This document discusses seed development, pollination, and germination. It begins by explaining that seeds develop from fertilized ovules, containing genes from both parents. Seeds can develop through cross-pollination, when pollen is transferred between different plants, or self-pollination within the same plant. The pollen contains sperm cells that fertilize the egg, forming an embryo and nourishing endosperm. Germination begins as the radicle emerges, and seedlings differ between monocots and dicots. The document provides details on an organic seedsman's practices and challenges of breeding new varieties.

1. B-Special
Supplement on
Organic Seeds
Winter, 2011-12
Seed Development
and Germination by Jack Kittredge
Sources for this information include theseedsite.
co.uk, Ohio State University, and Oregon State
University
Seed Development
Seeds develop from ovules in the female part
of the plant after they have been fertilized,
or pollinated, by pollen from the male parent
plant. This is sexual reproduction and the seeds
contain the genes of both the male and female
parents.
The ovules are the embryos from which the
seed will develop. At the time of pollination,
they are very small compared to the mature
seed. Without being pollinated, the ovules will
not develop into seeds.
Pollination can be accomplished by cross-polli-nation
or by self-pollination.
Cross-pollination occurs when pollen is deliv-ered
to a flower from a different plant. Plants
adapted to outcross or cross-pollinate often
have taller stamens (the male reproductive or-gan)
than pistils (the female reproductive organ)
or use other mechanisms to better ensure the
spread of pollen to other plants’ flowers.
Self-pollination occurs when pollen from one
flower pollinates the same flower or other flow-ers
of the same individual. It is thought to have
evolved under conditions when pollinators such
as insects were not reliable vectors for pollen
transport, and is most often seen in short-lived
annual species and plants that colonize new
locations. Plants adapted to self-fertilize often
have similar stamen and pistil lengths. Plants
that can pollinate themselves and produce vi-able
offspring are called self-fertile. Plants that
cannot fertilize themselves are called self-ster-ile,
a condition which mandates cross pollina-tion
for the production of offspring
Each pollen grain contains a vegetative cell and
a generative cell that divides to form two sperm
cells: the male gametes. Pollen is transferred
from the stamen by the process of pollination.
In 80% or more of the cases this involves trans-fer
by one of 200,000 species of living agents,
most of which are insects but include birds and
bats. Of the cases of abiotic pollination (that not
involving an animal vector) the vast majority is
by wind, with some by water for aquatic plants.
Once reaching the pistil, or carpel, the pollen is
caught by hairs, flaps, or other obstructions in
the stigma, or receptive tip. The pollen germi-nates
in response to a sugary fluid secreted by
the stigma. The vegetative cell then produces
the pollen tube, a protrusion from the pollen
grain which carries the sperm cells within its
cytoplasm. This tube is the transportation me-dium
of the male gamete to reach the egg cell.
The germinated pollen tube must drill its way
to the bottom of the ovary to reach the ovule.
Once the pollen tube successfully attains an
ovule, it delivers the two sperm cells with a
burst. One of them fertilizes the female gamete
(the egg cell) to form an embryo, which will
become the future plant. The other one fuses
with both polar nuclei (created in the ovary by
the process of cell division which created the
ovule) to form the endosperm, which serves as
the embryo’s food supply. The endosperm is
rich in starch, proteins and oils and is a major
source of human food (e.g., wheat, barley, rye,
oats, corn). Finally, the ovary will develop into
a fruit and the ovules will develop into seeds.

2. B- 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
We can often judge how close the seeds are to being
ripe from the size or color of the fruit or seedpod.
Unripe seeds are soft, white or green, and enclosed
in a hard green fleshy fruit or pod. When seeds are
ripe and mature they change to brown or green, de-velop
a hard covering, and the seedpod dries out and
changes to white or brown. It eventually splits to
release them.
Producing seeds uses a lot of the plant’s energy. If
the plant is dead or dying, it will not have enough
energy to complete the process. This is one of the
reasons you are unlikely to be able to get seeds from
cut flowers. The plant needs to be able to gather
food while it is developing seeds, and the seedpod
needs to remain attached to the parent plant until the
seeds are fully developed.
Development of the seeds, from pollination to shed-ding
of the ripe seeds, can take several weeks or
even months, but seeds gathered before the process
has been completed will not be viable.
Seeds and Germination
Most seeds contain less than 20% water, as opposed
to about 80% in growing tissues. Most of the limited
water in seeds is bound to macromolecules, so that
little is available for metabolic reactions. Cellular
membranes are disorganized under these conditions.
Because the water potential of seeds is extremely
low they are capable of drawing water from soils
that have too little water to support normal plant
growth. As the seed imbibes water, cell membranes
reorganize and metabolism begins. The seed may
not germinate at this point, however. In addition to
water, many seeds require a period of cold exposure
(stratification) or leaching of inhibitors by water
before germination is possible. This applies particu-larly
to wild species; many cultivated plants have
been selected for ease of germination.
Many seeds require light for germination; much of
our understanding of this phenomenon derives from
experiments with lettuce seeds in which germination
is stimulated by red light and inhibited by far-red.
These seeds, if buried in the soil, will not germinate
unless the soil is turned over so that they are ex-posed
to light. This is part of the theory behind “no-till”
crop production and recent ideas that it might
be a good idea to plow at night
The radicle or root is usually the first part of the em-bryo
to emerge from the seed coat. After this, differ-ent
structures emerge, depending on the species. The
most fimdamental structural difference is between a
monocot and a dicot.
A monocot has only one seed leaf (monocot is short
for ‘monocotyledon’. A cotyledon is a seed leaf,
and ‘mono’ means one). This seed leaf is usually the
same shape as the adult leaf, long and thin, and the
leaf veins nearly always run parallel to the central
midrib. Sometimes the adult leaves are pinnate, as
in many palms, but the veins are parallel on each
leaflet. There are several monocot plant families that
are instantly recognizable. Many food plants are
grasses, so crops like wheat, oats, barley and corn
are all monocots. Palms, Orchids, and most bulbous
plants are monocots.
A dicot has two cotyledons (dicot is short for ‘di-cotyledon’,
and ‘di’ means two). The seed leaves are
usually rounded and fat, because they are the two
halves of the seed. The first true leaves can be many
different shapes, from long and thin to rounded or
palmate. Most trees and shrubs and many garden an-nuals
and perennials are dicots, and there are many
more species of dicots than there are monocots.
Seeds need a supply of food to support the embryo
plant until it can collect its own food. This is the
reason for the endosperm. With some exceptions, in
monocots, this is inside the seed coat but separate
from the cotyledon. In dicots, the cotyledons contain
the endosperm.
monocot (oats) dicot (beans)
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3. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-3
by Frank Morton as interviewed by Jack Kittredge
I’m a self-trained seedsman, I grow 7-8 acres of
organic seeds on a 50 acre organic farm in Oregon.
I’m business partners with the people who run the
vegetable farm. My wife and I and our workers pro-duce
the seeds that we sell to seed companies – pret-ty
much all the seed companies that supply organic
farmers: Johnny’s, Fedco, High Mowing, Burpee,
Territorial.
Our catalog at www.wildgardenseeds.com lists 156
varieties, plus several seed mixtures, from 28 crop
species. We concentrate on salad greens because I
used to be a salad green grower, I’m one of the orig-inators
of the idea of plastic bags of salads. I started
selling to restaurants in 1983. I shipped a lot to the
east coast using recycled packaging and UPS deliv-ery.
That’s how we paid for our farm. In the process
I was also breeding varieties. That seems like a spe-cialized
skill, but if you realize it, in the past farmers
bred everything -- starting10,000 years ago.
I started breeding as a fluke. I started keeping my
own seeds – it seemed the natural thing to do. Self-sufficiency
seemed natural. I was learning as I went
along. Accidently I had a cross pollination between
a red and green lettuce. It appeared spontaneously.
It was a red oak leaf. I realized that there had been
a cross between a red romaine and a green oak leaf.
