J. Patuakhali Sci. and Tech. Univ. 2015, 6 (1): 73-83 ISSN 1996-4501

Problem Confrontation in Sunflower Cultivation by the Farmers of Nazirpur in Pirojpur A. Mandal1, A. T. M. S. Haque2, M. G. R. Akanda3 and M. K. Hasan4

Abstract

The main focus of the study was to explore the problems confronted by the farmers in sunflower cultivation. Further attempts were made to reveal the determinants of their problem confrontation. Following a multi-stage random sampling method, a total of 92 farmers who have been cultivating sunflower were selected from Nazirpur in Pirojpur in . Firstly, problems were identified through discussions with the farmers and literature reviews. Secondly, interviews with the sunflower cultivators were administered to quantify the problems along with their potential determinants that are stemmed from their socio-economic attributes. The farmers were found to have a moderate level of problems in sunflower cultivation with a small variation (M = 23.62 and SD = 4.55 against a possible score range between 0 to 45). Unweighted ranking of the problems shows that the top three problems out of fifteen were high price of seed, unavailability of improved seed and costly irrigation. Multiple linear regression without addressing the endogeneity problems has confirmed the age, training exposure, cosmopoliteness, knowledge and risk orientation of the farmers as the determinants of their problem confrontation. In order to minimize the extent of the problems, relatively older farmers need to be trained on sunflower cultivation. They need to be prepared to take to some extent of potential challenge of sunflower cultivation through providing input and marketing support by public and private initiatives. Besides, an expected level of solution to the problems depends on the availability of improved seeds of sunflower at lower cost.

Keywords: Sunflower farmers, problem confrontation, determinants of problems

Introduction

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus), an important oil crop next to soybean, originates from Central and North America (FAO, 2015). The move to cultivate sunflower came to southern Bangladesh by BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) following the super-cyclone Sidr in 2007 with a view to rehabilitate the farmers (Star Business Report, 2013). However, the coastal region of southern Bangladesh is vulnerable to climate change (Karmalkar et al., 2010; Ramachandran, 2013) and sunflower can be a good adaptation option to climate change for this region.

It can be grown in rabi (dry) season in a prevailing saline condition of 4-8 dS/m (Muralidharudu et al., 1999). Sunflower can tolerate this soil salinity because of its very deep root system which can take up about 60 to 70 percent of its water from one meter

1 Ex-MS student, 2 Assistant Professor, 3 Professor, and 4 Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, Patuakhali Science and Technology University, Dumki, Patuakhali, Bangladesh 74 J. Patuakhali Sci. and Tech. Univ. 2015, 6 (1): 73-83 ISSN 1996-4501

below the soil (Top Crop Manager, 1999).

Cropping intensity of Pirojpur was 183% in 2013-14 and it remained the same within next two years while it increased to some extent in other areas of region (Nath, 2016). However, sunflower cultivation shows currently a gradual increasing trend in because of its high profit potential. According to the DAE (Department of Agricultural Extension) report, 199 hectares of land in Pirojpur (135 hectares in ) have been brought under sunflower cultivation in the year of 2015 (Rahman, 2015).

Sunflower cultivation needs less effort and inputs, such as irrigation, fertilizers and insecticides. Its seeds’ oil extraction conversion factor is 30 to 50%. Thus, its cultivation is less effort intensive but more profitable (Hossain, 2011). The farmers can sell one kilogram of sunflower seeds for BDT 30 that gives BDT 80 to 100 thousand per hectare of land (Ahsan, 2015). The DAE also encouraged the local farmers to cultivate sunflower because it is more profitable than rice cultivation (Hossain, 2011).

However, Pirojpur district still has a lot of fallow lands specially in winter period. Temporary fallow land in this district is 27.16% and substantial part of it can be brought under sunflower cultivation (Nath, 2013). Thus, the farmers have ample scope to cultivate sunflower in their lands but the land under sunflower cultivation is not increasing at expected level. This could be due to the cash crop nature of sunflower that is difficult to market along with other problems. Farmers are unable to get fair price in the absence of market; and the local traders took the opportunity to exploit them. To overcome this situation, BRAC provides a buy-back guarantee to encourage the farmers to grow sunflower (Star Business Report, 2013). Still it is not sufficient condition to enhance sunflower cultivation. In order to expand the sunflower cultivation in these areas, we need to identify different problems along with the marketing constraints. In this context, this study aims to determine the extent of problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation by the farmers of Nazirpur upazila in Pirojpur and to explore the factors influencing their problem confrontation.

