If you subscribe to our monthly mailing, you’ll receive beautiful botanical stationery products and information as part of your monthly subscription. One of these products includes a postcard featuring beautiful sunflowers* specifically, the Mammoth Grey Stripe variety.

Did you know that in 2025, farmers in the United States grew 2.3 billion pounds of sunflowers? This was twice as much as 2024. North Dakota and South Dakota had the greatest increases as well as Kansas and Texas. Colorado, Nebraska and Minnesota also had significant production (NSA, 2026).

In 2026, US farmers planted 1.35 million acres of sunflowers, which was an approximate 5% increase from 2025. While the primary goal of these massive, golden fields is to produce sunflower oil, there is also current research under way. A specialized branch of the USDA—the Sunflower Improvement Research Unit, is working to enhance sunflower production by improving sunflower adaptation, resistance to disease and insect pests, benefits to pollinators, and product quality through basic and applied research.

While sunflowers are big business in the US and around other areas in the world, you can easily grow these in your own yard.

Sunflowers bring a bright, cheerful touch to any garden. They are also favorites among pollinators, including the important honeybee, and their seeds provide food for many birds.

Sunflowers have a special ability called heliotropism. This means young sunflowers turn to follow the sun as it moves across the sky from east to west during the day. At night, they turn back toward the east, so they are ready for the next sunrise. This movement helps them receive more sunlight, which supports stronger growth and healthier leaves. The center of the sunflower is especially sensitive to the sun’s direction. When sunflowers face east, they warm up earlier in the day, which makes them more inviting to pollinators like bees (Barrett, 2021).