I realized this is where new varieties come from. It
was a hybrid. I kept it and grew it out to seed. I got
only 55 seeds, but I planted those seeds. In the F2
generation (editor: F1 is the first filial generation
after breeding diverse lines, F2 is the second, or the
grandchildren of the original lines, so to speak) I got
the traces of all the parents in an unbelievable level
of genetic diversity. There were new greens and
reds, that hadn’t been in the parents. There was new
ruffling of the edges. When I saw all these new vari-eties
I realized I could be a plant breeder in conjunc-tion
with raising salad. I thought that would make
marketing easy!
Becoming an Organic Seedsman
Then I realized I could even have an organic seed
company and I wouldn’t have to change anything I
was doing. I thought that would be a very good idea.
After September 11. 2001 that is what happened.
My salad business disappeared. All the restaurants
on the east coast closed down. They couldn’t get
shipments from the west coast. Some never opened
again. My biggest customer sent his staff home for 3
weeks and never reopened.
So we were in the seed business. We had been grad-ually
pruning down our salad work for 5 years and
starting to sell seed to a few companies. We had ac-cumulated
a seed collection those years and figured
out which varieties had the best traits. You have to
know your plants if you are going to breed seeds.
The only way to learn what makes a cabbage is to
grow it over years.
For anyone doing breeding, the concept of self-pollinating
versus cross-pollinating is crucial. Self-pollinating
plants such as wheat, lettuce, purslane,
and sweet peppers pollinate themselves. Heirloom
tomatoes cross-pollinate but modern ones usually
self-pollinate. I am growing a huge variety of let-tuce
this year -- 35 varieties. I make them by cross-pollinating
varieties -- growing lettuce side by side
and holding the flowers together. Then, after 10
generations of self-pollinating, you get 99% similar-ity
-- essentially they are clones. Plants which self-pollinate
in nature don’t seem to develop inbreed-ing
depression, or loss of vigor, the way naturally
cross-pollinating species do when you force them to
self-pollinate.
The reason is that cross-pollinating plants are like
people. The population that we come from has a lot
of deleterious, recessive genes. In normal popula-tions
of humans or of corn most of the genes that are
delirious are recessive. Because they are rare they
tend to be paired up with the dominant gene. So the
bad effect never shows up. By mating in large popu-lations
of people or corn you try to encourage cross-ing.
The plant makes an effort to encourage this.
In corn, for instance, the male and female parts are
far apart to discourage self-pollination. The tassel
(male) is way up on the top of the plant. The silks
are down on the ears (female). It practically guaran-tees
that genetic mixing will occur.
In plant breeding for agriculture you have crops that
naturally cross-pollinate -- carrots, cabbages, squash
-- but about 60 percent are self-pollinated. About
30-40 percent are cross-pollinated. Then there are
ones that are in between.
Self-pollinating plants don’t have the deleterious
genes. There is a lot of debate about which kind of
pollination came first. A lot of scientists thought
cross-pollination did. But they have shown recently
that self-pollination is very old.
Tomatoes and peppers are in the middle. You can
self-pollinate a pepper for many years without that
inbreeding depression. The same with a tomato. But
in nature they cross readily. The tomato and pep-per,
of course, got taken from their home in South
America to Europe and the same pollinating insects
photo courtesy Frank Morton
Frank Morton collecting lettuce seed
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4. B- 4 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
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were not there. So those plants that were more likely
to self-pollinate were the ones to make seeds. It’s a
survival strategy. If you don’t make seeds, you’re
out!
What we have seen is that if you go to the Andes,
where peppers and tomatoes are native, they cross-pollinate.
But if you follow drainages and go up in
elevation, their numbers decrease until when you
reach certain altitudes there won’t be tomatoes.
Then there will be new ones in different valleys.
The mountains are wonderful for breeding this di-versity.
So selection occurs within populations that
favor self-pollination.
They are not necessarily using the same genes as
the tropical tomatoes or peppers. It might be that
in these new environments the deleterious genes
become favorable. When plants leave where they
originated that is when self-pollinations occurs. The
same thing happens when you breed them across the
world.
A few things do not cross -- beets, Swiss chard.
One beet plant will not produce seed. Chicory is
the same. Whereas an endive plant is 100% self-pollinated.
Spinach normally has male and female
plants. But if you remove all the males, the females
will make their own pollen.
Breeding for Organic Plants
Conventional farms have an environment moder-ated
by chemical inputs. The nutrients are soluble
in water so roots don’t have to compete. On the
disease and insect fronts, if you are spraying fungi-cides
plants don’t need resistance to disease. Same
for insecticides. If those diseases aren’t part of the
growing environment, of course, you can’t breed
for resistance to them. Breeding should be done in
the area of intended use using the farming practices
expected to be used. If you are breeding for chemi-cal
agriculture, use those chemicals on the breeding
farm.
Plant breeding for organics has to take place in an
organic environment.

5. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-5
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There are traits we want in organics -- such as
roots. Organic growers need plants with extensive
roots because they are putting down organic fertil-ity
which is widely distributed and you needs roots
which are extensive and have lots of root hairs.
Not every plant is the same in the ability to pick up
calcium, for instance. So ask how is the fertility ap-plied.
Another trait is tops, as in carrot tops. A lot of hy-brid
carrots have small tops. I’ve heard farmers
complain you can’t even bunch them! Carrot tops
make the carrot grow. They also shade out weeds.
Getting carrots established requires forming a good
leafy canopy to slow weed growth.
I breed kale so I ask people what shape of a kale
plant do they want. How tall? There is a class of
dwarf kale with short stems. It has less stalk and
more leaves. In cold areas you want short dwarf kale
because it can hide under the snow and not freeze.
When I ask people in Oregon, they want tall kale.
There is no snow cover here, but we do get rain and
that makes mud and short plants get muddy. Bacte-ria
also splash up with mud and can cause disease.
Finally, tall plants are easier to pick.
Organic growers tend to produce food in agricultur-ally
marginal areas. So in Vermont or New York you
have really different environments than around Da-vis,
California. Breeders in Davis are thinking about
the production centers of the crop. So to the extent
that organic agriculture is local, you need to breed
to know the local situation. The centers of breeding
are not breeding for these marginal areas. They are
breeding for the Salinas valley or for spinach grow-ers
in Arkansas or Texas. I would like to see local
breeders everywhere.
To the extent that something is locally bred and the
environment is unmoderated by chemicals, there
is no difference between organic and conventional
seed. But nobody is doing local breeding except the
organic breeders. It is a skill that is accessible to
everyone. You don’t need a degree in plant breeding
to do it.
Books for organic farmers on plant breeding are
scarce. I would recommend two. One is Seed to
Seed, published by the Seed Savers Exchange. It is
quite outdated and needs to be revised. I understand
that the Organic Seed Alliance is collaborating with
them on revising it. The other is Breed Your Own
Vegetable Varieties by Carol Deppe, published by
Chelsea Green. It has had 2 editions. It shows you
anybody can do it. It has a lot of breeder stories and
is illustrative of how you can go about a breeding
project.
Breeding is all just practice. Cleaning is part of it.
You winnow and screen and do that again and again.
There are some easy exercises if you are interested
in plant breeding. I suggest growing two radishes to
seed side by side. Grow one long white radish and
one red round one. Let them cross, then keep them
separate and keep the seeds. Grow those out to be
round and pink. They all will they look the same –
you have created a hybrid. But save and plant that
seed and the next generation is incredibly diverse in
color and shape. Mendel did this a hundred and fifty
years ago with peas!
But it all takes time. That is what discourages
people. That is why you need to do it in conjunction
with regular gardening. Save a few, let them cross, if
it catches your interest you won’t let go.
Also, if you want to experiment in genetics without
waiting a year, there is company in Wisconsin called
Fast Plants. They have come to me for genetic re-sources.
It is one guy who worked at the University
of Wisconsin and got an idea for breeding plants
on his desktop under lights. He bred a mustard
genotype that grows fast and continued to select for
fast growth. He now has seed to seed mustard in
28 days! He then took those and crossed them with
plants showing many colors and shapes. He sells
them to schools, so children can learn about genet-ics
through several generations in one school term.
They also use them in space for experiments in
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6. B- 6 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
by Bryan O’Hara
Tobacco Road Farm is primarily a vegetable grow-ing
operation. Over the last twenty years or so we
have saved seed from numerous crops and worked
to develop more beneficial varieties for our growing
conditions here in Eastern Connecticut. These ef-forts
have been undertaken for a number of reasons,
including to improve productivity and to provide
an interesting endeavor in our agricultural pursuits.