Methodology

This study was carried out in Nazirpur upazila in Pirojpur in southern Bangladesh. This area is suitable for sunflower cultivation. The farmers in this area cultivate mainly one crop (transplanted aman) in a year during August/ September to November/ December. This is due to the unfavorable soil and water salinity. This leads to a major cropping pattern in the coastal areas like fallow-fallow-transplanted aman. Thus, the lands in the dry period mostly remain fallow. Therefore, the farmers started growing sunflower after transplanted aman with the initiative of BRAC, DAE and IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) (Nath, 2013). BRAC started sunflower farming through motivating farmers in Nazirpur in 2012 (Ahsan, 2015). These sunflower growers of Nazirpur are the population of this study.

Problem Confrontation in Sunflower Cultivation by the Farmers 75

Multistage random sampling method was followed to select the respondent sunflower growers (Roy, 2000). In the first stage, 6 unions were randomly selected from a total of 8 unions of Nazirpur. In the second stage, 92 farmers were randomly selected from a total of 912 sunflower growers of 20 villages of the selected unions. The lists of all sunflower farmers of the selected villages were collected from the respective BRAC offices. Data were collected using a pretested interview schedule during March to April 2016.

Extent of problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation was the dependent variable. In order to identify the problems, firstly, the sunflower farmers and expert members from BRAC were consulted and literature reviews were done. Secondly, these problems were scored with a 4-point rating scale (0 for not all, 1 for low, 2 for medium and 3 for high) to quantify the problems. The selected socio-economic characteristics of the farmers constituted the independent variables. The characteristics were age, education, farming experience, farm size, annual household income, training received, communication exposure, cosmopoliteness, knowledge on sunflower cultivation and risk orientation. These factors were assumed to be influential to the problem confrontation in adopting sunflower cultivation. Variable selection was based on expert opinions and the research works that mentioned farm size, low cost inputs, training experience, communication, cosmopoliteness, risk exposure etc. as the essential factors of agricultural technology adoption (Feder et al., 1985; Moser & Barrett, 2006). The measurement techniques have been summarized in Table 1.

In order to explore the variables, descriptive statistics, such as mean, standard deviation and rank order were used. Multiple linear regression was performed to identify the determinants of problem confrontation by the sunflower farmers (Gujarati & Porter, 2009).

Table 1. Measurement techniques of independent variables

Independent variables Measurement techniques 1. Age Actual age in years from birth to the day of interview. 2. Education Years of schooling or highest class of school attained by the respondent farmer. 3. Farming experience Years of involvement in farming activities by the interviewed farmer. 4. Farm size Measured in hectare in terms of full benefit; sharecropped or leased land areas were divided by two and the results were added to homestead and own land under own cultivation to obtain the farm size. 5. Annual household Total monetary value of the outputs from both agricultural and non- income agricultural sources of income and expressed in thousand BDT. 6. Training received A score was given to the farmer based on his total number of days of training received on farming activities including sunflower cultivation (0 for not at all, 1 for attended training for 1 to 5 days, 2 for more than 5 days).

76 J. Patuakhali Sci. and Tech. Univ. 2015, 6 (1): 73-83 ISSN 1996-4501

7. Communication A total of 21 information sources were included in the interview exposure schedule to know their frequency of contact with the respective sources per unit of time that differs according to the expected level of contact. Thereafter, a subjective score (0 to 4) was given to each of the sources based on the frequency of contact. Total score of all the sources was the observed value for this variable. 8. Cosmopoliteness It represents the frequency of visit out of his own unions, such as other unions (a group of villages), own/ other , own/ other districts, other districts and capital city. Scoring method was similar to the method used for ‘communication exposure’ variable. 8. Knowledge on A total of 14 questions related to sunflower cultivation were asked to sunflower the farmers. Highest possible score for each of the correct answers cultivation was 2, while the wrong answers were scored as zero. Total scores for all the questions were computed to obtain the score for this variable. 9. Risk orientation It reveals the psychological strength of risk taking attitude of the farmers for farming activities. It was measured with 5-point Likert scale (1 for strongly disagree, 2 for disagree, 3 for undecided, 4 for agree and 5 for strongly agree) with 10 statements. Reverse scoring was done for negative statements. Total score represents the value of this variable.

