally considered objectionable or harmful. (c) If it is seized by the Federal Food & Drug Administration. (d) If free fatty acids are in excess of 4.0%. (e) If total dockage exceeds 6.0%. (f) If the Wijs lodineValue is less than 140 or more than 155. (5) Sampling Procedure for Export Shipment. A continuous sampling shall be made in a rep resentative manner throughout the loading to a ship, barge, etc., in such manner that a sepa rate and distinct sample shall be taken for every thousand metric ton increment—5% more or less—of the shipment, and a separate sample of the last increment which marks less than a thousand metric tons. Each increment sample must be properly marked showing the actual weight of which the increment sample is representative, the shipment of which it is a part, the shipper and stowage. All quality determinants shall be based on a representative portion of each increment sample taken at time of loading at port of shipment (Rule 5.8) and analysis as provided in Rule 5.7 (a). The percentage of dockage shall be determined according to the method adopted by the State of California, Department of Agriculture, effective ;one 1, 1965, and as subsequently amend ed, employing the Carter Dockage Tester. Oil content shall be determined by the NIOP method outlined in (6) below. Free fatty acids analysis shall be performed on oil extracted by such methods using AOCS Method Coll 3a-63. Moisture to be determined by ACCS Official Method Ac 2-41, using drying time of two (2) hours. A representative portion of each increment sample shall be submitted by the sampler to an inspector and/or to an Official NICP Chemist in a moisture-proof container with statement of whether or not it is a clean seed sample, together with weight, shipment, shipper and stowage as above stipulated. A portion of each increment sample representing a shipment

Figure D.2. The text for NIOP Rules 7.1 (g)(h)(i).

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shall be analyzed individually for quality determinants in the methods described above and the inspectors and/or chemists will calculate the average results of their determinations according to the weight of each increment, and will report only such calculated average result for the shipment. Any deficiency in oil content shall be allowed for by Seller and any excess shall be paid by Buyer on the basis of 2% of the contract price for each 1 % under or over 34% or proportion ally for any fraction thereof, clean basis, without moisture adjustment. (6) Oil Content: Definition: This method determines the substances extracted by petroleum ether under the conditions of the test. Scope: Applicable to Safflower Seed. A. Apparatus: 1, Got ldfisch Extraction Apparatus or extraction assembly as in AOCS Method Aa 4-38. 2. Whatman No. 2 filter paper or equivalent, 15 con. 3. Camel hair brush. 4. Paper extraction thimbles, about 25 mm × 80 mm. 5. Micro Grinder/Blender, hardened steel chimmed culling blades with stainless steel cover,and available at Cycle Sciences, Inc., Blendix Division, 434 Bergen Blvd., Padisades Park, New Jersey 07650 or High-Speed Grinder Model 9A-1 with hammer blades, rated at 23,000 rpm with no load; or other equivalent equipment. 6. Sample pan, aluminum 81/,” × 12” × 1 1/2” capacity 1 1/2 quarts. 7. Bate, Laboratory Aspirator, H.T. McGill, 548 Milby St., Houston, Texas. 8, Carter Dockage Tester, Carter Day Co., Minneapolis, Minnesota. 9. No, 34 Boemer Seed Sampler, Seedburo Equipment Company, 618 West Jackson Boulevard,Chicago, Illinois, or equivalent. B. Reagents: 1. Petroleum ether—AOCS Specification H2-41 2. Diatomaceous earth to be selected and supplied by NIOP. Earth must be dried to a moisture content of less than 0.2% before use. C. Preparation of Sample; (See E.I.) 1 . Hand Cleaning Method. (a) Split original sample about 1000 g with a Boemer Divider (record weight W1) and screen over a 15/64 ” round hole screen. Hand pick overs, adding any whole seed to troughs. (b) Adjust a Bates Aspirator to Feed 3, Slide opening 2 1/4, Voltage 60 and aspirate the material passing through 15/64 ” screen. Repeat aspiration at least three (3) times to remove all blank seeds. Empty cup and check for blanks on last pass. As long as significant num ber (3-5) of blanks appear aspiration should be repeated. (c) Screen remaining seed over a 4½/64” round hole screen. (d) Split the material on the 4½/64” screen to obtain about 100 g (record weight W2) and handpick all foreign material from this sample (weight W3). Do not remove kernels and piece, of Safflower Seed. (e)The total foreign material will consist of (A) all material on the 15/64 ” screen, (B) the material re moved by aspiration, (C) the material through the 4½/64” screen, plus [W1[A*B*C] × W3/W2. 2. Machine Cleaning Method [Using modified Carter Dockage Tester (See E.4)]. (a) Split original sample about 1000 g with a Boetner Divider (record weight Wl). (b) Adjust the modified Carter Dockage Tester as follows: (1) Set the air control at Number 5. (2) Set the feed control at Number 6. (3) Use the Number 3 scalper riddle. (4) Use the Number 8 sieve in the middle sieve carriage. (5) Use the Number 7 sieve in the bottom sieve carriage.

Figure D.2. The text for NIOP Rules 7.1 (g)(h)(i) (continued).

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(c) Run split sample from (a) through machine, (d) Safflower Seed passing over or caught in the scalper riddle is picked out and added to the cleaned seed. (e) Add the material which passes over the bottom sieve to the cleaned Safflower Seed. (f) Split the cleaned seed to obtain about 100 g (record weight W2) and handpick all foreign material from this sample (record weight W3). Do not remove kernels or pieces of Safflower Seed. (g) The total foreign material consists of (A) the mechanically separated dockage (aspirated material, fines from bottom pan and foreign material over riddle) plus (W1 -[A]) W3/W2. D. Procedure: 1 . Handpick a minimum 100 g aliquot, removing all dockage and foreign material, retaining part kernels and pan kernel containing Seed, but removing hull fragments. Split the hand picked sample to ca. 15 g charge using a Boemer sampler and accurately weigh the entire charge into high speed grinder lid. Add an equivalent weight of diatoma( eous earth. 2. Invert detachable bowl of grinder and attach to grinder lid containing weighed seed Sam ple and diatomaceous earth. 3. Connect bowl and lid securely to grinder base and grind for 40 to 45 seconds. Using a small spatula redistribute the contents of the grinder, breaking up iny lumps. Grind for an additional 30-60 Seconds. (See E.3. IMPORTANT) 4. Quantitatively transfer contents of grinder bowl to sample pan, making sure to thoroughly sweep lid and bowl free from fine sample particles. Hammer blade may have to be rotated to reach some sample particles. Transfer contents of sample pan quantitatively to a tight sealing container. Came] hair brush should be tapped in sample pan to free dust particles. 5. Thoroughly mix ground sample and weigh out a 10 g portion of the ground sample. (i Transfer charge to filter paper and fold as in AOCS Method Art 4-38 illustration, steps I to 7 only. 7. Flare wrapped sample into paper thimble and thimble into extraction tube. Conne(t to a tared extraction flask containing sufficient solvent for extraction. 8, Atta( h condenser and heat on a water bath or hot plate, condensing solvent at a rate of about 150 drops per minute. Continue extraction for four (4) hour,. 9. Cecil and disconnect flask. Evaporate solvent on a Steam or water bath until no odor ot petroleum remains. Remove any dirt or mostme from outs~de ot Flask, coot and weigh. Repeat Until ( onstant weight i, nintained. 10. Calculation:

%oil =

200 × Grams Oil Grams Ground Sample

E. NOTES: 1. Approximately WOO g sample should be used for removal of foreign matter. If sample has been previously cleaned, it should be split to about 100 g and further hand-picked to remove foreign matter yielding the cleaned seed which the analyst will use during analy sis. Free seed particles and kernels should be retained. 2. Lid of the grinder should be tare weighed into which seed and Celite are weighed. Lid will conveniently hold the 30 g of preground sample. 3. While sample is being ground, the analyst should rotate the grinder back and forth and to both sides to insure that any fine material adhering to the grinder lid will be mixed back into the grinding flow of the Sample. 4. Modifications of Carter Dockage Tester These modifications should in no way alter the original grain dockage settings. The machine is preset by the manufacturer and may be adjusted by varying the adjustable sheave on the motor shaft to give a camshaft speed of 146-148 rpm which will give a fan speed ra (74 97b rpm. The machine is modified by using the following sheaves and 69-inch belt obtained on special order from the factory: Where double sheaves are used the first size mentioned is mounted on the inner (next to the machine) side.

Figure D.2. The text for NIOP Rules 7.1 (g)(h)(i) (continued).

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Motor Sham—Sheave 2VP36 × 5/8, Browning, double groove, both grooves adjustable, A sec tion, 5/8” bore. Fan Shaft (Control Side)—Sheave, AC45 × ¾” and AC40 × ¾”, Browning or equivalent, cast iron, ¾” bore. These are joined together by welding to form a double groove, nonadjustable pulley. Fan Shaft (Noncontrol Side)—Sheave, 2VP36 × ¾,” Browning double groove, both grooves adjustable, A section, ¾” bore. Belt (Motor to Fan Shaft)—V-Belt #A31 (original part). Belt (Fan Shaft to Camshaft)—V-Belt, Link Type, Section A, 69-inch long. After installation of the sheaves the first operation consists of adjusting the motor sheave and fan shaft sheave (noncontrol side) to arrive at a fan shaft speed of 974–976 rpm and a camshaft speed of 146–148 rpm using the V-Belt #A31 from the motor to the fan shaft and the V-Belt, Link Type, Section A, 63 3/8,-inches long from the fan shaft to the camshar. Next adjust the outer sheaves to arrive at a fan shaft speed of 1302–1303 rpm and a camshaft speed of 146–148 rpm using the V-Belt #A31 from the motor to the fan shaft and the V-Belt Link Type, Section A, 69 inches long from the fan shaft to the camshaft. This modification should provide sufficient air in the aspiration process to remove blank seeds and hulls from the sample. Occasional checks should be made of the aspirations to assure that no filled seeds are being removed and of the cleaned seeds to assure that no blank seeds or hulls remain. (h) Safflower Seed (Domestic Terms) (1) Safflower Seed shall be sold under the terms of the grade “Safflower Seed” as Psahlihed under the Official Standards of the State of California, Department of Agriculture, effective June 1, 1965, and as subsequently amended, basis 100% clean seed, all dockage deductible. The Iodine Value of the oil shall he not less than 140 nor more than 155. (2) Safflower Seed which is graded “Sample Grade Safflower Seed” under the Official Standards of the State of California because it contains more than 3.0% damaged kernels or more than 0.1% heat damaged kernels, or because it contains more than 8,09/o hut not more than 10.0% of Safflower Seed in which the free fatty acids in the extracted oil exceed 1.0% but do not exceed 4.0% be tenclerable under the following conditions or allowances: (a) If seed contains more than 3.0% kernels or more than 0.1% heat damaged kernels, Seller shall be required to set forth analysis for free fatty acids in certificate. (b) If free fatty acids are in excess of 1.0%, Seller shall make allowance on the basis of ½% of contract price for each 1% over 1% and up to 2.5% of FFA, and on the basis of 1% of contract price for each 1% over 2.5% and less than 4.0%, all proportionally for any fraction llreneof, Seed containing over 4.0%, free fatty acids shall be subject rejection (Analysis for free fatty acid shall be guaranteed by Seller and need not be furnished except as required under (2) (a) or when requested by Buyer.) (c) If moisture exceeds 8.0% but does not exceed 10.0% Seller shall make allowance on the basis of 2% of the contract price for each 1 % over 8.0%, or proportionally for any traction thereof. Seed containing moisture over 10.0% shall be subject to rejection. (3) Safflower Seed which is graded Sample Grade Safflower Seed for reasons other than those above, or which is graded Weevily Safflower Seed, shall be considered objectionable and not renderable and cost of conditioning to a trenderable condition shall be for account of Seller. (4) Safflower Seed shall be rejectable: (a) If it contains treated seed. (b) If it contains toxic seed, chemicals or other materials which are normally considered objectionable or harmful. (c) If it is seized by the Federal Food & Drug Administration, (d) If free fatty acids are in excess of 4.0%. (e) If it contains rodent excreta. (f) If it contains over 10.0% moisture. (g) If the Wijs loclineValue is less than 140 or more than 155.