These efforts have lead to a more harmonious re-lationship
with our natural environment as well as
more vegetables and also profit.
A major benefit to our seed saving has been im-proved
germination and vigor of the seedlings and
crops. This vigor comes from our ability to select
the most vigorous plants to supply the seed as well
as freshness of the seed and our ability to interbreed
the seed crop. In selecting specimens for seed sav-ing
we generally will rogue out small or otherwise
inferior plants while still maintaining a larger ge-netic
pool of superior specimens. Size of seed can
be selected during the cleaning process to secure the
largest and heaviest. Seed freshness is also certain.
As an example, seed harvested from a kale crop
in July can be seeded in the same month of July.
This freshness cannot be secured from commercial
sources where age of seed is not even known by the
purchaser.
Beyond selection, breeding crops for vigor generally
takes advantage of large genetic pools to provide
hybrid vigor. Often these crops are diverse in ap-pearance
and are referred to as “land races”. Exam-ples
of our land races include – mizuna, tatsoi and
maruba, all bred together with seed of the offspring
saved for many successive years. These mizuna-like
plants are faster growing and hardier than any of
Plant Breeding and Seed Saving
at Tobacco Road Farm
photo by Rob Durgy
Ripe kale seed ready for harvest

7. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-7
their original parents and have diverse leaf shapes
and colors. It is an excellent selection for winter
salads. Another example of a land race grown here
is our watermelons, which originally came from a
Polish neighbor many years ago. This melon is a
very highly productive melon that produces melons
of different color green rinds from green striped
to a more solid, lighter green color. All the melons
have excellent flavor and the markets have accepted
these melons’ appearance. Vigor is derived from the
genetic diversity in out crossing crops. Out crossing
crops are those that readily breed with other plants,
that is, are not self-pollinating. Out crossing crops
are generally those crops that are pollinated by wind
or insects. In the self-pollinated crops like toma-toes,
seed is simply saved from the healthiest few
individuals as the need for diversity is much less.
This gives us the ability to readily maintain pinnacle
specimens in self-pollinated crops like tomatoes or
peppers.
While crop vigor is certainly a major benefit of seed
saving, the ability to select for the desired character-istics
is also very helpful. Some of our efforts have
been to improve cold tolerance, improve coloration
or lengthen harvest periods. In the case of cold
tolerance, we took a variety of arugula and over-wintered
an October seeding. This variety had about
a 10% survival rate. We saved the seed from this
10% and replanted them the next fall. These plants
survived winter at essentially 100% and were much
less prone to damage in freezing temperatures. This
is now our standard fall and winter arugula.
An example of lengthening harvest times is our ef-fort
to breed a true biennial kale. In this case it was
noted that about 5% of Konserva kale plants will not
flower in the spring following their over-wintering
from a previous spring planting. These plants are
dug up and placed together during their second
spring in an effort to have them flower in their third
spring. This project is ongoing and is difficult be-cause
of its long growth period and low plant count,
leading to low diversity. The benefit of having pro-duction
kale, however, that does not bolt in spring
after overwintering will be great.
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8. B- 8 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
Often we save seed simply to preserve varieties that
are no longer commercially available, such as the
Siegfried leek or presto cress. These varieties are
further adapted to our farm’s environment by our
selection of them and kept vigorous with high popu-lations
for breeding.
Sometimes we will re-invigorate existing commer-cial
varieties. For example, Dwarf Scotch Kale from
commercial sources seemed to be lacking vigor;
perhaps the seed that was being offered was old. We
grew out a large population and secured a vigor-ous
fresh seed. Also, hybrid seed can be stabilized.
Many hybrids are quite true to type if succeeding
generations are grown. Here stabilization may re-quire
several years of breeding to secure a consistent
plant. High plant populations are important to main-tain
diversity for out-crossing crops using this pro-cess.
Or if diversity in plant type can be tolerated, a
land race type of crop may be successfully started
from a commercial hybrid source.
Large volumes of seed are often produced, and most
can be saved for many years. This allows us to pro-duce
seed in different years that would have cross
breeding problems if grown during the same season.
Large volumes of seed are also useful for reducing
seed expenses, and gives us the ability to seed very
heavily if desired. This allows for broadcast seeding
of salad green crops, or seeding vegetables for cover
crops.
Seed production has also resulted in an increase in
beneficial insects and therefore a reduction in insect
pests. This occurs because the production cycle
of crops to seed often results in a food source and
habitat for these insects. An example is the Cotesia
Wasp, a predator of cabbage caterpillars. This wasp
lays its eggs on the caterpillar. The larvae burrows
into and then consume the caterpillar. The larvae
then emerge, pupates and new wasps emerge. The
pupal stage generally occurs on the leaf of the cab-bage
family, and pupae are seen as small white
cocoons, often in clusters. The wasp feeds on the
nectar of cabbage family plants. We have overwin-tered
the pupal cocoons in collards and seen the
wasps emerge the day the collards started to flower
in the spring. Now what if all the cabbage family
residue had been tilled in the fall. Would any pupae
that survived have anything to eat when they emerge
as wasps?
This relationship of the crops full growth cycle pro-viding
both the necessary habitat and nectar source
for the proliferation of the appropriate beneficial in-sects
led to a new understanding of crop production.
These crops offer us much in the way of their use-fulness.
Therefore, in return, we should help them to
proliferate and evolve through seed production -- a
simple, effective relationship.
In terms of how we produce seed, probably the most
important factor is soil fertility. A well-balanced
soil that can sustain healthy plant growth through to
seed production is critical to achieve large, vigorous
seed. Soil overly rich in nitrogen and other vegeta-tive
growth elements will not yield high quality
seed, nor will a soil deficient in necessary nutrients.
A fertile soil also helps with weed control, which is
critical in a long term crop like a seed crop. Often
seed crops are grown with an organic mulch like
leaves, straw or hay to assist weed control and pro-vide
for better soil. The growing practices for the
straw or hay need to be ascertained in order to avoid
hazardous herbicides, herbicides known to damage
vegetable crops.
In terms of the growth cycle of plants, it seems best
to grow crops for seed in their natural patterns. The
vast majority of vegetable crops are either summer
annuals or winter annuals. Summer annuals are
generally frost sensitive crops which are seeded in
spring or summer and produce seed by fall. Tomato,
pepper, squash, melon, bean, pea, okra, basil and
amaranth are examples of summer annuals. Winter
photo by Rob Durgy
Mizuna land race in flower
around the patch applying Plantskydd, and
the deer stayed out until after harvest.
We have such a deer problem in the valley
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about your product, they jump right on it.
Hooper’s Garden Center, in Kalispell, Mon-tana,
sent one of their customers to me,
desperate to see if I could help them save a
$30,000 investment in flowers that were to be
planted for a special event on a large estate.
I sent them to the CHS Country Store (also in
Kalispell), where they proceeded to clean all
the Plantskydd Granular off the shelf. The
estate put in an order for 50 more 20 lbs bags
this year.
The Plantskydd Granular is my favorite re-pellent
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9. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-9
annual crops generally start growth in spring or
summer or later, and flower and produce seed the
following spring. Lettuce, carrot, beet, the cabbage
family, onion, leek, parsley and many others are in
this group. Often they are mistaken for biennials,
but this is inaccurate as their growth period is only
one year, generally from summer to the follow-ing
summer, an annual cycle. A true biennial like
burdock starts its growth in one summer, forming
a small root. This crop then spends the entire next
year growing a larger root which spends a second
year underground and then flowers the next summer,
a full two year growth cycle.
It is critically important to understand this winter
annual cycle in order to grow high quality seed in
our environment. Winter annuals seeded in summer
or fall and grown through winter and allowed to
flower in spring have consistently grown seed free
of seed borne diseases and are vastly more prolific
than a winter annual sown in spring which then
flowers in summer. Lettuce has been a perfect ex-ample
of this with prolific overwintered production
and next to nothing of quality from spring sowings.
This is not to say that you cannot produce seed from
spring sown winter annuals. Some winter annu-als
will generally not flower in their last summer
if sown in winter or spring, such as cabbage, kale,
carrot, beet, parsley, onion etc. Others will perform
as summer annuals from a winter or spring sowing
such as broccoli, lettuce, mustards, cilantro etc. and
produce seed in their first summer.