Results and Discussion

In this section, description of the salient features of the sunflower cultivators have been presented followed by their problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation. Finally, the determinants of the identified problems have been explained based on the empirical evidence.

Salient Features of the Farmers The average socio-economic situations of the sampled sunflower cultivators have been summarized in Table 2. Majority of the respondent farmers were from a middle-age cluster of people having not more than primary level of education. This is the usual reflection of our rural agriculture. The younger people tend to be connected with diversified income sources besides agriculture. On the contrary, the older people normally do not carry out any significant farming activities. In addition, the more educated people have less inclination to farming activities. However, the farmers had a high extent of farming experience that is fairly enough to learn farming activities properly. The average of land holdings of the farmers was suitable to continue small to medium scale sunflower cultivation. Their household income still seems to be inadequate for their least possible comfortable livelihoods.

Training received on farming activities by the farmers was below the satisfactory level. They had fairly a moderate level of communication with information sources related to

Problem Confrontation in Sunflower Cultivation by the Farmers 77 farming activities. The farmers were also moderately cosmopolite in nature as they have outward mobility to different locations outside their own areas for different purposes. However, why they were visiting these places was not figured out in this study. The selected farmers had a moderate level of knowledge on different aspects of sunflower cultivation. However, this knowledge is related to their basic understanding of sunflower farming rather than creative or autonomous problem solving capabilities.

Table 2. Summary of women’s characteristics

Possible range Observed Characteristics Mean SD with units range 1. Age – * years 25 - 60 45.05 8.17 2. Education – years of schooling 0 - 11 3.53 3.82 3. Farming experience – years of farming 6 - 40 20.91 6.72 4. Farm size – hectare 0.34 - 3.03 1.14 0.45 5. Annual household income – thousand BDT 60 - 227 121.27 30.45 6. Training received 0 - 2 score 0 - 2 0.80 0.54 7. Communication exposure 0 - 84 score 10 - 58 28.16 9.69 8. Cosmopoliteness 0 - 24 score 6 - 24 15.89 4.87 9. Knowledge 0 - 28 score 9.5 - 28 17.70 4.81 10. Risk orientation 10 - 50 score 20 - 38 29.79 3.92 *‘–’ indicates unknown figures

Problem Confrontation in Sunflower Cultivation The sampled farmers had a moderate extent of problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation (M = 23.67, SD = 4.58, CV = 19.33%, observed range = 16 to 38, possible range 0 to 45). The farmers were facing similar extent of problems as indicated by a low value of standard deviation and coefficient of variation. Consequently, the standard error of the means was also small (SE = 0.48). thus, the sampled farmers were a relatively homogenous cluster of individuals confronting various problems in sunflower cultivation. This structure of the farmers would be helpful to formulate a simple extension program to solve their problems.

However, the extent of problems was not the same for all of the identified constraints. Unweighted total scores of the problems showed that the high price of seeds followed by unavailability of improved seed and expensive irrigation were the topmost problems (Table 3).

78 J. Patuakhali Sci. and Tech. Univ. 2015, 6 (1): 73-83 ISSN 1996-4501

Table 3. Ranking of the problems

Rank Problems Score 1 High price of seed 242 2 Unavailability of improved seed 208 3 High price of irrigation 202 4 High price of inputs 199 5 Lack of required amount of seed timely 190 6 High labor cost 174 7 Unavailability of labor 159 8 Less access to appropriate information 157 9 Lack of appropriate knowledge 147 10 Deterioration of soil quality 133 11 Difficulty in oil extraction 112 12 Lack of suitable water for irrigation 90 13 Higher dose of fertilizers needed 83 14 Difficulty in marketing of product 59 15 High insect infestation than other rabi crops 23

Costly seeds with less availability was the topmost problems in sunflower cultivation. The farmers grow BARI sunflower 2 and Hybrid Hysun 33 varieties of sunflower in Nazirpur. These are high yielding but the seeds are very costly. One kilogram of hybrid seeds requires BDT 1400 while other seeds cost only BDT 60 per kilogram. The hybrid variety gives on an average BDT 30 thousand more income than other varieties that is sufficient to recover the high cost of seeds. However, during seeding the extra expenditure for purchasing seeds is not always possible for the poor farmers. In this case, they try to buy BARI sunflower 2 variety but it is less available in the local markets. Therefore, they need to go to even BARI Headquarter in to collect seeds which is not practical (Nath, 2013).