Figure D.2. The text for NIOP Rules 7.1 (g)(h)(i) (continued).

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(5) All quality determinants shall be based on samples taken at Buyer’s receiving point (Rule 5.8) and analysis as provided in Rule 5.7 (a). The percentage of dockage shall be determined accord ing to the method adopted by the State of California, Department of Agriculture, effective June 1, 1965, and as subsequently amended, employing the Carter Dockage Tester. Free fatty acids analysis shall be performed on oil extracted by such methods using AOCS Method Cd 3a-63. The iodine Value may be estimated by the Refractometric Method outlined in (6) below, but if found to be outside the specified limits, a Wijs Iodine Value must be determined on the extracted oil using AOCS Official Method Cd 1-25. (6) Iodine Value, Reftactometric Method Definition: This method estimates the Wiis lodineValue of the oil contained in a sample of Clej, or Safflower Seed or a mixture thereof by measuring the index of refraction of the oil obtained by cold pressing. Scope: Applicable to Safflower and/or Cleic Seed or a mixture thereof. A. Apparatus: 1. Laboratory-type hydraulic press: Carver Laboratory press, Model B, Fred. S. Carver, Inc., Summit, New Jersey; or equivalent. 2 . Carver test cylinder (2 ½” or 1 1/8” diam.), or equivalent. 3. Aluminum dish, disposable. 4. Refractometer, any standard refiractometer with a minimum range equivalent to 1.464 to 1.478 at 25°C, divided into maximum 0.0002 divisions. 5. Standard pure Safflower and Cleic Oils of known Iodine Value. B. Procedure: 1. Fill the chamber of the press cylinder with ca 15 g of seed obtained from the original sam ple by dividing with the aid of a Boemer sampler or similar device (foreign matter should be removed from the charge by handpicking). The press cylinder is placed into the hydraulic press on the aluminum dish and approximately 20,000 lbs., pressure applied. The pressed oil is collected in the aluminum dish. 2. Several drops of the well-mixed oil are placed on the refractometr prism and after a suit able time period allowed tor the od temperature to come to equilibrium with the instrument, the refractive index is read. 3. Samples of the standard Safflower and Oleic Oils are examined in the same manner with the precaution that temperatures of the instrument remain constant (within ±5°C). C. Calculations: lx = ls - (Rs - Rx) (ls - lo)/(Rs - Ro) where Rx = Refractometer scale reading of the sample Rs = Reffactometer scale reading of the safflower standard Ro = Refracrometer scale reading of the oleic standard lx = Wijs Iodine Value of the sample ls = Wijs Iodine Value of the safflower standard lo = Wijs iodine Value of the oleic standard (i) Oleic Seed. The Rules 7.1 (g) and 7.1 (h) shall apply to Oleic Seed in ail regards, except the following: 1. 7.1 (g) (1)—The Iodine Value of the extracted oil shall not be less than 85 or more than 95. 2. 7.1 (g) (4) (f)—Oleic Seed shall be rejectable if the Wijs Iodine Value is less than 85 or more than 95. 3. 7.1 (h) (1)—Oleic Seed shall be sold under the terms of the grade “Safflower Seed” as established under the Official Standards of the State of California, Department of Agriculture, effective June 1, 1965, and as subsequently ameneed basis 100% clean seed, all dockage deductible. The Iodine Value of the oil shall be not less than 85 or more than 95. 4. 7A (h) (4) (9)–Oleic Seed shall be rejectable if the Wijs Iodine Value is less than 85 or more than 95. 5. Rule 6.12 shall be used to describe the Oleic Oil.

Figure D.2. The text for NIOP Rules 7.1 (g)(h)(i) (continued).

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SAFFLOWER SEED PRODUCTION CONTRACT Contract No. Crop Year GROWER PHONE % INTEREST ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP LANDIORD PHONE % INTEREST ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP FIELD LOCATION COUNTY We supply planning seed @ ¢/lb. FOB Seed variety $ FOB or delivered Price per 2,000 lbs., pure basis. Weight settlements shall be delivered basis. Number of Acres Contracted

REMARKS

All conditions stated herein constitute the full contractual agreement between BUYFR and GROWER. BUYER and GROWER agree that Grower shall plant safflower seed of the variety specified, raise, harvest, sell and deliver his entire safflower seed crop to BUYER under the following terms and conditions: GROWER must notify BUYER in writing of any change in acreage or variety of planting seed planted and obtain BUYER’s agreement to same. 1. GROWER shall deliver to BUYER, GROWER’s entire production of safflower seed of storable and milling quality produced from the acreage herein indicated, BUYER shall cause dockage and quality analysis to be made of all safflower seed delivered hereunder and one-half (½) the cost thereof shall be charged to GROWER. A copy of said analysis shall be furnished GROWER. BUYER will accept safflower seed with up to 8% moisture content with no penalty, and above 8% moisture, BUYER reserves the right to reject deliveres. BUYER may accept safflower seed with moisture over 8%, but such seed so accepted will be subject to a weight deduction (pure seed basis) of 2% for each 1 % (or fraction therein) of moisture in excess of 8%. 2. BUYER reserves the right to reject deliveries containing dockage in excess of 5%. BUYER may accept safflower seed with dockage over 5%, but such seed so accepted will be subject to a weight deduction of 2% for each 1 % (or fraction thereoft of dockage in excess of 5%, or in lieu thereof, at BUYER’s option, GROWER will be charged for the cost of rough cleaning. BUYER reserves the right to urte, I deliveries that grade “Sample Grade”. Should BUYER accept such delivery, the lot will be subject to a weight redi of 20% in addition to regular moisture and dockage deductions 3. Any freight penalty for dockage in excess of 5%, excess moisture, or for less than minimum loads shall be for GROWER’s account. 4. GROWER shall promptly notify BUYER in writing, prior to July 1st of crop year of the name and address of any person or persons who may claim an interest in the crop and agrees to hold BUYER harmless for any act or emission in respect to any such interest not known to BUYER. 5. Promptly after GROWER’s deliveries are completed and after receipt of weight and State dockage certificates, BUYER shall remit to GROWER and/or lien holder, if any, the floor price, or fixed price indicated above after first deducing any charges and deductions provided for in paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 above, and, any indebtedness then owing from GROWER to BUYER, 6 Pesticide. GROWER agrees not to apply to the crop or to the land on which the crop is grown any pesti mine chemical, as defined in the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, as amended, unless a regulation should then be in effect under Section 408 of said act, exempting such chemical from the necessity of a tolerance, or establishing a tolerance for such chemical, in which latter event such chemical shall be applied in the crop or land only at such time and in such a manner and quantities as shall be within the tolerance specified in such regulation. 7. Governing Law. This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of California and the Rules of the NIOP 8. Force Majeure. Delays in or nonperformance of this Agreement shall be excused if caused by Acts of (,od, fire, floods, crop failures, frosts, disasters, strikes, lockouts, riots, rebellion, civil commotion, acts of any governmental authority or events beyond the control of the parties 9, Assignment. GROWER may not assign GROWER’s rights or obligations hereunder without prior written consent of BUYER. Subject to the foregoing, this Agreement shall inure to the benefit of and bind the successors, assigns and personal representatives of the parties.

SIGNATURES BY

BY GROWER

DATE

BY BROKER

DATE

BUYER DATE

Figure D.3. A typical safflower production contract for California. Copyright © 1996 AOCS Press

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SAFFLOWER SEED PRODUCTION CONTRACT Contract No. Crop Year GROWER PHONE % INTEREST ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP LANDIORD PHONE % INTEREST ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP FIELD LOCATION COUNTY We supply planning seed @ ¢/lb. FOB Seed variety $ FOB or delivered Price per 2,000 lbs., pure basis. Weight settlements shall be delivered basis. Number of Acres Contracted REMARKS Basis 36% oil conterit with 2:1 premiums & discounts. Buyer reserves the right to rellect deliveries less than 32% oil conteant. Delivered local elevator weight/quality. All conditions stated herein constitute the full contractual agreement between BUYER and GROWER BUYERand GROWER agresethot Growershall plant safflower seed of thevarieryspecified, raise, harest, ell and deliver his entire safflower seed crop to BUYER under the following terms and conditions GROWER m,t conic BUYER in writing of any change in acreage or variety of planting seed planted and obtain BUYER’s agreement to same 1. GROWER shall deliver to BUYER, GROWER’s entire production of safflower seed of storable and milling quality produced from the acreage herein indicated. BUYER shall cause dockage and quality analysis to be made of all safflower seed delivered hereunder and one-half (½) the cost thereof shall be , barged to GROWER A copy of said analysis shall be furnished GROWER. BUYER will accept safflower seed with up In 8% moisture content with no penalty, and above 8% moisture, BUYER reseNes the right to reject deliveries, BUYER may accept safflower seed with moisture over 8%, but such seed so accepted will be subject to a weight deduction (pure seed basis) of 2% for each 1 % (or fraction thereson of moisture in excess of 8%. 2 BUYER reserves the right to reject deliveries containing dockage in excess of 5%. BUYER may accept safflowe, send with dockage over 5%, but such seed so accepted will be subject to a weight deduction of 2% for each 1 % (or fraction thereof) of dockage in excess of 5%, or in lieu thereof, at BUYER’s option, GROWER will be charged for the cost of rough cleaning. BUYER reserves the right to reject deliveries that grade “Sample Grade”. Should BUYER accept such delivery, the lot will be subject to a weight reduction of 20% in addition to regular moisture and dockage deductions. 3 Any freight penalty for dockage in excess of 5%, excess moisture, or for less than minimum loads shall be for GROWER’s account 4, GROWER shall promptly notify BUYER in writing, prior to July 1 st of crop year of the name and address of any person or persons who may claim an interest in the crop and agrees to hold BUYER harmless for any act or omission in respect to any such interest not known to BUYER. 5 Promptly after GROWER’s deliveries are completed and after receipt of weight and State dockage certificates, BUYER shall remit to GROWER and/or lien holder, if any, the floor price, or fixed price inch cared above after first deducing any charges and deductions provided for in paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 above, and, any indebtedness then owing from GROWER to BUYER, 6, Pesticide GROWER agrees not to apply to the crop or to the land on which the crop is grown any pesticide chemical, as defined in the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, as amended, unless a regulation 5hri ffen be in effect under Section 408 of laid act, exempting such chemical from the necessity of a tolerance, or establishing a tolerance for such chemical, in which latter event such chemical shall be applied to the crop or land only at such time and in such a manner and quantities as shall be within the tolerance specified in such regulation 7. Governing Law. This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of California and the Rules of the NOR 8. Force Majeure. Delays in of nonperformance of this Agreement shall be excused if caused by Acts of God, fire, floods, crop failures, frosts, disasters, strikes, lockouts, riots, rebellion, civil commotion, acts of any governmental authority or events beyond the control of the parties. 9. Assignment, GROWER may not assign GROWER’s rights or obligations inereunder without prior written consent of BUYER. Subject to the foregoing, this Agreement shall inure to the benefit of and bind the successors, assigns and personal representatives of the parties,

SIGNATURES BY

BY GROWER

DATE

BY BROKER

DATE

BUYER DATE

Figure D.3. A typical safflower production contract for California.