Often crop cycles are staggered in order to pro-duce
pure seed from similar crops that will readily
cross breed – for example, mizuna may be sown in
October for an early flowering seed crop, where a
late sowing in December of tatsoi will flower late
enough in the spring to miss the mizuna’s flowers.
Crops can also be separated by harvesting, which
delays flowering, or by distance, such as another
field entirely.
In the case of selecting the best plants for seed col-lection,
rogueing generally occurs. This is especially
important in the out-crossing crops where large
populations are maintained. In rogueing, plants are
removed which are weak or otherwise do not meet
our requirements. In the land races where vast di-versity
is tolerated and even encouraged, rogueing is
performed even less and is limited to very undesir-able
traits, such as hairiness in a salad crop. In self-pollinated
crops much less rogueing takes place and
seed is simply saved from the superior specimens,
though if we are really trying to “clean up” a variety
we will use rogueing to give better isolation.
The basic process for most seed crops is to cut seed
stalks when the first basal seed pods are just start-ing
to shatter. These basal seed pods generally have
the best seed so it is important not to let many of
them shatter before harvest, yet they also need to be
at full maturity. These seed stalks are then brought
into a shade cloth covered hoop tunnel and allowed
to dry either hanging from the hoops in bunches or
spread out on benches. Once dry they are stomped
upon in a large sheet metal pan. The bulky materi-als
are then removed from the top. The seed and
chaff is then poured from one smaller pan to another
through various sized screens, both too large and too
small for the seed to pass through. This removes the
vast majority of the chaff.
The seed is then winnowed by pouring from one pan
to another in front of a fan. If done carefully almost
all chaff and small light seed can be removed in this
manner. The seed is then left for a day or two in a
very dry location to allow any insects to leave. The
seed is then stored in airtight glass gallon jars in the
dark with desiccant packs inserted into the jars.
For summer fruits the seeds are simply removed
from the melon, bean, pepper or squash and dried
before storage. In the case of the tomato, the seed
and pulp is removed and allowed to ferment for sev-eral
days, then washed, dried and stored.
All of these efforts have seemingly led to increased
profit since the benefits are substantial. However, no
cost benefit analysis has ever been done here. Seed
production does require additional planning, labor,
and observation and may be too much to embark
on for many labor-strapped farms. Even small, well
placed efforts, however, may have a dramatic effect.
This could lead to more seed developed for our spe-cific
region, and if distributed and shared with other
regional farms would create greater self-reliance in
our means of production.
photo by Ropb Durgy
Various screens attached to wooden frames for sifting seed by size

10. B- 10 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
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11. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-11
by CR Lawn
Seed is an essential living component of organic
systems. The use of organically-grown seed that is
adapted to organic systems and free of contaminants
is critical to overall organic integrity.
Few in the organic movement would take issue with
such noble sentiments. But the dream that organic
farmers use only certified organic seeds, while salu-tary
as an end goal, is of no help in navigating the
way there.
From the get-go, the Organic Seed Rule has been
one of the most controversial features of the NOP,
for it had no precedent in the decentralized certifi-cation
operations that the NOP replaced. In effect,
it called for an entire industry to develop out of a
vacuum, a pertinent fact that puts the Organic Trade
Association’s (OTA) impatience at the slow pace of
industry development in perspective. In railing at a
too-slow increase in organic seed use since imple-mentation
of the NOP, OTA failed to appreciate
why 11 years transition time has been insufficient
to allow production of organic seed to catch up to
the demand. Given that it takes a minimum of 7-10
years using classical breeding to develop a new va-riety
or to stabilize an hybrid, and that the organic
method rightfully, in my opinion, forbids certain
faster breeding techniques, organic seed develop-ment
represents the ultimate form of slow food.
NOP regulations 205.2 and 205.204 establish a re-quirement
that certified operations use organic seed
and planting stock, but allows an exemption if these
are “not commercially available in an appropriate
form, quality or quantity to fulfill an essential func-tion
in organic production. Price cannot be a consid-eration.”
While many in the organic industry lament
the lack of clarity inherent in the ‘commercial avail-
The Organic Seed Rule

12. B- 12 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
ability’ loophole, and wish that the NOP would take
steps to close, or at least tighten it, much of their
position relies on two premises, both of which are,
in my experience, demonstrably false: First, that as
long as exemptions are permitted, organic farmers
will shirk the organic seed requirement whenever
they can. Second, that the organic seed industry will
not be willing to invest in capacity absent the assur-ance
of a stronger, more strictly enforced rule.
My experience at Fedco Seeds gives lie to the first
contention. I have found that reasonably priced or-ganically
grown seed of good quality flies off the
shelf. Not only is it purchased by certified organic
farmers, who are required to look for it under the
NOP rule, but it is also chosen by droves of non-cer-tified
farmers and gardeners who are under no such
obligation. That’s because organic is far more than
a market niche, it is a social and ethical movement.
Much of the demand for organic seed preceded
the Rule. It sprang from grass roots ethical choices
made by the pioneering generations of the move-ment
and enthusiastically embraced by the next. To
test this contention I conducted a small survey. I
found that our customers chose to purchase organic
seed 38.1% of the time, even though only 26.5% of
our listings were certified organic, and even though
organic seed cost 2-3 times as much.
The second contention is harder to refute. I can
point to numerous capacity building initiatives un-dertaken
by entrepreneurs in the last decade, howev-er
-- by us, by our friendly competitors, by our sup-pliers
and by growers -- and I believe that these will
continue to grow in the decade to come. Given the
ever-increasing demand for quality organic seed at a
fair price, there are tremendous investment opportu-nities
even with the Rule as it is. To those would-be
suppliers who might hesitate, I would advise: don’t
wait for an iron-clad Rule. High Mowing didn’t
wait, Family Farmers Seed Co-operative didn’t wait,
we didn’t wait to invest. Our biggest need in the in-dustry
is for more quality wholesalers in the States.
Assess the market and take the risk. We’ll be knock-ing
at your door!
Last year the Organic Seed Alliance, as part of its
first State of Organic Seed Report, conducted a sur-vey
of 1,027 organic farmers in 45 states, finding
that by far the biggest obstacles to greater use of or-ganic
seed are the lack of availability for the specific
varieties wanted (for 79% a moderate or significant
factor) and the lack of sufficient quantity of avail-able
seed (50%).
The quality of available organic seed is quite un-even.
The best varieties, such as those bred and
produced by Frank Morton and Gathering Together
Farm, those originating from Cornell University’s
farmer-breeder collaborations, and some releases
from Europe where organics developed much earlier
and faster than in the States, were trialed and bred
specifically under organic conditions. These are
worth every penny of their price and more. Fedco’s
seed receivers, however, can recite a litany of hor-rors
to attest that some organic seed growers need
additional technical assistance and seed-cleaning
capacity to get up to snuff. In recent years we’ve
invested tens of thousands of dollars to bolster our
lot grow-out and trials research, and our condition-ing
capabilities, to respond to these glaring needs.
Unfortunately, the OSA chose to downplay seed
quality issues in their report, dismissing the signifi-cance
of the 21% of growers (more for vegetable
seed) who reported significant problems, particular-ly
of germination, emergence and trueness to type.
The survey results showed a serious asymmetry,
with only 3% of seed users having more problems
with untreated conventionally-grown seeds com-pared
to 23% having more problems with organic
seed. Since growers are paying a premium of any-where
from 1.5 to ten times the price for organic
seed compared to conventional, they have a reason-able
expectation that its quality should be at least as
good.
Which brings us head-to-head with perhaps the most
problematic feature of the Rule: price. Fully 41% of
organic farmers in the survey admitted taking price
into consideration in their seed selection, despite the
express prohibition of the Rule. It is from this statis-tic
that the “shirker” argument gains traction. Let’s
look at this from the farmers’ perspective. Farming
is one of the highest arts. The ability to observe and
choose varieties best suited to one’s climate, soil
conditions and marketing needs is one of the distin-guishing
characteristics of the skilled practitioner.
Take away the farmer’s right to choose and she is
little better than a serf.