Sunflower cultivation requires two irrigations for better yield. Nazirpur is located in coastal regions. So, the river water is saline which is not suitable for irrigation. In addition, ground water extraction for irrigation is highly expensive due to high depth of fresh water table. Thus, the high cost of irrigation discourages the farmers to cultivate sunflower.

The farmers have less access to information and knowledge related to sunflower cultivation, processing and marketing. Sunflower is a relatively newer crop for the farmers. So, they are unware of potential hazards of its production. During its growing season, birds and caterpillar may destroy plants and seeds. The passersby may also pluck the flowers for decorative purposes. Ultimately, these cause substantial yield loss. More importantly, information related to seed rate, fertilizer dose, pest control and marketing are essential for its successful cultivation. Knowledge gap regarding sunflower cultivation deters the farmers from its expansion in the study areas.

Problem Confrontation in Sunflower Cultivation by the Farmers 79

Problems related to inputs like seeds, irrigation and labor dominated over the problems of fertilizer expenditure, though overall high price of inputs was considered as the fourth most important problems. They do not have much problems related to marketing of sunflowers or extracted oil but they face difficulty if they want to extract oil from sunflower at their locality. A newspaper report says that the farmers have marketing related problems. Though BRAC has an assurance to buy all the products of sunflower from the grower, in reality many of them need to go to distant locations to sell their products (Ahsan, 2015). Small farmers can sell their products easily in the local markets but large farmers need to search for potential buyers who buy in larger quantities. It is a good message that sunflower do not have higher insect infestation that other rabi (winter season from November to February/March) crops as perceived by the farmers.

Determinants of Problem Confrontation Multiple linear regression is a widely used statistical analysis to find out the effect of independent variables on the dependent variable. In our study, we have regressed the selected characteristics of the farmers on their problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation. In order to select the variables to be included in the regression model, step- wise regression (both forward and backward elimination) was used (Faraway, 2002). Summary of the outputs of multiple linear regression with the selected regressors has been shown in Table 4. The constructed regression model is as follows:

Problem = 21.74 + 0.29×Age – 0.02×Income – 1.06×Training + 0.08×Communication + 0.15×Cosmopoliteness – 0.16×Knowledge – 0.35×Risk

The estimated value of the problem confrontation was significantly influenced by age, training received, cosmopoliteness, farm knowledge and risk orientation of the farmers at least at 10% level of significance. Feder et al. (1985) also noted that risk aversive attitude of the farmers and less communication are the causes of realizing less benefit from new practices. The variables having p-values greater than 0.10 do not have significant effect on the problem confrontation but those are also important as they influence the other independent variables that constitute the model. However, this model explains 53.56% of the total variance in problem confrontation. The remaining variance depends on the stochastic disturbance or random error terms or unobserved variables that could not be possible to investigate. The intercept of the model is 21.74 which indicates the intrinsic value of the problem confrontation when all the predictors have zero values. This intrinsic value reaches to the estimated mean value of problem confrontation (M = 23.67) by the influence of the independent variables. This small influence of the predictors on the problem confrontation is due to the small variance of the problem confrontation (SD = 4.58). This could also be due to a less sensitive scale to measure the problem confrontation.

