If placed within proper range of a Bee House (5 squares in any cardinal direction), a Sunflower will cause the Honey produced to become more profitable.
Since both sunflowers and their seeds can be processed into oil using an Oil Maker, when processing sunflowers into oil it is more profitable to first process the crop into Sunflower Seeds using a Seed Maker. This will yield on average 2 seeds, producing on average 2 oil for 1 sunflower instead of only 1 oil.