The best farmers choose whatever varieties will
offer the highest value. What factors determine
value? Price, satisfaction with the supplier (acces-sibility,
prompt and accurate service), the genetics
of the cultivar, its consistency, its quality compared
to other strains and similar varieties, its ability to
fill the required marketing niche. As the price for
achieving certification, organic farmers are expected
voluntarily to ignore price; to give up a key factor
in determining value, which is a huge sacrifice. To
quote the OSA report “There is a long and unfortu-nate
history in agricultural policy of treating farmers
unfairly...in order to benefit consumers, retailers,
food companies, processors, financiers and suppliers
of agricultural inputs” (read seed companies). If the
organic movement is not to repeat this tragedy, how
can it reconcile a Rule that asks its farmers to make
such a sacrifice with the lofty desiderata of keeping
organic agriculture “farmer-driven and farmer ori-ented?”
There are no easy answers.
The Rule as stated presents seed companies like
mine with a dilemma as well. Aware that organic
farmers are required to source organic seed, we take
on an added burden whenever we consider adding
an organic cultivar. Because organic farmers are
forced to consider it if we offer it, we must make
doubly sure that it is of sufficient value to justify the
price we’d charge for it. If not, our clear duty to or-ganic
growers is to leave it out of our catalog.
At present, certifying agencies are inconsistent in
applying the rule for sourcing organic seed. Some
are much more stringent than others, but the trend
is toward increasing strictness. Many still maintain
a minimum requirement that farmers search at least
three sources, a requirement that could be clearly
inadequate depending which sources are chosen and
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13. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-13
how thoroughly they are searched. Others ask for a
pattern of continued improvement in the percentage
usage of organic seed. Although both the Organic
Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA)
and OTA, in their 2011 recommendations to the
NOP, endorse the percentage usage test, it is at best
a crude measurement of compliance, requiring cer-tifying
agents to have a significant degree of seed
industry knowledge to apply fairly. As a farmer, I
could be making progress toward greater organic
seed use even while my percentage use is dropping.
How could that be? Let’s look at Carmen pepper.
Johnny’s introduced Carmen pepper in 2006 when it
won an All-America award. For the past five years it
has been available only in conventional seed. 2012
is the first time organic seed will be available. This
is typical for the industry; with few exceptions, new
cultivars usually show up first as conventional offer-ings
and several years elapse before organic seed is
available. Should growers who purchased Carmen
the past five years have been penalized by certifiers?
How about those who want to stay at the cutting
edge by continuing to try new varieties that sound
superior but are available only in conventional seed?
Or let’s suppose that I have specialized in heirloom
tomatoes. Shopping 2011 catalogs from Seeds of
Change, High Mowing, Johnny’s and us, I found 63
different organic listings for heirloom tomatoes. My
certifier could have reasonably insisted on 100% or
near 100% organic seed usage for heirloom toma-toes.
However, now my market has changed and it
demands shell peas and hybrid watermelons instead
of tomatoes. For the latter I could find only three
organic options in the four seed catalogs; for the
peas, just seven. Unless my certifier is knowledge-able
about the seed market, it will unfairly take me
to task when my market changes to peas and melons
or to hybrid summer or winter squash. In particular,
the supply of organically grown hybrid varieties in
the States is way underdeveloped, and the price of
some of the imports, prohibitive.
Because certifiers clearly need more tools to get up
to speed on seeds, and farmers need a more con-venient
jumping-off place to begin their organic
search, I have, after years of holding out, recently
come to support the organic industry’s longtime
push for a national database of organic seed avail-ability,
provided it is used as a tool to benefit farm-ers
in making selections rather than as a cudgel to
enforce the Rule high-handedly, and provided it
observes the following caveats:
1) Seeds are live products. Their availability is in
constant flux, new developments are continu-ous.
The database will be worthwhile only if it
is carefully and knowledgeably maintained and
kept current.
2) For that reason it will be costly to keep up and
farmers and seed companies should not be asked
to bear these costs. Public funding must come
from the NOP.
3) Although I am in favor of requiring organic farm-ers
to search this database as part of their organic
sourcing, it is only a starting point. It cannot
replace a more detailed search through seed cata-logs,
and wise farmers searching for value will
not use it as a short-cut.
4) The mere mention of an available variety on this
database is insufficient to require a farmer to pur-chase
that variety as such a listing is no guaran-tee
of quality or suitability of purpose. Certifiers
may not use this listing to force farmers to pur-chase
specific varieties or deal with seed compa-nies
with whom they do not prefer to patronize.
OSGATA’s recommendation to NOP places pri-mary
responsibility on farmers, not certifiers, to
determine varietal suitability for a given specific
purpose and seed quality sufficiency, recognizing
the complex nuances of seed issues.
Well kept, wisely used and fairly applied, such a da-tabase
can become a valuable tool, not only to farm-ers
to source varieties, not only to certifiers to assess
progress in organic seed use, but also to the entire
organic industry to identify areas of insufficient sup-ply
and develop responses. Applied unfairly, it could
become a bureaucratic nightmare for organic farm-ers.
Though it might be our sextant in navigating to
a truly organic shore, it must be supplemented with
astute observation and close collaboration between
certifiers and farmers, as colleagues working for a
common goal, not as cops and clients!
In recommending any further hurdles for organic
growers, the trends toward increased costs, bureau-cracy,
and onerous documentation in organic certifi-cation
give me great pause. In fact, in the fall issue
of the Organic Broadcaster, longtime organic in-spector
and MOSES organic specialist Harriet Behar
warned that she is seeing organic producers leave
the certified marketplace due to the hassle factor of
excess paperwork.
Along these lines, OTA’s recommendations to
the NOP regarding varietal equivalency present a
real can of worms. Equivalency is mentioned in
the Rule, but its definition is sufficiently vague to
leave open different interpretations. Represent-ing
the goals of some of the larger players in the
industry, OTA would like to see the NOP enforce
equivalency. Depending on specific definitions,
equivalency could be used to force growers to use a
different variety if they cannot source the one they
want. Varietal equivalency, for example, might re-quire
growers to use Michelle lettuce if Sierra were
unavailable, on the grounds that the varieties are
sufficiently similar. Kind equivalency, even broader,
could treat such varieties as Italienischer, Plato II,
Parris Island Cos and Jericho as interchangeable tall
green Romaine lettuces. Not only would this abro-gate
farmers’ fundamental right to choose varieties,
but it would also prove a bureaucratic nightmare
both for growers and certifiers.
In conducting and observing trials, attending con-ferences,
and visiting farmers these past 25 plus
years, I have learned that there is no such thing as
an equivalent variety. Michelle is not Sierra is not
Canasta. Farmers have definite preferences among
varieties as among seed companies, preferences that
should be honored. Even varieties that seem simi-lar
may perform differently in different soil types,
microclimates, or under different practices. The dif-ferences
among varieties can be as subtle as the dif-ferences
in fine wines.
Not only are there significant differences between
similar varieties, but there is also variation among
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14. B- 14 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
different strains of the same variety. If you don’t
believe me, try planting arugula, Scarlet Nantes car-rots
or Cherry Belle radishes from 6 or 8 different
seed companies. Put them alongside each other and
you will see variation. Varieties are alive, constantly
evolving with their environment. Seed companies
and their seed stocks are different, too.
Equivalency is American Seed Trade Association
(ASTA) sophistry at its worst. Its implementation
would turn organic farmers into captives of the seed
industry. It is nothing more than a scheme to enrich
seed companies at the expense of organic farmers. I
cannot imagine why any skilled farmer would ever
want his/her choices to be so restricted. Wisely,
OSGATA elected to eschew all references to equiva-lency
in its recommendations to the NOP. Equiva-lency
has one further fatal drawback. In a worst case
scenario in which the organic industry abandoned
zero tolerance of genetically engineered varieties in
exchange for a defined acceptable threshold, equiva-lency
could be used as a back-door means of permit-ting
the use of GE-contaminated seeds in organics.