80 J. Patuakhali Sci. and Tech. Univ. 2015, 6 (1): 73-83 ISSN 1996-4501

Table 4. Multiple linear regression of the predictors on problem confrontation

Standardized Regression Predictors regression Probability coefficient coefficient Intercept/ constant 21.743 0.000 0.0005 Age 0.294 0.526 0.0000 Annual household income -0.017 -0.111 0.1696 Training received -1.059 -0.123 0.0999 Communication exposure 0.080 0.170 0.1267 Cosmopoliteness 0.154 0.164 0.0689 Knowledge -0.160 -0.168 0.0983 Risk orientation -0.347 -0.297 0.0040 Standard error = 3.246, R2 = 0.5356, F(7, 84) = 13.84, P-value = 0.000

Standardized regression coefficient indicates that age and risk orientation have the highest level of influence (p < 0.05) on the problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation. Increase in age by one year of the farmers increases the score of the problem confrontation by 0.29 holding other predictors constant. Older farmers face greater extent of problems because they are traditional by nature. They have less enthusiastic attitude to obtain knowledge and expertise to solve the problems even after their recognition of the problems. On the other hand, the more the farmers are risk oriented, the lesser they face problems in sunflower cultivation. Risk aversive farmers do not take risk to initiate new farm practices; so the problems stay on their hands for longer duration. The risk takers are not afraid of losing their farm outputs; they continue to cultivate even with riskier practices; they gain experience and their problems gradually disappear. The risk aversive attitude has also been identified as a constraint to technology adoption in another study (Guerin & Guerin, 1994).

The less influential factors are training, cosmopoliteness and knowledge on sunflower cultivation. The farmers having more training experience and higher knowledge on sunflower cultivation confronted less extent of problems. This is intuitively rational because these type of farmers are of expert categories. They can foresee the upcoming problems and know how to properly address those problems. Consequently, they perceive less problems in sunflower cultivation. However, the negative influence of cosmopoliteness deserves special attention. Apparently, cosmopolite farmers should possess greater expertise in sunflower cultivation but in reality they face greater problems. This is due to the measurement of cosmopoliteness in a general way. In this study, cosmopoliteness has been defined as the extent of outward mobility other than the own locality by the farmers; but whether they are visiting those outward places in favor of sunflower cultivation was not taken into consideration. In reality, the farmers having higher level of cosmopoliteness have less affiliation with farming activities. They are connected to other non-farm income earning activities that requires to visit different unions, upazilas, districts or capital city. Therefore, with the increase of cosmopoliteness there is a tendency to decrease the extent of sunflower cultivation because of considering sunflower cultivation as either a difficult task or a problematic farming activity. Consequently, increased

Problem Confrontation in Sunflower Cultivation by the Farmers 81 cosmopoliteness of the farmers had increased the extent of problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation.

However, the final model was free from multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity problem as checked by variance inflation factor (VIF) values and White’s non-constant variance (NCV) test. None of the variables has VIF greater than 2.5 and NCV test produced a chi-squared value of 0.42 (p = 0.52). So, multicollinearity was not a concern for this model and there was insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis of non- constant variance (heteroscedastic). Visual inspection of residuals vs. fitted plot reveals that the variance across the values of problem confrontation was constant. Normal Q-Q plot has ensured the linear relationship between the regressors and regressand. Residual vs leverage plot showed that the observations did not have any influential points with high leverage that could pull the regression line towards them. Therefore, we can assume the regression coefficients in the model were unbiased with a stable level of p- values because the assumptions of linearity and constant variance of the error term were satisfied. The coefficient of determination and significant F statistics have made the model a fair representation of the reality (Faraway, 2002; Gujarati & Porter, 2009). However, it was assumed that the dependent variable (problem confrontation) was endogenous; and the exogenous variables (selected characteristics) were uncorrelated with the error terms (Baltagi, 2008). This could not be verified due to a lack of suitable instrumental variables (Staiger & Stock, 1997). Hence, the reverse causation of problem confrontation was ignored. Nonetheless, problem confrontation is influenced by the characteristics, and in turn, the problem confrontation may also influence the characteristics in a real world. Thus, the selected regression model might have endogeneity problem. Solving the endogeneity problem might reveal more precious effect of the characteristics on the problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation.