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DEPARTMENT OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE STANDARDS FOR SAFFLOWER SEED 2836. Standards for Safflower Seed (The specifications of these standards shall not excuse failure to comply with applicable Federal and State laws governing the sales of such commodities.) (a) Terms defined. (1) For the purposes of the Official Standards Of the State of California for Safflower Seed: (A)Safflower Seed. Safflower seed shall be any seed which, before the removal of dockage, consists of 50 percent or more of safflower seed. (B) Grades. Grades shall be “Safflower Seed,” “Sample Grade Safflower Seed,” and special grades provided for in the standards. (C) Dockage. Dockage shall be weed seeds, weed stems, chaff, straw, grain other than safflower seed, empty hulls, sand, dirt, and other foreign material; also underdeveloped, shriveled, and small pieces of safflower seed kernels removed in properly separating the material other than safflower seed and which cannot be recovered by properly rescreening or recleaning. (D) Damaged Kernels. Damaged kernels shall be kernels and pieces of kernels of safflower seed which are damaged by blight and/or mold, or which are heat damaged, sprouted, frosted, badly ground damaged, badly weather damaged, or otherwise materially damaged. (E)Heat-Damaged Kernels. Heat-damaged kernels shall be kernels and pieces of kernels of safflower seed which have been damaged by heat, (D) Stones. Stones shall he concreted earthy or mineral matter and other substances of similar hardness that do not disintegrate readily in water. (G) Other Grains. Other grains in safflower seed shall consist of kernels of wheat, barley, oats, core, sorghum, rye, and triticale. (b) Principles Governing the Application of the Standards (1)The following principles shall apply in the determination of the grades of safflower seed (Revised 8/2/74) (A) Basis of Determination. Each determination of other grains, dockage, moisture, temperature, odor, live weevils or other insects injurious to stored safflower seed, and distinctly low quality shall be upon the basis of the seed as a whole. All other determinations shall be upon the basis of the seed when free from dockage. (B) Percentages. All percentages shall be upon the basis of weight. (C) Moisture. Moisture shall be ascertained by the air-oven method prescribed by the United States Department of Agriculture as described in Service and Regulatory Announcement No. 147, issued by the Agricultural Marketing Service, or ascertained by any method which gives equivalent results. (c) Grades, Grade Requirements, and Grade Designations. (1) The following grades, grade requirements, and grade designations are applicable under these standards (A) Safflower Seed. The grade “Safflower Seed” shall be safflower seed with not more than 3.0 percent damaged kernels, not more than 0.1 percent heat-damaged kernels, not more than 3.0 percent other grains, and not more than 8.0 percent moisture. (B) Sample Grade Safflower Seed. The grade “Sample Grade Safflower Seed” shall be safflower seed which does not meet the requirements for the grade Safflower Seed; or which contains stonnes; or which is musty, or sour, or heating, or hot; or which has any commercially objectionable foreign odor; or which is otherwise of distinctly low quality. (C) Grade Designation. The grade designation for safflower seed shall include the words “safflower Seed” or the words “Sample Grade safflower Seed,” as the case may be; the name of each applicable special grade, and the word “dockage” together with the percentage thereof. (D) Dockage. The quantity of dockage shal I be calculated in terms of percentage based on th, total weight of the seed including the dockage. Dockage shall be stated in terms of tenths (1/,r) of percent. (d) Special Grades for Safflower Seed (1) Weevily safflower seed (A) Requirements. Weevily safflower seed shall be safflower seed which is infested with live weevils or other insects injurious to stored safflower seed. (B) Grade Designation. Weevily safflower seed shall be graded and designated according to the grade requirements of the standards applicable to such safflower seed if it were not weevils, and there shall be added to, and made part of the grade designation, the word “weevily”

Figure D.5. State of California Official Standards for Safflower, Source: California Department of Food and Agriculture (3).

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Other U.S. states involved in safflower production have not adopted standards of their own (with the exception of Montana), and most trading done elsewhere in the United States has either referred to State of California Grades, NIOP Grades, or what is specified in the buyer’s contract. No Federal Grades existed, although several times the Federal Grain Inspection Branch proposed adopting a grade during the 1960s when acreage was expanding. The State of California Bureau of Field Crops people opposed the idea and most of the industry supported their view because we felt that establishing a federal grade for a business that was still evolving would be dangerous. Once a federal grade is established, it is difficult to change without holding extended hearings, asking for public comment, and so on, and meanwhile if we found that we had made some sort of mistake in drafting a grade we could do nothing about it for months or years. The laboratory industry also opposed a federal grade because they were afraid that if it contained oil content as a grading factor, the government would provide the analyses and they would lose this business. When the Agricultural Act of 1990 was passed, incorporating safflower as a minor oil seed, and making it eligible for federal marketing loans (a proposal that most of the industry, the USDA administrators, and most California farmers opposed), the Department of Agriculture was forced to take some action. USDA people needed to establish a method to grade safflower they might be forced to acquire and pay for under the Act. The administrators in Washington were afraid of suddenly becoming responsible for 250 bushels of safflower seed in Elgin, North Dakota. and rightly so. After much discussion, grading factors were adopted by USDA for safflower seed (Figure D.6 [5]): Acting through the California Grain and Feed Association (CGFA), several changes were proposed: 1. Reducing maximum moisture to 8.0%. 2. Reducing maximum FFA to 2.0%. 3. Changing acceptable Wijs iodine value ranges to 80–90 (for oleic safflower) and 140155 (for linoleic safflower). (1) Safflower seed must contain not less than 35 percent oil content; (i) The Safflower seed must not grade “Infested” or have moisture in excess of 10.0 percent unless a supplemental certificate is provided in accordance with Section 1421.9. (iii) The Safflower seed must not grade “Musty”; “Sour”; “Heating”; “COFO”; “Distinctly Low Quality”; (iv) The safflower seed must not exceed the following percentages: (al For heat damage, 0.1 percent; (B) For total damage, 3.0 percent; (C) For other grain, 3.0 percent; (D) For free fatty acid, 4.0 percent; (F) For dockage, 6.0 percent; (v) The safflower seed must not contain more than the following count of other material per 1,000 grams: (A) For animal filth, 3 (B) For glass, 0 (C) For unknown foreign substance, 1 (vi) The safflower seed must not contain less than 80 or more than 155 Wijs Iodine value; and (vii) The safflower seed gross weight must be adjusted downward to reflect dockage.

Figure D.6. USDA Safflower Grades.

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TABLE D.1 Montana Safflower Seed Grade and Grade Requirements Chart

Grade 1

I Montana 2 Montana 3 Montana

Minimum Test Weight per Bushel (lbs)

Maximum Stones (per kg)

40.0 38.0 35.0

2 6 6

Limits of Dehulled Ker Hulls nels and Bro(%) ken Seed (%)

1.0 2.0 5.0

2.0 4.0 8.0

Other Damaged Safflower Seed Grains Heat Damage Total (%) (%) (%)

0.5 2.0 3.0

0.0 0.2 1.0

3.0 5.O 5.0

aSample Grade: Sample grade shall be safflower that 1. Does not meet the requirements for the grades No 1 Montana through No 3 Montana; or 2. In a 1,000 g sample, contains 7 or more stones, or 3. Has a musty, sour, or commecially objectionable foreign odor; or 4. Has more than 2 5% of earth pellets after the mechanical separation of dockage. Notes: 1. Slightly weather-stained safflower see may grade no higher than No. 2 Montana 2. Badly weather stained safflower seed may grade no higher than No, 3 Mmnanu.

Under USDA:s procedures, the Carter Dockage Tester was proposed to be used for safflower dockage testing on an unmodified basis. The CGFA proposed that this be modified to use the procedure outlined in NIOP mles and these modifications be incorporated by the Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS) in a Program Directive issued on January 28, 1992, with a Modification Procedure for the Carter Dockage Tester (6). It is virtually identical with the State of California Manual. The State of Montana has had its own grades established for safflower seed for several years as listed in Table D.1. They have not been used by the principal buyers of oilseeds or birdseed to my knowledge, all of them preferring to use modifications of NIOP rules for oilseeds and private contract bases in case of birdseed.

Standards for Birdseed Standards are quite imprecise for safflower used for birdseed. Birdseed buyers prefer seed that is white, plump, bright, uniform in size without attached sterile hairs and that contains less than 1 % foreign material. Chinese Type 100 safflower seed generally is considered to be the best, since it is undoubtedly cleaned and graded by hand. In the United States, the Gila variety was for many years considered the preferred type, and prior to that, N-852. Both of them are practically nonexistent and S-208 generally is considered the next best. Birdseed is generally sold and graded basis buyers’ grades. One should be careful because different buyers can judge some charactenstics, color, for example, quite differently. Again, in a year of poor market conditions or oversupply, some buyers are quite notorious for applying much stricter standards than in years when the purchase price was low or supplies were tight. For example, in a year like 1992, when most of the harvest in the Great Plains was lost or badly damaged, most buyers willingly took obviously damaged or stained seed; seed of purple or striped hull varieties, seed that was very low in test weight, and so on, simply because there was nothing else to be hadin 1991 all of these would have been rejected out of hand. So fair average quality definitely plays a hand even if it is not mentioned in a contract. Some attempts have been made to establish private grading scales by putting seeds of varying quality in a series of vials numbered one to ten from brightest white

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to dark gray and then scales are exchanged between buyers and sellers to give each a standard to go by. Still the best axiom in this business is for buyer and seller to know each other well.

Safflower Seed—Canada Canada adopted grades for Canada Western Safflower Seed in 1975 along the lines of its grade for grains and other oilseeds (7). Individual buyers provided additional grading factors in their own contracts. The Canadian Bureau of Grain Commissioners Manual provided some more clarification (8). In recent years, newer Grades for Safflower Seed (Canada) were published. The latest version, released in 1993, is shown in Figure D.7 (9). It should be noted, however, that since most safflower seed produced in Canada in recent times is aimed at the birdseed market, these grades are usually ignored and standards based on color, bushel weight, and admixture are the real standard similar to what is shown previously under “Birdseed.”

Safflower Seed—Australia The Australian Oilseeds Federation Incorporated has published suggested standards and specifications for the trading of safflower seed that have been summarized in Figure D.8 (10). A typical Australian Safflower Contract is listed in Figure D.9. It contains provisions for oil content adjustments similar to U.S. Great Plains safflower contracts. The Australian Oilseeds Federation Incorporated also provides a Standard Contract form along with recommended methods of analysis, handling standards and typical composition and color charts in its standards publication.

Safflower Seed—Mexico The governmental Compañia Nacional de Subsistencias Populares (CONASUPO) established standards for safflower under the support program that Mexico maintained for many years as follows: Moisture: Safflower delivered under 6% moisture received no discount in price. Between 6–8% moisture, a discount of 1 kg/MT for each 0.1% additional moisture was applied. Seed containing over 8% moisture was rejected. However, in the State of Tamaulipas, because of higher levels of humidity no deduction was applied under 8% moisture and 1 kg/MT discount in weight for each 0.1% additional moisture was applied. Seed containing over 10% moisture was rejectable. For seed accepted between 8.1–10% moisture, an additional aeration charge of 1,000 old pesos/MT was assessed. Impurities and Foreign Material: A discount of I kg/MT of seed for each 0. 1% between 0–3.0%. Between 3.1–6.0% a discount of 1.3 kg/MT for each 0.1%. Seed containing more than 6.0% impurities and foreign material was rejectable.