Keep in mind that organic seed is still a nascent
industry and needs more time to develop capacity
to bring the supply of quality organic seed into line
with the rapidly-growing demand, and don’t forget
how the law of supply and demand works. If farm-ers
are made captives of the Rule, the resultant spike
in demand will sharply increase the cost of organic
seed. While the seed industry reaps the benefits
of this indirect government subsidy, farmers will
pay the price -- a sad re-enactment of an old and
familiar refrain. While I, too, look to the eventual
day that our organic farms are 100% organic from
seed to table, while I, too, respect those high organic
ideals, I also remember from Economics 101 that
setting the bar higher in the form of stiffer regula-tions
restricts entry to the market. While all sorts of
persuasive public policy benefits are advanced to
justify licensing requirements, the hidden motive, to
limit market access and keep prices high, is rarely
acknowledged. Let us honestly assess where the or-ganic
seed industry fits in this model before we raise
the bar much higher.
Sailors know that the straightest line is seldom the
shortest distance in sailing between two points.
Rarely in life, as in the water, is the wind right
behind our backs. To successfully navigate to our
goal on the other shore, often we must tack and tack
again.
While acknowledging that the organic Rule has pro-vided
an important stimulus in increasing the pro-duction
and use of organic seed, I would argue that
now is not the time to close all loopholes and make
it absolute, or even to greatly intensify enforcement
efforts at the expense of our farmers. Instead let’s
focus most of our energies on expanding capacity in
ways that will benefit rather than hurt organic farm-ers.
As we build infrastructure, develop and refine
skills, we will expand our productive capabilities,
opening up ways to increase the quantity and quality
of good organic seed. As the supply expands over
time to approximate the demand, we will experience
more favorable winds, more opportunities to navi-gate
more directly toward that shore of all-organic
seed use, without having to jettison many members
of our crew. The Organic Seed Alliance report and
the OSGATA recommendations are filled with cre-ative
ideas for such capacity building that could jus-tify
a full-length article of their own.
CR Lawn founded Fedco Seeds in 1978. Full dis-closure:
CR was on the OSGATA Policy Committee
that drafted its latest recommendations to the NOP.
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are neither
those of OSGATA nor of Fedco Seeds, Inc. but rep-resent
only those of the author.
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15. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-15
by Jack Kittredge
Eastern New York, between the Hudson River and
the Berkshires, is Biodynamic country. Hawthorne
Valley Farm, Roxbury Farm, and Copake’s Cam-phill
Village are among the important institutions in
the area that follow the biodynamic philosophy. And
because of the unique features of Camphill Village,
it has become home to a thriving organic seed com-pany,
Turtle Tree Seeds.
The company was started by Beth and Nathan Cor-ymb
in Minnesota, at the headwaters of the Mis-sissippi.
They chose the name based on the Native
American belief that the North American continent
is a turtle with a tree, which is the Mississippi, on its
back.
In 1998 the Corymbs came to Camphill Village in
Copake, looking for a home for the company. They
brought with them the roots they used for perennials
and started putting seed crops in the ground. After
discussion, the community decided the company
would be a good fit. There is a lot of handwork in-volved
in processing seeds, and Camphill Village
has lots of hands. Plus they have a vegetable garden,
a dairy, and an herb garden. So Nathan and Beth
gave Turtle Tree Seeds to the Village.
Ian Robb, who was a farmer at Camphill Village
before becoming active in the seed company, has a
long history of biodynamic growing. He explains
why the company and the Village make such a good
combination: “When you talk about Turtle Tree as
a seed company, people could imagine that it is a
thing unto itself. But that is oversimplified. We can
function because we are in the center of a Biody-namic
support group. How could we be a sustain-
Biodynamic Seeds at
Turtle Tree
able seed company if we didn’t have cows to give
us manure? To be just a seed company, I don’t know
how it could be sustainable unless you have a farm
organism around it. We’re extremely lucky. We have
a dairy farm for manure, an herb garden and a veg-etable
garden where we can trial varieties. We have
a 250 member residential community which can
taste our food. When we grow squash we can extract
the seeds and still feed 200 people with the part we
aren’t using. To take us out and plunk us somewhere
else, I don’t think it would work.”
Lia Babitch, another of the Turtle Tree staff, is a
bright young woman who is fascinated with seeds.
To order call
800-355-5313
or shop online at
www.acresusa.com
The ArT of BAlAncing
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William A. Albrecht, Ph.D. A carefully
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of one element to another that counts. An indispensable
foundation for anyone interested in sustainable,
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Softcover, 227 pages. #7078 — $25.00
A Complete Guide to the
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Biological
the
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the Secret to Better farming . . .
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A safe and sustainable system
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accomplishes this by working in
harmony with nature.
A common-sense approach.
Biological farming focuses on
ways to reduce input costs and
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soil conditions and livestock
health.
Taking care of the soil.
Skilled biological farmers learn
how to take care of soil life —
they nurture it, feed it a bal-anced
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and methods to enhance soil life.
Learn how to fertilize.
Biological farmers learn proper
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and nutrient imbalances and to
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Agriculture/Organic Farming U.S. $25.00
“Biological farmers work
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the Biological farmer Zimmer Acres U.S.A.
Acres U.S.A. / 1-800-355-5313
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a farmer educator . . .
Raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm, Gary
Zimmer has been evaluating U.S. farming
practices for over 35 years. In this time, he
has established a close understanding of
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robust system of biological farming.
Gary Zimmer is president of Midwestern
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with 75 trained consultants and thousands
of farms across the U.S. Gary also manages
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and crop demonstration farm where he
tests products and methods for successful
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The Zimmer family’s Otter Creek Organic
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Gary F. Zimmer
Biological
advancing
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Agriculture/Organic Farming U.S. $25.00
gary f. Zimmer
leilani Zimmer-durand
Anyone who’s attended a winter meeting
featuring Gary Zimmer knows why he’s
considered one of the nation’s leading
authorities on biological farming. As a
farmer, agri-businessman, educator, and
author with four decades of experience
under his belt, Zimmer is recognized around
the world for his dedication to improving
farming by restoring soils.
Arguing in convincing detail that an
optimally productive soil contains a perfect
balance of inorganic minerals, organic
materials and living organisms, he relies
less on modern improvements than on “the
things we’ve learned by improving fertility in
a natural, sustainable way over many years.”
Adjusting for different soils, a farmer can
use the interaction of minerals, materials,
and organisms to foster natural chemical
reactions that feed plants perfectly. This
book offers invaluable scientific support
for committed organic farmers as well as
conventional farmers who’d like to reduce
chemical inputs and use natural processes to
their advantage.
Written with his daughter Leilani, it
updates and expands upon Zimmer’s earlier
classic, The Biological Farmer. Technically
precise yet written in friendly language, this
book is a horn of plenty for everyone who
wants a future in biological farming.
Biology, Chemistry
Soil Structure
— the three “legs” of biological farming
Raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm, Gary Zimmer has been evaluating U.S. farming practices for
over 35 years. In this time, he has established a close understanding of dairy, soils and successful
farming methods, which has led to the development of a robust system of biological farming.
Gary Zimmer is president of Midwestern Bio-Ag, a sustainable agriculture input supplier
and biological farming consulting firm established in 1985, where he works with 75 trained
consultants and thousands of farms across the U.S. Gary also manages the Bio-Ag Learning
Center, a livestock and crop demonstration farm where he tests products and methods for
successful biological farming.
The Zimmer family’s Otter Creek Organic Farm has dairy, beef and crops on more than
1,000 acres, with direct marketing of their farm products including specialty cheeses.
ISBN 978-1-601730-19-0
EAN
Practicing Mineralized,
Balanced Agriculture
to Improve Soils Crops
Acres U.S.A. / www.acresusa.com
advancing Biological farming Zimmer Acres U.S.A.
• klober •
Acres U.s.A.
Practical
advice
On HeirlOOm
cHickens
eggs
F selectiOn
F Breeding
F raising
F marketing
PoUltry U.s. $28.00
everyone’s talking
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Kelly Klober was raised on a small, mixed-livestock farm in
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farm fresh eggs along their weekly egg route in St. Louis County, Missouri.
Klober has been active in poultry and livestock breed preservation for
more than 35 years. He has written on agriculture, especially the small
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raising poultry and hogs, as well as two books on pigs including Dirt Hog:
A Hands-On Guide to Raising Pigs Outdoors ... Naturally.
Klober and his wife continue to farm — about 20 miles
east from where Klober was raised — with much love and
attention to their heritage poultry flock.