Conclusions

The sunflower farmers in the study areas faced various input related problems, such as costly seed with limited availability, expensive irrigation water, labor scarcity etc. Sunflower cultivation in the study area is a promising farm practice to increase the cropping intensity through covering the fallow lands in dry winter period. The farmers faced moderate level of problems in sunflower cultivation that has a possibility to overcome or at least minimize through addressing the problems properly. This study reveals the influencing factors of their problem confrontation. Age and risk orientation of the farmers contributed much on the problem confrontation in sunflower cultivation. Other factors include training and knowledge on sunflower cultivation. Older farmers faced more problems than younger farmers. These farmers need to be trained on sunflower cultivation to enhance their knowledge and understanding of different aspects of sunflower cultivation. Besides, older farmers tend to be risk aversive. So, they need some sort of assurance from public and private sectors. In particular, the input related problems should be addressed by the government, even if needed, with more input subsidies. The non-government

82 J. Patuakhali Sci. and Tech. Univ. 2015, 6 (1): 73-83 ISSN 1996-4501

organizations can facilitate the processing and marketing of sunflower to support the farmers. Finally, cost-benefit analysis of sunflower cultivation considering the transaction cost (unaccounted cost of information access related to inputs, processing and marketing) needs to be carefully performed to find out the demotivating factors of sunflower cultivation. Thus, it could be a vital farm practice to increase the cropping intensity of saline prone coastal lands as in the study areas.

REFERENCES

Ahsan, Z. 2015. Sunflower farming becoming popular in Pirojpur. Retrieved on October 20, 2016, from http://www.observerbd.com/2015/04/01/81143.php Baltagi, B. 2008. Econometrics (4th ed.). Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. FAO. (2015). Crop water information: sunflower. Retrieved on June 10, 2016, from http://www.fao.org/nr/water/cropinfo_sunflower.html Faraway, J. J. 2002. Practical regression and anova using R. Julian J. Faraway. Feder, G., Just, R. E., & Zilberman, D. 1985. Adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries: A survey. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 33(2): 255–298. Guerin, L. J., & Guerin, T. F. 1994. Constraints to the adoption of innovations in agricultural research and environmental management: A review. Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, 34: 549–571. Gujarati, D. N., & Porter, D. C. 2009. Basic econometrics (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/ Irwin. Hossain, S. 2011. Farmers opt for sunflower cultivation in Patuakhali. Retrieved on June 12, 2016, from http://www.thedailystar.net/news-detail-191270 Karmalkar, A., McSweeney, C., New, M., & Lizcano, G. 2010. UNDP climate change country profiles: Bangladesh. Retrieved on October 9, 2016, from http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/climate/projects/undp- cp/UNDP_reports/Bangladesh/Bangladesh.hires.report.pdf Moser, C. M., & Barrett, C. B. 2006. The complex dynamics of smallholder technology adoption: The case of SRI in Madagascar. Agricultural Economics, 35(3): 373–388. Muralidharudu, Y., Ravishankar, G., Hebbara, M., & Patil, S. G. 1999. Genotypic variation in sunflower (Helianthus annuus) for salt tolerance. The Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 69(5). Nath, D. K. 2013. Crop cultivation scenario in Barisal region. Retrieved on October 20, 2016, from https://dknath2004.wordpress.com/tag/popular-crop-of-barisal/ Nath, D. K. 2016. Cropping intensity of Barisal region. Retrieved on October 20, 2016, from https://dknath2004.wordpress.com/category/cropping-systems/

Problem Confrontation in Sunflower Cultivation by the Farmers 83

Rahman, H. 2015. Sunflower farming on rise in Pirojpur. Retrieved on October 20, 2016, from http://www.thedailystar.net/sunflower-farming-on-rise-in-pirojpur-22595 Ramachandran, N. 2013. Gender, climate change and household food security: A South Asian perspective. In M. Behnassi, O. Pollmann, & G. Kissinger (Eds.), Sustainable food security in the era of local and global environmental change (pp. 69–84). Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer. Roy, G. L. 2000. Research methods in social sciences and extension education. Kolkata: Naya Prakash. Staiger, D., & Stock, J. H. 1997. Instrumental variables regression with weak instruments. Econometrica, 65(3): 557–586. Star Business Report. 2013. BRAC to produce sunflower oil. Retrieved on October 20, 2016, from http://www.thedailystar.net/news/brac-to-produce-sunflower-oil Top Crop Manager. 1999. Sunflowers for saline soils. Retrieved on October 20, 2016, from http://www.topcropmanager.com/irrigation/sunflowers-for-saline-soils-2209