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SAFFLOWER SEED VARIETIES Safflower seed is graded without rpjerence to varieny DETERMINATION OF DOCKAGE ON SAMPLES NOT CONSIDERED COMMERCIALLY CLEAN Reporting dockage percentages For official samples, dockage is reported to the nearest 0.5%, except in the case of commercially clean ship ments (containing not more than 2.5% dockage by weight), where dockage is reported to the nearest 0,1% with no minimum. For unofficial samples, dockage is reported to the nearest 0.5% with no minimum. Cleaning equipment: Carter dockage tester Hand sieves: No. 15 roundhole No 6 slotted No. 6 buckwheat Procedure: 1. Two or more representative portions of approximately 250 g are divided from the uncleared sample and then cleaned individually in the following sequence: 2. The sample is sifted over a No. 15 roundhole sieve nested over a No. 6 slotted sieve and/or a No, 6 buck wheat sieve, with a blank tray on the bottom 3. The material passing through the No. 15 roundhole sieve is run through the Carter dockage tester with set tings as follows: feed control #7 top sieve: blank tray air control #7 center sieve: none riddle: none bottom sieve: none 4. All whole or broken safflower seeds are handpicked from the material remaining on top of the No. 15 roundhole sieve and returned to the cleaned sample. Composition of dockage: • foreign material removed by the No, 15 roundoole sieve: • material removed by the No. 6 slotted and/or No. 6 buckwheat sieve; • material removed by asinnation; • earth pellets handpicked from the cleaned sample constituting up to 2 5% of the sample by weight. NOTE: In samples eligible for off grades, dockage consists cit the material described above. However, dockage is not applied against samples eligible for the following grades: • Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Fireburm • Safflower Seed, Sample Salvage SAMPLE GRADES Sample grade saffbiver seed is graded with reference to “Canada,” e.g, Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Heated GRADING FACTORS Foreign material Othergrains. Any other grains that are not removed in the cleaning process are considered “other grains Samples containing more than 5.0% by weight of other grains are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Admixture Matter other than cereal grains. Samples containing more than 1.0% by weight of matter other than cereal grains are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Admixture. Earth pellets (soft). Soft earth pellets include soft fertilizer pellets and any other non-toxic material of similar consistency. Earth pellets are handpicked from the cleaned sample, and provided their weight does not consti tute more than 2.5% of the sample weight they are assessed as dockage. samples containing more than 2.5%, by weight of earth pellets are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Admixture. Stones. Samples containing met 2.5% by weight of stones are graded Safflower Sued, Sample Storage, Damage. Frosted, green, broken, heated or insect-damaged or otheranse unsound seed is considered damaged. Heated seed. Heated seed has the color, taste or odor typical of grain that has heated in storage, The term includes kernels discolored from amficial drying, but not cleaned kernels. Samples containing more than 1.0% by weight of heatdamaged seed or having a heated odor are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Heated. Rotted seed is considered in combination with heat-damaged kernels. Samples containing more than 1.0% by weight of rotted kernels are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Heated. Dehulled seed. Broken and whole seeds that are bulless are considered dishulled. Samples containing more than 8.0% by weight of dehulled seeds are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Demilled. Odor Samples which have any hype of unnatural or objectionable odor other than that of heated or firei kernels are graded according to the basic quality of the sample, the type and degree of odor, and the presence of visible residue causing the odor Samples having a distinct color net associated with the quality of the grain are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Odor, Samples having a heated odor are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Heated. Samples having a firebung odor are graded Safflower Seed, Sample Canada, Account Fireburnt.

Figure D.7. Grades for safflower seed in Canada: Primary and Export Grade Determinants. Source: Grain Grading Handbook for Western Canada, pp. 141–144.

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SAMPLES FOR ANALYSIS Specifications and price adjustments recorded are applicable to the analysis of Official Samples taken and tested according to the prescribed methods. Sampling procedures must be followed to ensure that the Official Sample used for analysis is representative of the consignment. For domestic trading, the Official Sample shall be taken by the buyer or his appointed agent at the receival point at the time of receipt of the lot, or as otherwise agreed to. Samples shall be retained by the buyer for at least three months after receival. SPECIFICATIONS Contracted Oilseeds According to the provisions of these rules, seed can be rejected by the crusher. However, such seed may be accepted where storage or processing arrangements can be made by the crusher so as not to jeopardize the safety of operation of the facilities or the quality of the products. Seed will be accepted at a receival point on the basis of the impurity acceptance test (Method 2A-86). Where laboratory facilities are available, the Official Method for impurity content (Method 2-86) shall take precedence for rejection.

Oilseed Safflower

Oil Content Standard

Impurity Limit (Rejectable Over)

34%

4%

Moisture Broken Seed Allowed Allowed (Rejecta- (Rejectable ble Over) Over) Allowed 8%

7%

3%

Damaged Seed (Rejectable Over) Sprouted Green 5%

10%

Total 20%

With the exception of impurities and moisture, all analyses shall be reported on a clean seed basis. A consignment containing harmful substances shall be rejectable. Among harmful substances are included live, stared grain-freeding insects or undesirable weed seeds, such as castor oil plain-form apple (Datura spp.) in excess of 5 seeds per 2 liters and castor oil (Ricinus communis L.), nil. Burrs are rejectable over 1%. If accepted, there will be a 2% deduction for each 1% of burrs over 1%. PRICE ADJUSTMENTS The impurity content or, where over 4% the corrected impurity content, shall be deducted from the gross weight of seed received to give the Corrected Net Weight from which shall be calculated the Clean Seed Value. The Clean Seed Value shall be the basis for calcuatfon of all premiums and deductions. Corrected Net Weight: The gross weight shall be adjusted by 1% for each 1% impurity up to 4% plus 2% for each 1% impurity over 4%. For seed accepted over the standard limits in addition to the adjusting charge the buyer may also apply a grading charge. Clean Seed Value: The price of seed per ton multiplied by the corrected net weight. Adjustments shall be applied to the Clean Seed Value as follows: Oil Content: 2% premium or deduction for each 1% above or below standard, respectively. Moisture: 2% deduction for each 1%. above the allowed level for seed purchased for immediate processing or a 1.5% deduction for each 1 % above the allowed level plus a drymg charge when the seed received is for storage. Broken or Split Seed: (see Definitions) 0.5% deduction for each 1 % above the allowed level. Damaged Seed: (see Definition) 0.5% deduction for each 1 % above the allowed level. Free Fatty Acids: To be applied as required to clean seed. 2% deduction for each 1 % above 1 % FFA Rejectable over 2.S% FFA. DEFINITIONS Oil Content The oil content shall be that quantity of oil contained in the sample of clean seed as determined by prescribed solvent extraction methods or by any rapid test procedure whose calibration is based thereon. Oil contents shall be expressed to the nearest 0.1%, clean seed basis. In cases of dispute, the prescribed solvent extraction method shalt be the basis for decision unless otherwise agreed to by mutual decision. The results of oil content re-tests shall be adjusted to the basis of the moisture content at the time of delivery but only where an oven moisture is available on the original test.

Figure D.8. Australian Oilseeds Federation standards and specifications for safflower seed.

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Oil Content Delivered = Oil Content Re-Test (100 Delivered Moisture) (100 Re-Test Moisture) Moisture Content To be determined on the seed as received~ Rapid direct reading moisture testers shall be used only as a guide for acceptance or rejection of a consignment by the crusher or his agent. Where moisture deduction is to be made from a receival account, the results of the prescribed oven test method expressed to the nearest 0.1 %, as received basis, shall be applied. Moisture deductions shall only be based on the results obtained in this way.

Impurities Impurities shall consist of the following: i) Foreign matter (organic or inorganic) other than seeds of the basic species. The outer peanut shells or hulls are classified as impurities except when shell and kernel are intact, but not hubs of the other seeds, such as safflower and sunflower hubs. ii) All material, including seed and seed material of the basic species, passing the 2 mm round hole screen. The impurity content shall be expressed to the nearest 0.1% on an “as received” basis.

Clean Seed Clean seed shall include all seed of the type being tested other than that defined under Impurities, above.

Damaged Seed—General Damage, Green Seed, Sprouted Seed Damaged seed shalt be seed that is heat damaged, frosted, green, weather damaged or in any way materially damaged. Seeds which are surface damaged only shall be classified sound. Seeds which are immature from any cause are considered damaged. Damaged seed shall be taken as a percentage of the clean seed expressed to the nearest 0.1%. Sprouted Seed (also designated “shot” or “sprung”). Seed that gives any indication of the commencement of growth shall be classified as being sprouted and shall be subject to the appropriate penalties.

Broken or Split Seed For seeds other than soybeans and peanuts, all hulls, kernels or parts thereof, not otherwise dam aged shall be classified as splits or broken seed (except fines classified as Impurities—see 4.3). Broken or split seed shall be taken as a percentage of clean seed expressed to the nearest 0.1%.

Degraded Seed Seed which is hot, musty, sour, moldy or contains harmful substances, or which is not otherwise of commercial grade, shall be classified “degraded” and as such shall be rejectable. Excessive free fatty acids (over 2.5%) or peroxide values (over 2 mEq/kg) of extracted oils may also render the seed rejectable.

Free Fatty Acids To be determined on the oil extracted from clean seed.

RETESTS AND DISPUTED RESULTS Requests for moisture re-tests on high moisture seed shall be made within 7 days of the notification of the analysis results. Where results are disputed, and unless otherwise agreed to, a portion of the Official Sample shall be tested for buyer and seller by laboratories having appropriate National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) registration. Such requests for arbitration shal I be made in writing and within 30 days of the date of first payment. Cost of such tests shall be met by the seller. An average of the results from the two referee laboratories, corrected to the delivered oven moisture where available, shall be compared with the original. If the difference between the original test and the average of the re-tests is greater than 1% absolute for oil content, and 20% relative for impurity, the original payment shall be amended, up or down, according to the new result. This result shall be final.

Figure D.8. Australian Oilseeds Federation standards and specifications for safflower seed (continued).