Acres U.s.A. / www.acresusa.com
IsBN 978-1-601730-21-3
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• kelly klober •
Cody Holmes
foreword by greg judy
Ranching
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There are many hard-working men and
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Learn how to plan and make good
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Ranching Full-Time on Three Hours a
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Cody Holmes left home at age 17 with his high school 4-H project of
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chicken, eggs, milk and seasonal produce.
Cody, by tapping the knowledge of wise mentors has connected
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AgRiCulTuRe/RAnCHing $30.00
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The BiologicAl fArMer
Gary F. Zimmer. Biological farming does not mean less
production; it means eliminating obstacles to healthy, efficient
production. It’s a safe and sustainable system designed to keep
production up. Learn more about biological farming
including how to take care of your soil life and how to use
fertilizers properly to correct mineral and nutrient imbalances
for a balanced, healthy soil that promises greater productivity
at lower costs. Softcover, 352 pages.
#6438 — $25.00
AdvAncing BiologicAl
fArMing
Gary F. Zimmer Leilani Zimmer-Durand. One of the leading
authorities on biological farming, Zimmer is recognized for improv-ing
farming by restoring soils. Arguing that an optimally productive
soil contains a balance of inorganic minerals, organic materials and
living organisms, he relies less on modern improvements than on
“the things we’ve learned by improving fertility in a natural, sustain-able
way over many years.” Advancing Biological Farming updates and
expands upon Zimmer’s classic, The Biological Farmer.
Softcover, 244 pages. #7066 — $25.00
Special Both Zimmer Books Save $10! — #S-6438 — $40.00
TAlking chicken
Kelly Klober. A resurgence of interest in heritage poultry breeds
has invigorated poultry raising on family farms and backyards
across the country. These are the birds that can and should be
producing for today’s marketplace — for consumers that have
come to value locally bred and grown, historically significant
agricultural food. Softcover, 416 pages. #7067 — $28.00
rAnching full-TiMe
on Three hourS A dAy
Cody Holmes. No amount of the hard, sweating work you do on
the ranch, if you continue to make poor decisions, can bring you
to the reality of successful ranching. Holmes has found that to
be really successful, the critical factors are your decision making
and planning abilities. You too can have grasslands that are more
productive and useful than they previously were, and enjoy raising
a family without spending all your time working.
Softcover, 200 pages. #7071 — $30.00
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Albrecht Albrecht on Soil Balancing Acres U.S.A.
7 William A. Albrecht Ph.D.
edited by Charles Walters
Albrecht
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Balancing
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VOLUME 7
Agriculture U.S. $25.00
Albrecht
on Soil
Balancing
William A. Albrecht, Ph.D. was undoubtedly the pre-eminent
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agronomy based on healthy soil ecosystems rather than
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when they were first written.
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water and carbon dioxide the carbohydrates — stored in the plants and also transformed into
— as the major source of food for energy. Only the plant can combine, through various
reactions aided by soil fertility, the carbohydrates with nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur to
give amino acids . . . essential for reproduction, growth, and repair of the protoplasmic tis-sues
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This valuable collection of essays reveals the insights of a brilliant soil scientist who was
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Albrecht’s work provides an indispensable foundation for anyone interested in sustainable,
ecologically responsible agriculture.
ISBN 978-1-601730-29-9
1-800-355-5313 • www.acresusa.com ECO-FARMING CLASSIC
A n A c r e s U . S . A .
• New •
photo by Jack Kittredge
Turtle Tree’s Ian Robb shows his inventory of seeds raised in a Biodynamic setting

16. B- 16 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
She got her training in a biodynamic apprenticeship
producing seeds for lettuce, chard, onions, leeks,
tomatoes and cucumbers. She has continued to edu-cate
herself during the two years she has been at
Turtle Tree. She explains what it means to be a part
of such a community: “I’m a volunteer – I’m not
paid, but my needs are all met by the community. If
you volunteer here you get room and board, gener-ally
in a shared house with people with and without
developmental disabilities -- sometimes with a fam-ily,
sometimes not, sometimes with a small team.
But part of living here is supporting people with
developmental disabilities.”
“There is health care covered by the community,”
she continues. “There are vehicles if you need to
drive somewhere. After three years they also make
some provision toward retirement or toward your
next step. And there is needs-based help as well. If
I need to visit my ailing mother I could go to the
community and ask for travel money and time off.
They would try to figure out a way to make that pos-sible.
We try to put something aside each year for
that kind of need. There is a really rich cultural life.
There is a lot of music that goes on, an ensemble
that meets every Monday has gone down to Park
Avenue and played there, for instance. All the prop-erty
is owned by the community. Sometimes people
come who just want to live in a place like this!”
Turtle Tree staffing changes every year as different
volunteers come to work there. Right now there are
seven full time workers, two of whom are devel-opmentally
disabled and two who are brand new
apprentices, and 20 part time workers. Ian does
the germination testing and organizes the fine seed
cleaning. He also does the bookkeeping and bill
paying, and coordinates the shipping. Lia is respon-sible
for the gardens and the rough cleaning of the
seed. Eli, who has just been hired, is going to take
responsibility in those areas too, especially the first
seed cleaning. Lia is also responsible for the catalog
and public relations. The apprentices work one in
the shop and one in the garden.
“We get a lot of questions about seed saving,” Lia
says, “and I try to answer them all and encourage
people to do it. We get school groups which will
come by and want to learn about it. They come for
a day or even a few hours. But if you are going
to volunteer here you have to be interested in the
whole package and living here in the community.
Sometimes it is hard for people to uproot their lives
that way. Some people love it, but it’s also a lot of
work.”
The Village has three different growing plots, each
of which has completely different soils. This makes
it an excellent place to isolate and grow particular
crops. Some plots are good for first year onions, for
instance, but second year onions don’t do well there.
Turtle Tree is still learning about the best places to
grow out particular crops, and on ways to record
and make that kind of information accessible to the
Village growers.
In order to provide isolation they sometimes plant
an early variety early, and a late one late, so they
won’t be flowering at the same time. Of course there
are many crops and varieties that the Village can-not
effectively grow, sometimes because of climate,
sometimes soil, sometimes weeds or disease.
“We can’t grow carrots, for instance,” Lia says. “We
can grow the roots, but we would have to send them
out the second year because of all the Queen Anne’s
Lace here. It is botanically the same plant as the car-rot.
Its pollen would contaminate our seed. Beth and
Nathan are now in Nebraska, where they don’t have
Queen Anne’s Lace, so that is a good place to grow
carrots out the second year. This is a good place to
select for disease resistance, however, since we have
so many diseases here.“
“A number of the brassicas are really hard for us
to get,” she continues. “They are possible to grow
here, but don’t do really well. There are ways to get
rid of some of the diseases, but they take a labora-tory,
which we don’t have. The Northwest is a great
place for them, and we have a couple of growers
there who grow brassicas for us. There are a few
things we still have to get from Europe – some of
the herbs, for instance.
Lia estimates that they grow about half of Turtle
Tree’s varieties in Copake, getting the rest else-where.
“We have a network of about 15 active growers,”
she says, “of whom maybe 8 are growing for us in
any given year. That involves growing out a crop
and getting it to the point where they can box and
mail it. It is usually dried seed, removed from the
plant. You can usually dry seeds on a sheet in your
greenhouse or just in a shady location in a dry cli-mate.
For biennials, we buy the roots.”
“Most of our seed growers are not just growing for
us,” she continues. “They are also serving a CSA or
are market gardeners. We want them to select their
best for us, so we offer good money. They are all
biodynamic, although not necessarily certified.”
Demeter, which is the biodynamic certification or-ganization,
certifies all Turtle Tree’s seed. In the last
few years, however, for small growers Demeter has
changed their certification system. Instead of pay-ing
each year for certification, farmers are certified
photo by Jack Kittredge
Lia Babitch shows how onions
are tested for germination

17. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-17
every three years. In between, the program talks to
them about their practices and makes sure they are
still using biodynamic practices. They sign an af-fidavit
that they are doing so. It is just too costly to
do every year.