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THE QUEENSLAND GPAINGROWERS ASSOCIATION Safflower 1977 Season This Schedule Hereinbefore Referred to

Receival Standards. Test Weight: 47 kilograms per becteliter. Moisture: 8% maximum determined at State Wheat Board receival point by Marconi Moisture Meter against Q.G.G.A. Calibration Chart. Insects: Nil tolerance to live stored grain pests. Admixture: Maximum allowable 4% including all fines that pass through a 2 millimeter screen and all material remaining on top of the screen excluding whole safflower seed and broken seed. Weather Damaged Grain: Maximum allowable 4% sprouted grain. Growers with grain in excess of this amount must store such grain and submit a sample for analysis. Following analysis for free fatty acid (F.F.A.) any grain having in excess of 1 % FFA. will be subject to rejection but if accepted will incur the following dockage: 1.0%–2.5% 0.5% of price for every 1 % (fractions in proportion) 2.6%–4.0% 01.0% of price for every 1% (fractions in proportion) 4.1%–8.0% 2.5% of price for every 1 % (fractions in proportion) Above 8.0% Not acceptable

Payment Terms. Price: Growers will be paid on the basis of gross realization of the pool or pools to which he delivers, and in respect of which his delivery is accepted, less the average costs in handling and administration of the relevant pool or pools less zone freight. Payment: Payment will be made on a clean seed basis. Growers will be paid on the basis of 34% oil content, with a premium or deduction of 2% in price for each 1 % in oil content above or below 34% (fractions in proportion). Growers who submit a “Claim for Payment” form by the last day of each calendar month will receive their first advance payment on or about the I itri day of the following month. Second and subsequent advances will be paid as soon as finance permits. Planting Seed: The grower will have the option at the time of signing this Contract to sign an irrevocable authority directed to the Association authorizing it to deduct from the first payment to be made under this contract, the cost of planting seed necessary to plant the area referred to in this schedule. if no such authority is signed and received by the Association, the Association shall not be liable for the cost of the said seed and payment for the seed shall remain the liability of the grower. if due to crop failure, the grower is unable to deliver, the Association reserves the right to recover the debt from other crop proceeds. Important: This contract shall have no force and effect whatsoever unless and until a copy duly executed by the grower of same shall be delivered to the association on or before the day of and the association shall have agreed itself to be bound by endorsement thereon in writing by a duly authorized officer of the association. Surcharge: A surcharge of $3 per metric ton will be imposed against this contract if the grain is delivered within 30 days of the date on which the contract was issued. No comideration will be given to a request for waiver of a surcharge. Such surcharge if incurred will be deducted from growers payment. Name(s) Address

Grower’s Signature

Telephone Exchange/Std. Number Dryland Area Applied For (ha) Irrigated Area Applied For (ha) Nearest S.W.B. Depot (Not necessarily the depot into which the grain will be received by the Association.) Date Date of signing for the Queensland Graingrowers Association.

Figure D.9. A typical safflower grower contract used by QGGA.

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Safflower

Damaged Grain: Rotted, damaged, sprouted–maximum allowable 5%. Insects Alive or Dead: Seed containing insects shall be assessed a charge of 540 old pesos/MT to allow for fumigation. Specific Weight: 520 g/L is considered normal. A premium of 6.5 kg/MT was allowed for each 5 g/L above 520 and a discount of 6.5 kg/MT was applied for each 5 g/L below 520. Seed below 420 g/L was rejectable. In the State of Tamaulipas a reciprocal allowance of 2% for each 1% oil content, fractions in proportion, around a basis of 34% oil content was imposed. As Mexican safflower oil began to be traded into the world market and the government became less involved, the following quality specifications have been applied. Moisture: Seed up to 15% moisture is acceptable if drying is available. A deduction of 2% for each 1% of moisture over 8% is applied. Oil Content: Reciprocal allowance of 2% for each 1% of oil content, fractions in proportion, around a basis of 34% oil content. Admixture: No limit. Deduction of 1% for each 1% of admixture and foreign material.

Argentina The Junta de Granos published a rule many years ago that covered linseed, safflower, and other seeds, but as far as I can determine, it was never followed by the trade. The customary basis for the Argentine trade in safflower seed was Oil Content: Basis 33% with reciprocal allowance of 2% for each 1% variation, fractions in proportion. Acidity (FFA): Basis 2.0% with an allowance of 2.5% for each 1.0% in excess, fractions in proportion. Foreign Matter: Basis 0% with an allowance of 2% for each 1%. Moisture: 10% maximum.

Safflower Oil At PVO’s request a simple rule, “Rule 169–Safflower Oil,” was adopted into the NIOP Rules in the early 1950s (11). The Pacific Vegetable Oil Corporation prescribed much more rigid specifications for oil that it sold to its industrial oil customers. In 1962, facing serious competition from several directions and learning of requests by others for a more comprehensive rule to deal with safflower oil going into the edible trade, PVO’s Research Director drafted a new Rule 169 (12). Most of the new rule covered methods for an official sample and determination of and adjustments for refining loss, color, and settlings in crude safflower oil. In the section on Specifications, Kneeland inserted two factors aimed at PVO’s competition, domestic and foreign. The Specification required a negative Halphen Test result that PVO hoped would make it more difficult for cottonseed oil mills to compete in safflower oil. A maximum iodine level was added plus a minimum linoleic level. The

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latter additions were added because PVO had experienced deliveries from early shippers in Mexico that had adulterated safflower oil with linseed oil. The rule was adopted almost verbatim. The following year the specifications were expanded to provide for Domestic and Export Standards for Crude Oil. Over the years, attempts to drop the negative Halphen test were rebuffed but finally, in 1984, it was dropped since the advent of GLC measurements of fatty acid distribution allowed a more accurate determination of adulteration. These rules remained unchanged until 1968, when a provision for maximum 0.3% insoluble impurities was added to both crude oil provisions. This came about because one company had periodically shipped poorly filtered safflower oil containing some safflower meal particles. They pointed out that nothing in the Rules prohibited this. Upon complaints by PVO, NIOP agreed to a rule change. More importantly a new Rule 170 designed to cover oleic safflower oil was adopted (13). With Rule 170, PVO’s Kneeland and Dick Purdy again tried to design a rule that would give PVO some advantage against competition. The rule called the new mutation “oleic oil” instead of “oleic safflower oil,” with the reasoning that it might be possible for PVO to trademark the name “Oleic Oil.” (This tactic did not succeed.) A fairly tight specification was provided for minimum and maximum iodine values in order to make it difficult for others to supply oleic oil unless they adopted rigorous quality standards. A provision for refractive index was also provided in order to allow for rapid testing of oleic products before GLC equipment was readily available. (This refractive index level, which provided some leeway for experimental error, continues into NIOP’s present rule and should be modified because it does not correspond to the level of iodine value that it is supposed to indirectly measure.) Interestingly, the Oleic Rule included a specification for an edible grade, whereas the Rule for Safflower Oil did not contain an edible oil specification. The omission was not corrected until 1988. In 1991, the specification for minimum and maximum allowable iodine value was widened. The original upper limit of 150 had been put in at PVO’s request years before to prevent contamination with linseed. The change was requested by Cal Oils to prevent some European buyers from escaping a high-priced contract in a future downtrending market should oil be shipped from Montana, a region that often produced plus 150 iodine value oil. Again, use of GLC analysis fueled this change. Figure D.10 depiets the current NIOP Rules for Safflower and Oleic Safflower (14). In recent years concern about posible contamination from exposure to trace amounts of products carried in prior voyages of a vessel transporting edible oils or crude oils destined for edible use led to adoption of NIOP Rule 5.12 which lists acceptable and unacceptable prior cargos (Figure D.11). Safflower oil sold in Rotterdam typically is traded via The Netherlands Oils, Fats, and Oilseeds Trade Association (NOFOTA) Contract for Trade in Bulk Ex Tank. In that market, when a buyer requests a delivery, a delivery order for the goods is exchanged for payment at the buyer’s bank–a very safe arrangement. The Australian Oilseeds Federation has published trading standards for safflower oils that are shown in Table D.2 (16).

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Rule 6.11—SAFFLOWER OIL The contract shall specify whether oil is solvent extracted, expeller type or a blend. A. QUALITY SPECIFICATIONS: 1. CRUDE SAFFLOWER OIL (DOMESTIC) Crude Safflower Oil shall be pure Safflower Oil and shall meet the following specifications: (1) IodineValue (Wijs): 140 Minimum 155 Maximum Linoleic Acid (as % of TFA): 72% Minimum Linolenic Acid: 0.5% Maximum Flash Point (AOCS Method Cc 9b-55): 250%F Minimum Unsaponifiable: 1.5% Maximum Moisture and Volatile: 0.8% Maximum (AOCS Method Ca 2d-25) Insoluble Impurities: 0.3% Maximum (AOCS Method Ca 3a-46) (1) These shall be guaranteed by Shipper, but do not need to be set forth in an analysis certificate on each shipment. Buyer shall receive an allowance of 1 % of the invoice value for each 1% of the moisture and impurities in excess of 1 % when the combined sum of each (M & 1) exceeds 1 %; fractions in proportions. 2. CRUDE SAFFLOWER OIL (EXPORT) Crude Safflower Oil shall be pure Safflower Oil and shall meet the following specifications: (2) *Free Fatty Acid: 2.0% Maximum Iodine Value (Wijs): 140 Minimum 155 Maximum Linoleic Acid (as % of TFA): 72% Minimum Linolenic Acid: 0.5% Maximum Flash Point AOCS Method Cc 9b-55): 250’F Minimum Unsaponifiable: 1.5% Maximum *Moisture and Volatile: 0.8% Maximum (AOCS Method Cat 2d-25) Insoluble Impurities: 0.3% Maximum (AOCS Method Ca 3a-46) (2) These shall be guaranteed by Shipper, but only those marked by asterisk are required to appear on analysis certificates for export shipments. Buyer shall receive an allowance of 1 % of the invoice value for each 1% of the moiture and impurities in excess of 1 % when the combined sum of each (M & I) exceeds 1%; fractions in proportion. Unless otherwise agreed between Buyer and Seiler the provisions of Rule No. 6.11, Sections B, C, D, and E do not apply to Crude Safflower Oil sold for export. 3. ONCE-R REFINED SAFFLOWER OIL Shall be clear and free from visible foreign material at 25°C. This grade shall meet the following specifications in addition to the specifications outlined under Crude Safflower Oil Free Fatty Acids: 0.1% Maximum Moisture & Impurities (combined): 0.1% Maximum Color after bleaching: 25 Yellow, 2.5 Red Max (bleaching according to method in crude) (AOCS Method Cc 13b-45) Cold test O°C after bleaching: 5½, hours AOCS Method Cc 11-53) 4. NON-B BREAK SAFFLOWER OIL Shall be clear and free from visible foreign material at 25’C. This grade shall meet the following specifications in addition to the specifications outlined under Crude Safflower Oil: AcidValue: 4 Maximum Color, Gardner: 11 Maximum Color after heat bleaching: 600’F 4 Maximum Moisture and Impurities (combined): 0.1% Maximum Break, heat: None Break, add (AOCS Method Ca 10-40): 0.02% Maximum

Figure D.10. NIOP Rule 6.11 and 6.12, depicting current rules for safflower oil and oleic safflower oil.

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5. ALKALI-R REFINED, BLEACHED SAFFLOWER OIL Shall be clear and free from visible foreign material at 251C. This grade shall meet the following specifications in addition to the specifications outlined under Crude Safflower Oil: Acid Value: 0.5 Maximum Color, Gardner: 4 Maximum Color Gardner after heat bleach 600°F 2 Maximum Moisture and Impurities (combined): 0.1% Maximum 6. EDIBLE GRADE LINOLEIC SAFFLOWER OIL Shall be clear and free from visible foreign material at 251C. This grade shall meet the following specifications—as in addition to specifications for Crude Safflower Oil: Flavor and Odor: Bland Free Fatty Acid (as Cleic): 0.05% Maximum Color: 15 Yellow, (AOCS Method Cc 13b-45) 1.5 Red Maximum Peroxide Value: (at time of shipment) 1.0 Maximum (AOCS Method Cd 8-53) B. OFFICIAL SAMPLE The Official Sample shall be three (3) one,gallon samples drawn at time of leading by a qualified sampler in accordance with AOCS Official Method for sampling crude oils (AOCS Method (C 1-47), and shall be so indicated on invoice. If the Shipper tregiects to provide such a sam le at the time of losidin or fails to show on invoice that an Official Sample has been taken, a sample drawn at destination shall be official when taken in accordance with AOCS Official Method as noted above. Shipper shall forward to Consignee one of the one-gallon official loading samples at no expense to Cosignee the day of completion of loading, an label of sample must designate type of oil and plantion. NOTE For Ovic Safflower Oils (Rule 61.2) and High Oleic Sunflower Oil (Rule 6.13). Sample size to be three (3) one-quart samples. All other conditions as above, The following label has been approved: Official Loading Sample Crude Safflower Oil Type (Extranted (state solvent used) Expeller)

Shipper

(Firms Name)

Plant Location Loaded

Shipped (Date)

To

(Date) (Name of Buyer Firm)

Plant Located at The following sampling affidavit Most be furnished with the invoice where official samples of safflower oil have been taken at points of origin. FORM OF AFFIDAVIT TO ACCOMPANY INVOICES WHERE OFFICIAL SAMPLES OF SAF FLOWER OIL HAVE BEEN TAKEN AT POINTS OF ORIGIN Date

I, the undersigned, do hereby make affidavit that I have this date, drawn a fair and true sample of the contents of tank car marked Initials and Number Loaded at by City

State

That the sample was taken by the AOCS Official

Name of Processor

Method.

(Continuous Flow or Trier)

The sample was taken so as to secure a fair representation of the contents of the tank car and a true average of the quality of same. I certify to the correctness of the sample, which is marked as follows: (Type of safflower oil. If extracted oil, state solvent used.)

Sampler Sworn to and subscribed before me, a Notary Public in and for the county of State of this day of 19

Notary Public

Figure D.10. NIOP Rule 6.11 and 6.12, depicting current rules for safflower oil and oleic safflower oil (continued).

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Safflower

C. BASIS FOR HANDLING ADJUSTMENTS FOR REFINING LOSS AND COLOR IN CRUDE SAF FLOWER OIL, CRUDE OLEIC SAFFLOWER OIL AND CRUDE HIGH OLEIC SUNFLOWER OIL The basis for handling refining loss and color adjustment in the above oils shall be determined in the following manner between Shipper and Consignee and when determined shall apply to settlements with all intervening Buyers, if any. 1. If the Consignee’s analysis of his portion of the Official Sample shows that a discount is due, the Coreignee shall inform the Shipper of this analysis by telex or telegram within five (5) days after receipt of Official Sample by the Consignee. If, however, the Consignee’s analysis of his portion of the Official Sample shows that premium is due, the Consignee shall inform the Shipper of this analysis by MAIL within five (5) days. The Shipper shall have three (3) days after receipt of the Consignee’s analysis to accept this anaiysis. If the difference between the Shipper’s and Consignee’s refining loss findings is not over 6/10 of 1 %, the settlement , [11 be made on the average of Shipper’s and Consignee’s analyses both with respect to refining loss and also refined and bleached (R.B.) color. If the difference between Consignee’s and Shipper’s refining loss analyses is 7110 of 1 % or greater, then the third portion of the Official Sample shall be sent to an Official Referee Chemist not previously concerned and settlement shall be based on the Official Referee Chemist’s analy sis In the event that the analysis is referred for refining loss and color, and is decided against the Shipper on one count, and against the Consignee on the other and/or the Referee’s results are the mean of the Shipper’s and Consignee’s findings, then the Referee’s fee shall be shared equal ly; othermse, the fee for this work shall be charged to the account of the party against whom the decision results. 2. In the event that the Consignee does not furnish the Shipper with analytical determination of relining loss on the Consignee’s portion of the Official Sample within thirty (30) calendar days after the shipment of each unit, as determined by the date of the bill of lading for that unit, then settlement for that unit will be made on the basis of the analysis of the Shipper’s portion of the Official Sample only. In the event that the Shipper does not report his analytical determination of the Official Sample within thirty (30) calendar days after shipment of each unit, as determined by the date of the bill of lading for that unit, then settlement for that unit will be on the basis of the Consignee’s portion of the Official Sample only. D. ADJUSTMENT FOR SETTLINGS IN CRUDE AND CRUDE OLEIC SAFFLOWER OILS Settlings or sludge shall be considered the solid residue which cannot be drained, pumped or squeegeed from the car. Settlings claims may be filed only on tank cars that are unloaded within five (5) days after arrival of tank car at Buyers destination. If settlings are found when the tank car is being unloaded, the Shipper shall be notified by telex, telegram or telephone, and shall have the right to inspect the car, if he so informs the Consignee within twenty-four (24) hours of such notification. A tolerance of one hundred fifty (150) pounds of settlings will be allowed. If a car contains more than one hundred fifty (150) pounds, an allowance will be made for the total amount of sludge up to one thousand (1,000) pounds at 50% of the contract price. Settlings present in excess of one thousand (1,000) pounds will be allowed for at the contract price. Settlings claims shall be filed as soon as POS5ible, If Consignee does not define his settlings lo,, claim with supporting documents to the Shipper within sixty (60) calendar days after shipment of each unit, the settle ment claim for settlings shall be null and void. The claim for the amount of settlings shall not exceed the difference between the invoiced weight, if official, and the weight of oil unloaded at destination. Consignee must substantiate his claim for settlings with official weight certificate showing the gross weight of the car, and either (a) the tare weight of the unloaded car, both before and after removal of settlings from the car or (b) the net weight of the settings shall be based on the official net weights and not on the official net weights less a deduction for settlings. E. ADJUSTMENTS FOR REFINING LOSS IN CRUDE SAFFLOWER OIL, CRUDE OLEIC SAFFLOWER OIL AND CRUDE HIGH OLEIC SUNFLOWER OIL The above oils shall be sold on a refining loss basis of 4% (maximum 10%), using AOCS Method Ca 9f-57. The refining loss shall be one hundred (100) minus neutral oil. Premiums for oil under 4% and discounts for oil over 4% refining loss shall be at the rate of 1 % for each percent refining loss, fractions in proportion. Color, after refining, according to AOCS Ca 9a-52, table 3d,

Figure D.10. NIOP Rule 6.11 and 6.12, depicting current rules for safflower oil and oleic safflower oil (continued).

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maximum 12 lye, and bleaching according to AOCS Method Cc 8b-52 using the AOCS official natural bleaching earth at the higher percent of the two shown on the can label of the clay, shall be 25 Yellow, 2.5 Red on a 5 ¼” Column AOCS-Tintometer Color Scale (AOCS Method Cc 13b-45) with discount of 1/2 of 1 % of invoice price allowed for each 1 Red up to 5 A Red, fractions in proportion. NOTE: Crude and Crude Oleic Safflower Oils only. Sample, after refining and bleaching, shall stand a 5 1/2 hour Cold Test at 01C, AOCS Method Cc 11-53. RULE 6.12—OLEIC SAFFLOWER OIL A. QUALITY SPECIFICATIONSi Oleic Safflower Oil shall be the oil obtained from the Oleic Seed and shall meet the following specifications: I. CRUDE OLEIC SAFFLOWER OIL Minimum Maximum Iodine Value: 85 95 Oleic Acid (as % of TFA): 75% Flash Point! 25O°F (AOCS Method Cc 9b-55) Unsaponifiable: 1.5% Moisture and Volatile: 0.8% (AOCS Method Ca 2d-25) Refractive Index DJ25C: 1.467 1.469 Insoluble Impurities: 0.3% AOCS Method Ca 3a-46) Buyer shall receive an allowance of 1% of the invoice value for each 1% of the moisture and impurities in excess of 1 % when the combined sum of each (M & 1) exceeds 1%; fractions in proportions 2. ONCE-R REFINED OLEIC SAFFLOWER OIL Shall be clear and free from visible foreign material at 2SC. This grade shall meet the following specifications in addition to the specifications outlined under Crude Oleic Saffiower Oil: Minimum Maximum Free Fatty Acid: 0.1% Moisture and Impurities (combined): 0.1% Color After Bleaching: 15 Yellow (according to method in crude) 2.5 Red (AOCS Method Cc 13b-45) Cold Test O°C: 24 hours (AOCS Method Cc 11 -53) 3. EDIBLE GRADE OLEIC SAFFLOWER OIL Shall be clear and free from visible foreign material at 25C. This grade shall meet the following specifications in addition to specifications for Crude Oleic Safflower Oil: Minimum Maximum Flavor and Odor: Bland Free Fatty Acid: 0.05% Color: 15 Yellow (AOCS Method Cc 13b-45) 1.5 Red Peroxide Value: 0.5 (ACCS Method Cd 8-53) Smoke Point: 450°F B. OFFICIAL SAMPLE (See Rule 6.11 B) C. BASIS FOR HANDLING ADJUSTMENTS FOR REFINING LOSS AND COLOR (See Rule 6.11 C) D. ADJUSTMENT FOR SETTLINGS (See Rule 6.11 D) E. ADJUSTMENTS FOR REFINING LOSS (See Rule 6.11 E).

Figure D.10. NIOP Rule 6.11 and 6.12, depicting current rules for safflower oil and oleic safflower oil (continued).

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Safflower

Rule 5.12—PRIOR CARGO LISTINGS (EFFECTIVE MAY 1, 1993) 5.12.1—ACCEPTABLE PRIOR CARGO-LLIST NO. 1 The following items are acceptable prior cargoes for transported edible oils which may or may not be further processed prior to use: Cargo Common Name Alcoholic beverages (i.e., rum, wine) Menhaden oil Almond oil Molasses Anchovy oil Montan wax Apricot kernel oil Mummuru fat Avocado oil Mustard seed oil Babassu oil Nutmeg butter Beechnut oil Olive oil Beeswax Orange juice slurry Candelilla wax Palm kernel oil Canola oil/LEAR (low erucic acid rapeseed oil) Palm kernel olein Carnauba wax Palm kernel strearin Castor oil Palm oil Cocoa butter Palm oil mid-fractions Coconut oil Palm oil olein Cod liver oil Palm oil stearin Cod oil Peanut oil (groundnut oil); (CNO) Cohune oil Pilchard oil Corn oil (maize oil) Poppy seed oil Corn syrup Rapeseed oil/HEAR (high erucic acid rapeseed oil) Cottonseed oil Rapeseed oil (hydrogenated) Dairy products (per USA 21 CFR, Part 13 1) Rice bran oil Dextrose solution Safflower oil Fish liver oil Sal fat Fish oil Sardine oil Glucose syrup Sesame oil Glycerin Shark oil Grapeseed oil Shea oil (shea butter) Hazelnut oil Surbitol Herring oil Soybean oil Illipe butter (mowrah butter) Sunflower oil juice concentrates (i.e., apple, grape) Tallow (edible) Lactic acid Teaseed oil Lard Tucum oil Linseed oil Vegetable gibee unade from vegetable oils on this list) Lycopersicum esculentrum oil (tomato seed oil) Walnut oil 5.12.2. ACCEPTABLE PRIOR CARGO—LIST NO. 2 Acceptable prior cargoes for edible oils which will undergo further processing: Cargo Common Name Acetic acid (acidulated coconut oil soapstock) Acetone Coconut oil, fatty acids Ammonium hydroxide Coconut oil, fatty acid methyl esters Benzyl alcohol (NF and Reagent grades only) Cottonseed acid oil Butanecrol (see glycols) Cottonseed oil, fatty acid Butylene glycol (see glycols) Cyclohexane Butyl acetates Cyciohexanol Calcium chloride solution Cyclohexanone Calcium lignosulfonate liquid Ethanol tethyl alcohol) (lignin liquor); (sulphite lye) Ethyl acetate (EA) Coconut acid oil (CAO); 2-Ethylhexyl alcohol (2-ethyl hexanol)

Figure D.11. The text of NIOP Rule 5.12 on Prior Cargo Listings.

Source: NIOP rules (15).

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Fatty acids: Common Name Systematic/Chemical name Butyric aud C-4 Butanoic acid Valcric acid C-5 Pentanoic acid Caproic acid C-6 Hexanoic acid Heptoic acid C-7 Hetpanoic acid Caprylic acid C-8 Octanoic acid Pelargonic acid C-9 Nonanoic acid Capric acid C-10 Decanoic acid Fauric acid C-12 Dodecanoic acid Laurofeic acid C-12 Dodecenoic acid Myrisfic acid C-1 4 Tetradecenoic acid Myristoleic acid C-14 Tetradecenoic acid Palmitic acid C-16 Hexadecanoic acid Palmitoleic acid C-16 Hexadecenoic acid Stearic acid C-18 Octadecanoic acid Ricinoleic acid C-18 12-Hydroxy-9-octadecenoic acid Oleic acid C18 Ociadecenoic acid Linoletc acid C-18 Octadecadienoic acid Linolenic acid C-18 Octadecatrienoic acid Arachidic acid C-20 Eicosanoic acid Behenic acid C-22 Docosanoic acid Erucic acid C-22 Docosenoic acid Fatty acid methy-esters (fatty acid esters; methyl esters of fatty acids) Common name Chemical name Methyl laurate C-12 Methyl dodecanoate Methyl palmitate C-16 Methyl hexadecanoate Methyl srearate C-18 Methyl octadecanoate Methyl oleate C-18 Methyl octadecenoate Fatty alcohols (natural alcohols)i Common name Systematic Other Butyl alcohol C-4 1-Butanol Butyric alcohol Caproyl alcohol C-6 1-Hexanol Hexyl alcohol Enanthyl alcohol C-7 1-Heptanol Heptyl alcohol Capryl alcohol C-8 1-n-Octanol Octyl alcohol Nonyl alcohol C-9 Nonanol Pelargonic alcohol Decyl alcohol C-10 1-Decanol Lauryl alcohol C-12 n-Dodecanol Dodecyl alcohol Tridecyl alcohol C-13 1-Tridecanol Myristyl alcohol C-14 1-Tetradecanol Cety] alcohol C-16 1-Hexadecarrol Cetylic alcohol; Palmityl alcohol Stearyl alcohol C-18 1-Octadecanol Oleyl alcohol C- 18 Octadecenol Lauryl myristyl alcohol (C12-CI4) (blend) Cetyl stearyl alcohol (Cl 6-C18) (blend) Hexaclecanol combination (Cl 6-Cl 8) (blend of natural fatty alcohols) Glycols: Common name Synonyms Buylene glycol & Butanediol 1,3-butylene glycol; 1,3-butanediol 1,4-butylene glycol; 1,4-butandiol 2,3-butylene glycol; 2,3-butanediol Polypropylene glycol PG

Figure D.11. The text of NIOP Rule 5.12 on Prior Cargo Listing (continued).

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Safflower

Propylene glycol 1,2-propylene glycol; 1,2-propandiol; 1,2-dihydroxypropane; monopropylene glycol (MPG) 1,3-Propylene glycol trimethylene glycol; 1,3-propanediol Formic acid Heptane Hexane Inedible tallow Isobutyl acetate Isobutyl alcohol (isobutanol) isodecyl alcohol (isodecanol) sonoryl alcohol (isononanol) Isooctyl alcohol (isooctanol) Isopropyl alcohol (isopropanol) Limonene (dipentene) Magnesium chloride solution Methanol (methyl alcohol) Methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) Methyl solbutyl ketone (MIBK) Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) Nitric acid Nonane (C-9) monyl hydride) Palm acid oil (PAO) Palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) Palm kernel fatty acid distillate (PKFAD) Palm kernel oil fatty acids Palm kernel oil, fatty acid methyl esters Palm oil, fatty acids Palm oil, fatty acid methyl esters Pentane Petroleum wax (petroleum paraffin); (paraffin wax, edible grade) Phosphoric acid Polypropylene glycol (PG; see glycols) Potassium hydroxide solution (caustic potash solution) Propyl acetate Propyl alcohol (1-propanol) Propylene glycol (see glycols) Rice bran acid oil Sodium hydroxide solution (caustic soda solution) Soybean acid oil Soybean oil (epoxidized) Soybean oil, fatty acids Sulfuric acid Tallow fatty acids Tallow fatty alcohol Tung oil Urea ammonium nitrate solution WAN solution) **The counny of origin in which the product is rendered must have standards or certification programs which are designed to preclude toxic or bacterial contamination and the transmission of pathogens including bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) by animal products or byproducts.

Figure D.11. The text of NIOP Rule 5.12 on Prior Cargo Listings (continued).

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5.12.3 Unacceptable Prior Cargo List These substances have been proven to be highly toxic and/or carcinogenic. They may not be carried as the last cargo immediately prior to edible oils. Cargo common name: Acetone cyanohydrin (ACH) Acrylonitrile (ACN) Benzene 1,3-Butadiene (vinylethylene) Butyl acrylate (n- and tert-) Carbon tetrachloride (CTC) Cashew nutshell liquid (CNSSL) Chloroform (TCM) Cresol (o.m.p.) (cresylic acid) Diethanolamine (DEA) Diglycidylether of bisphenol A Dioctyl phthalate (DOP) Diphenyl methan diisocyanate (MDI) Epichlorohydrin Ethyl acrylate Ethylene clibromide (EDB; 1,2-dibromoethane; ethylene bromide) Ethylene dichloride (EDC; 1,2-dichloroethane; ethylene chloride) Ethylene glycol (MEG; monoethylene glycol) Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether (2-butoxyethanol) Ethylene oxide (EO) Formaldehyde Leaded petroleum or other leaded products Methyl acrylate Methyl methacrylate Methylene chloride (dichloromethane; MEC, methylene dichloride) Methylene chisocyanate (diisocyanatomethane) Monoethylene glycol (MEG; ethylene glycol) Nitropropane (I- and 2-isomers and mixtures) Perchloroethylene (PEC) Pmymethylene polyphenylisocyanate (PAPI) Propylene oxide Styrene monomer Telone 11 L-propene, 1,3-dichloro; 1,3-dichloropropene) Toluene Toluene di-isocyanate (TDI; 2,4- and 2,6-isomers) Taluichne (ortho) Transformer oil Trichloroethane (1,1,1- and 1,1,2-isomers) Triethylene glycol (TEG) Vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) Xylene (ortho, meta, para) The provisions of NIOP Trading Rules, including Rules 1.3.1(b), 1.4, 1.5.2(b), 1.6.2(b) and 1.9 are not superseded by this Rule. The “last cargo” restriction is not applicable to the products referenced thus: Provisions contained in the above-cited Rules include and provide for a signed statement that the vessel’s tank receiving the vegetable oil has not contained any leaded petroleum or other leaded product on at least the last three (3) prior cargoes carried. Source: NIOP Rules 0 5)

Figure D.11. The text of NIOP Rule 5.12 on Prior Cargo Listings (continued).

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TABLE D.2 Australian Safflower Oil Trading Standards Trading Standard Number SAF:0:261/79 SAF:0:262/79

Safflower oil Max. 2% Crude Safflower oil Max. 2% Crude degummed Safflower oil Max. 0.25% Bleached refined or alkali refined

35y (133.35 MM) Color

Iodine Value (Wijs)b

Peroxide Value

Moisture Volatiles, Impuritiesc

Max. 5R/35Y (25.4 MM) Max. 5R/35Y (25.4 MM) Max. 4

138–150

Max. 10

Max. 0.5%

138–150

Max. 10

Max. 0.3%

138–150 Max. 10 Gardner Max. 4R/35Y (133.35 MM)

Comment

Phosphorous Max.0.02%d

Max. 0.25%

aFor crude oils a 0.2% price reduction shall be applied for each 0.1% the FFA is over 2% up to a maximum of 4%. Above 4% FFA the consignment shall be rejectable. bSubject so seasonal conditions. rice reduction shall be applied for each 0.1% the Moisture, Volatiles, and Impurities exceeds the prescribed limit. price reduction shall be applied for each 0.001% that the phosphorous content is above the prescribed limit. Australian Oilseeds Federation Incorporated (10).

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SAF:0:263/79

Commodity

Free Fatty Acida

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TABLE D.3

587

Australian Standards for Safflower Meal

Trading Standard Refrence SAF:M:361/79 SAF:M:362/79 SAF:M:363/79

Commondity Name SAfflower meal Expeller Safflower meal Extraction Safflower meal Dehulled

Min. Oil (%)

Trading Standard Min.Crude Max. Crude (%) Fiber (%)

Max. Moisture (%)

4

20

30

8

0.5

22

32

12

0.5

42

10

12

Source: NIOP (9); Australian Oilseeds Federation Incorporated (19).

Safflower Meal—United States Safflower meal’s principal analytical problem lies in getting a good sample. Safflower meal tends to stratify with the fine high-protein portion separating from the coarser high-fiber particles. The State of California defines ordinary 20% protein safflower meal as “Whole-Pressed Safflower Seed,” (Figure D.12 [17]), reasoning that it was too high in fiber and low in protein to be classed as a meal–but the trade mostly ignores this and continues to call it a meal. In any case, it is quite common for safflower meal taken from the same storage tank to vary quite a bit in protein analysis from truck to truck because of effects of stratification. In 1965, at the request of the safflower industry, the NIOP added a paragraph to its Rule 180 covering meals providing for settlement of such protein deficiencies (18). This rule soon proved not to be comprehensive enough in light of the increasing exports of safflower meal at the time, so in 1970 the NIOP adopted Rule 181 – Safflower Meal (19). The rule did not attempt to establish a complete specification but set up a method of settling quality claims and extension of shipping problems involved in export sales that to that point had been lacking in the General Rules. The rule as presently written (now called Rule 8.1) is shown in Figure D.13 (20). The Australian Oilseeds Federation has published the following suggested standards for safflower meal (Table D.3 [21]). 2795.5 Safflower Products (a) Safflower Meal is obtained by extraction of oil and hulls from safflower seed and contains not less than 40 percent crude protein. If solvent extracted, it shall be so designated. (b) Whole-Pressed Safflower Seed is the ground residue obtained by extraction of oil from whole saffloweF seed by a mechanical or solvent extraction process and contains not less than 20 per cent protein and not more man 40 percent fiber. It solvent extracted, it shall be so designated. (c) Safflower Hulls consist of the outer covering of safflower seed. When used in a mixture, the percentage shall be stated. NOTE: Authority cited: Sections 407 and 14902. Food and Agricultural Code. Reference: Sections 14992 and 15011, Food and Agricultural Code. HISTORY: 1. Editorial correction of NOTE filed 8-17 82 (Register 82, No. 34).

Figure D.12. State of California standards for safflower products. Source: Commercial Feed Law and Regulation (21).

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Rule 8.1—Safflower Meal 8.1.1.—Meal C. & F Sales A. Extension of Shipment—The contract period for shipment, if such be thirty-one (31) days or less, shall, if clesired by the Shipper, be extended by an additional period not exceeding eight (8) days, provided the Shipper gives notice claiming extension by telex or telegram sent not later than the next day following the last day of the originally stipulated period. The notice need not state the number of additional days claimed, and such notice shall be passed on by other Sellers to their Buyers respectively in due course after receipt. The Sellers shall make an allowance to the Buyers, to be deducted in the invoice from the contract price based on the number of days by which the originally stipulated period is exceeded, as follows: 0.5% of the gross price for 1, 2, 3 and 4 additional days 1.0% of the gross price for 5 or 6 additional days 1.5%. of the gross price for 7 or 8 additional days If, however, after having given notice to the Buyer as above, the Seller fails to make shipment within such eight (8) days, then the contract shall be deemed to have called for shipment during the originally stipulated period plus eight (8) days, at contract price less 1.5% and any settlement for default shall be calculated on that basis. (b) Quality—Should the whole or any portion not turn out equal to analysis warranted in sales contract, the goods must be taken at an allowance to be agreed or settled by arbitration, except that for any deficiency of oil and protein there shall be allowances to Buyers at the following rates, viz: 1 % of the contract price for each of the first three (3) units of deficiency under the warranted percentage; 2% of the contract price for each of the fourth and fifth units and 3% of the contract price for each unit in excess of 5% proportionately for any fraction thereof. Independent sampling and analysis at time of shipment to govern. (c) Weights—Official weights at time of loading to be final. 8.1.2—MEAL EX SPOUT SALES (a) Provisions of this Rule are deemed to be identical with Rule 1 .5—Buyer Stipulations—item 1.5.2 (e) notes (1), (2), (3), (4) and Rule 7.4 (a), except that the material is considered to be delivered and Seller’s obligations to Buyer therefore cease upon its emergence from the elevator loading spout. Otherwise all other conditions of Rule 1.5 apply to these definitions. (b) Quality-Same as Item 8.1.1 (b). (c) Weights-Same as Item 8. 1.1 (c). (d) Wharfage Cost of wharfage shall be for account of Seller. 8.1.3—MEAL DOMESTIC SALES Shipped weights and analysis to govern. No claim for deficiency in protein shall be made by the Buyer unless such deficiency shall exceed 1/2 unit of protein, in which event Seller shall reduce the contract price by the full amount of deficiency, fractions in proportion, calculating such adjustment in price cost per protein unit guaranteed in contract.

Figure D.13. The text of NIOP Rule 8.1 on safflower meal.

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Duties, Tariffs, and Quotas Japan The duty structure adopted by post-World War II Japan was perhaps the single most important market factor that encouraged the surge in safflower production in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the MacArthur stewardship, Japan adopted a series of duties and quotas designed to protect its local production of soybean and rapeseed and secondarily to protect the reconstruction of its processing industry and conserve foreign exchange. Soybeans were assigned a duty of 20% ad valorem and a tight system of quotas (in effect import licenses) was imposed. A duty schedule was set up for other oilseeds as well. However, since safflower had not been an item of trade in prewar Japan, no duty was put in place, and safflower seed was therefore free to be imported with little restriction. This resulted in a dramatic increase in safflower seed imports until duties on soybeans began to be lowered and eventually were eliminated (see Chapters 4 and 5 for more complete discussion). Japan did have in place duties on importation of oils that applied to safflower and this has continued until today. In the case of safflower oil, the duty structure contains a provision that works to the detriment of local refiners. Crude safflower oil is defined as any safflower that contains more than 0.3% FFA; such oil bears an import duty of 17 yen/kg. Refined oil, including crude oil of less than 0.3% FFA bears a duty of 20.7 yen/kg. In many cases, safflower oil, particularly prepress safflower oil produced in California, will exhibit FFA levels well below 0.3% straight from the oil mill but must be treated as a refined product. The National Institute of Oilseed Products has campaigned for years with the Japanese government, Japanese trading companies, the U.S. State Department, and so on to change this definition of refined oil to some other basis that would actually measure whether or not an oil had been chemically refined. Large measures of sympathy for this change have been expressed, since it would produce a financial saving for Japanese refiners, but in the final analysis no change has taken place. For many years, it was rumored that the duty on all safflower oil would be removed or reduced over time as part of a package reduction in duties under the ongoing U.S./Japanese dialogue concerning trade barriers. Finally, in the GATT negotiations at the end of 1993, Japan agreed to begin lowering duties on safflower oil starting in 1995 to reach a target level of 10.9 yen and 13.2 yen for crude and refined grades, respectively, by the year 2001 or before. Some Japanese traders felt that it may take place all at once in 1995, but this hasn’t happened. Europe Using the same reasoning prevalent in Japan, in order to protect local industry the European Economic Community charges a 10% duty on imported safflower oil for edible purposes and a 5% duty for industrial use, but no duty on safflower seed. Oil produced from imported seed (known by the trade as “EEC origin oil”; imported oil is called “any origin” [AO] oil) bears no duty. During the 1970s, it made economic

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sense for U.S. marketers of safflower oil in Europe to toll crush safflower seed in The Netherlands or Germany during particular years when the exchange value of the U.S. dollar was high relative to the local currency. Crude safflower oil shipped into Rotterdam can be held in bond in that port and no duty is assessed until a consumer actually calls for it. Recently the EEC has taken some steps to charge duty upon arrival in Rotterdam; objections, naturally, have been violent. For a time, crude prepress safflower oil from California was under attack by Dutch customs authorities in the 1960s because they could not believe an oil would be naturally so low in FFA. A series of seed samples were sent by Agricom through Matthes and Porton to Dutch authorities who then extracted the oil and proved to their own satisfaction that the seed did, in fact, contain such a low level of FFA. Only then were things allowed to proceed. Mexico Until January 1, 1989, safflower oil from Mexico was eligible to enter the United States under a generalized duty category, “Expressed or Extracted Vegetable Oils Not Specifically Provided for... Other” (22) that was eligible for the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) treatment. The GSP system allows products from developing countries to enter the country free of duty if they will not adversely affect the U.S. marketplace. In 1988, as part of an effort by the U.S. government to harmonize its tariff schedules with all of its trading partners, safflower oil was given new listing numbers (1512.11.00.408 for crude safflower oil and 1512.19.00.400 for refined safflower oil) and inadvertently grouped with sunflower and cottonseed oils that were not eligible for GSP treatment. The cottonseed industry had lobbied long ago for protection from cheap Mexican imports. The safflower industry, which after many years of trying had just begun to import safflower oil from Mexico, suddenly found itself faced with a duty of $0.02/kg plus 4% of value. I testified, along with representatives of PCO and Cal Oils before the U.S. International Trade Commission asking that this change be rescinded, to no avail. Our fears of an adverse impact on trade were not realized, fortunately. Most safflower oil brought into the United States from Mexico either entered under bond (and paid no duty) prior to subsequent export or importers were able to recover most of their duties paid by exporting equivalent amounts of safflower oil later and claiming for a draw-back payment. The duty situation in Mexico was quite different. Since production of safflower began in Mexico, that country had maintained a system that discouraged export of any vegetable oils through a combination of export license and exchange controls. U.S. oil producers tried for years to encourage Mexico to export high value oils, such as safflower oil, and to use the foreign exchange gained thereby to import twice as much soybean oil, but Mexico’s answer was that they preferred to feed their own people with their own produce. But in the mid-1980s, as recounted elsewhere, Mexico began to open its borders to importation of oils and oilseeds and in 1986 agreed to permit the exportation of safflower oil, without export license requirements. Mexico, theoretically, can allow

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the export of safflower seed as well, but the Mexican oil-milling industry has been able to keep the government aligned against such a movement. Australia Australia, during its first decade or two of safflower production, played games with its import duty structure. Basically, beginning in 1964 import duties were changed yearly and were generally most severe on importation of refined safflower oils. But from time to time, when Australian production fell below domestic needs, minimal duties could be imposed to “allow the bylaw entry of imports of vegetable oils required to make up shortfalls in local supply” (23). For a time, sliding scale rates were imposed on safflower and linseed oil and although the duties were designed to protect local refiners, at times the same rate was changed for crude oil or refined oil (A$70.13/MT). In recent times, as Australia primarily has become an exporter rather than a consumer of safflower, duty arguments have become passe and safflower oil is allowed to enter duty free. Two other Australian governmental regulations played important parts in the development of safflower in Australia. When the crop was first introduced, safflower oil was used by the Australian paint industry without a problem, but as an edible oil it faced a major problem. Australian manufacturers wanted to use it in margarine (their advertising copy was very flamboyant) but Australia at the time had quotas imposed on the manufacture and sale of margarine in order to protect the dairy industry. It was not until 1976 that the quotas were removed in New South Wales and South Australia after long political battles. The second limiting regulation pertains to the quarantine of imported planting seeds. Australia is relatively free of many plant pests and diseases that have spread over the rest of the world and the government wants to keep it that way. Their Quarantine Act requires seeds introduced into Australia to be grown through three full generations in quarantine before they can be released for use in Australia. This effectively prevents the sale of imported planting seed varieties and severely impedes efforts by plant breeders to improve locally available varieties. Consequently, Australia still lags behind other countries in oil content and yield for safflower produced within the country. References 1. “U.S.A. Origin Safflower Seed,” National Institute of Oilseed Products, Trading Rules–1969–1970, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, August 1, 1969, pp. 68–75. 2. National Institute of Oilseed Products, Trading Rules–1993–1994, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1993, pp. 13,15,96–104, 111–114. 3. Official Standards for Safflower Seed–Revised 10/83, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento, California, 1983, 5 pp. 4. Safflower Seed Inspection Manual, California Department of Food and Agricultural Sacramento, California, revised January 1, 1994, 39 pp. 5. “Agricultural Act of 1990, Rules and Regulations,” Federal Register 56: 20116 (1991). 6. Program Directive, Fed. Grain Insp. Serv. Directive No. 918.53, January 28, 1992, 13 pp.

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7. “Special Grades of Grain–Safflower Seed (Western),” Canada Gazette Part II 109: 1710, (Schedule III) 1752, September 23, 1975. 8. “Safflower Seed,” Canadian Board of Grain Commission Manual, Canadian Grain Commission, Ottawa, Canada, September 6, 1977, p. 58. 9. “Safflower Seed (Canada),” Grain Grading Handbook for Western Canada, Canadian Grain Commission, Ottawa, Canada, August 1, 1993, pp. 140–143. 10. “Technical and Trading Standards,” Australian Oilseeds Federation Incorporated, Wilberforce, Australia, March 1994, pp. 1–4. 11. “Rule 169–Safflower Oil,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, July 1, 1953, pp. 71–74. 12. “Rule 169–Safflower Oil,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, January 1, 1954, p. 64. 13. “Rule 170–Oleic Oil,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, August 1, 1968, pp. 91–92. 14. “Rule 6.11 Safflower Oil, 6.12 Oleic Safflower Oil,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1993, pp. 81–88. 15. “Rule 5.12–Prior Cargo Listings (Effective May 1, 1993),” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1993, pp. 70–96. 16. “Technical and Trading Standards,” Australian Oilseeds Federation, Incorporated, Wilberforce, Australia, March 1994, p. 80. 17. “2795.5–Safflower Products,” Commercial Feed Law and Regulations, California Dept. of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento, California, March, 1990, p. 50. 18. “Rule 180–Meals,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, July 1, 1965, pp. 85. 19. “Rule 181–Safflower Meal,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, San Francisco, California, July 1, 1970, pp. 94–95. 20. “Rule 8.1–Safflower Meal,” National Institute of Oilseed Products Trading Rules, National Institute of Oilseed Products, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1993, pp. 115–116. 21. “Technical and Trading Standards,” Australian Oilseeds Federation Incorporated, Wilberforce, Australia, March 1994, p. 83. 22. Tariff Board Report n Vetegatle Fats and Oils, Canberra, Australia, September 30, 1968.

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