For some crops, such as the cucurbits, it is some-times
possible to use the crop and save the seeds
both. With pumpkins, for instance, some growers
have a pumpkin festival where they sell the pump-kin
but they are then carved into jack-o-lanterns on
the spot and taken home. Frugal growers can collect
and dry the discarded seeds for sale. At the Village
they have an annual Watermelon Seed Spit and
Bean Stomp Festival which provides both entertain-ment
and a wealth of discarded seeds.
Seed companies pay by the pound for seed. Lia says
a pound of tomato seed would command a good
price – maybe $80 -- because it is pretty light. For
beans or peas it would be a lot less per pound. Grain
is also lower because it is easier to harvest and store.
Seed usually goes for between $40 and $100 per
pound, depending on how much work is involved.
“Most of our growers grow one or two things really
well,” says Ian. “They are not primarily seed pro-ducers.
They have a market garden. So it is tricky
getting spots which are isolated enough to keep
seed pure. Take these 4 watermelon varieties. This
one is from here, this is from Colorado, this is from
Nebraska, and this is from Sacramento, California.
This melon from Sacramento, for instance, is from
a teaching garden which doesn’t have to support
itself on production. So they can afford to isolate
and raise melons for seed. I have great sympathy
for people who are trying to make their living doing
this, growing vegetables.”
“If you are going to do a business in open pollinated
seed,” adds Lia, “you have to find creative solutions.
Southern Exposure is also in a community, for in-stance,
like us. Then there are the seed libraries, and
groups like the Seed Savers Exchange, where grow-ers
participate in a lending library way.”
Ian figures that there is probably a small percent-age
of their customer base that save their own seed.
He says they get calls from them, asking questions
about details.
Turtle Tree generally keeps a two to three year sup-ply
of seeds. Each kind of seed has a different lifes-pan.
Corn seed has a long life, for instance. It will
easily last ten years. But parsnip seed is notoriously
short-lived, as is onion seed.
One of the reasons Turtle Tree and other organic
or biodynamic seed companies are important for
organic growers is that they are selecting seeds for
organic management. Conventional seed companies
don’t do that.
Lia explains: “Being able to outgrow weeds may be
important in an organic situation, where in a non-or-ganic
system they may use herbicide so that would
not be so important. We’re really interested in se-lecting
for good flavor, for good storage quality, and
for being able to grow well without a lot of inputs.
We apply a lot of compost, but we don’t force feed
nitrogen. So the plants have to be able to grow well
in a natural system.”
It is tricky to do good flavor selection on crops like
peas and beans, she says, because once you have
eaten them it is too late. But you can taste other
seeds from the same plant and since peas and beans
mostly inbreed (pollinate themselves), you can fig-ure
one pod on the plant will be much like another
one. Corn and cabbages, however, are the opposite.
Corn is wind pollinated, and cabbages are self-in-fertile.
They can’t pollinate themselves. Carrots also
need a wide population for pollination.
photo by Jack Kittredge
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18. B- 18 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
There are many variations in how plants are pol-linated,
Lia continues, and you have to work with
many of them before you grasp the details. There
are some things you can get from charts – isolation
distances for plants, for instance. You have to keep
a plant certain minimum distances apart from other
varieties of that species to prevent pollination, and
that distance is easy to look up. But, as we are learn-ing
with GMO crops, the only real isolation is if you
want to grow on the moon. Otherwise you are not
growing in isolation!
“Isolation from relatives is important,” Lia states.
“But there are other factors to consider when you
are setting up a garden to raise seed. You need to
consider the height of the surrounding plants to get
proper airflow for drying the seeds. If you are grow-ing
lettuce to eat it will always be low to the ground.
But if you are growing it for seed, it will get four
and a half feet tall. So if you have corn, then lettuce,
then a pole bean, you might not have enough air
flow to dry things. You need to vary the height. That
drying also helps prevent disease.
“For squash,” she continues, “we will do a full sec-tion,
maybe 40 to 50 feet wide, in 50 foot rows. That
way pollination is encouraged. And we wouldn’t
have any relative nearby. This valley is pretty good
because first of all it is a valley and not a lot comes
in from outside. Also it is covered in trees and hills,
which makes it frustrating for growing because it is
not great soil for vegetable production. But for seed
production it is pretty good because you don’t want
to give the plant the easiest ride. If you do, you are
just seeing what it will do in the best possible condi-tions.
You want to make sure it is being put through
its paces – it is able to grow in difficult conditions.
It was healthy and vigorous and strong in conditions
that were not ideal.”
Cleaning, or separating the seed from its surround-ing
husk or other protective membrane is, of course,
one of the fundamental tasks in this business. Much
of it is done mechanically, using the principle that
the seed will be heavier than the chaff.
One device they use a lot for this purpose is called
a “Pelz Thresher”. You can put whole plants in the
top and rotating rubber pads thresh the seeds out
of the plant. Various sizes of screens enable you to
determine what size of seed you are looking for. A
fan creates wind so anything light will be blown off,
and heavy things go into a bin at the bottom of the
machine. You can adjust the speed of the threshing
pads, the strength of the blowing air, and the size of
the screens.
Once the seeds are removed, they are usually sifted
through various screens to separate them by size.
For seeds of the same size, however, some will be
more or less viable. The best proxy for selection in
that case is weight.
For this purpose, another device is handy. It is a
small adjustable blower. Air is sucked in through
a fine screen in the bottom of the machine, and a
setting at the top allows more or less air to escape,
adjusting the pressure within. Seeds are put into a
canister at the bottom and lifted to various heights
by the air flow. The heavier ones never travel far be-fore
falling of their own weight. Lighter ones, how-ever,
are lifted further and trapped in two cylinders
at the top.
A final process used at Turtle Tree is handwork. It
takes a certain kind of person to enjoy sorting seeds
with tweezers, Lia admits, but some of the commu-nity
residents in the Camphill Village are very detail
oriented and perfect for the work. They use magni-fiers
and bright lights to pick out the most viable
seed by its visual appearance. It is a learned skill,
but some of the qualities they are sorting by are size,
color, and proper appearance.
“Other seed companies do most of this mechanical-ly,”
she says. “Machines do it fairly well. But I’ve
often noticed that when I open other seed packets it
is not what we would call ‘packing ready’.
“Seeds which aren’t dry-seeded,” Lia explains, “but
have a wet fruit around them -- such as all the cu-curbits,
tomatoes, and peppers -- present a special
problem. With those you have to get rid of the mem-brane
around the seed before it can dry. A lettuce
seed dries as it matures. But a tomato seed stays
damp as it matures until you dry it. So the processes
are different.”
“We scoop the seeds out of the tomatoes first,” she
continues. We’re lucky here to have lots of hands
and we can use the rest of the tomato for making to-mato
paste or whatever. Then we ferment the seeds,
as we do with cucumber seeds, (the other wet-seeded
crops like the squashes don’t need the fer-mentation
process). The fermentation breaks down
the membrane around the seed, as well as kills many
seed-borne diseases. The acidic fermentation envi-ronment
(which is really just seeds in tomato juice
in a jar) makes it hard for disease organisms to sur-vive.
We stir it occasionally. The fermentation starts
on its own, from organisms which exist on the to-mato.
If it is a ninety-degree week it takes maybe 36
to 48 hours. If it is more of a seventy degree week, it
might take 72 hours. At a certain point you can tell
it is done – the membrane is broken down and the
seeds are ready. After that, we rinse off the bits and
allow a water winnowing. The heavier seeds sink
faster, and you can pour off the lighter ones. You re-photo
by Jack Kittredge
Lia demonstrates the blower which sepa-rates
light from heavier seeds.
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19. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-19
peat that process several times and you are left with
the more viable seeds. You can then spread them out
and let them dry. If it is not dry enough naturally in
the fall, we have dehumidifiers and fans we can use.
Some need to be rubbed because they tend to stick
together when drying. Once dry, there might be a
few small or discolored ones to pick out, but they
are pretty clean and ready to pack.
One step every seed company has to do before pack-ing
the seeds is to run germination tests.
“Some seeds, notably peppers and eggplants,” Lia
explains, “have dormancies. Some plants need the
dormancy to be broken by cold, so you need to put
them in the refrigerator or freezer for awhile. Some
need scarifying -- rubbing -- so that the outside
protection is damaged and water can get in. That
happens naturally in the earth over the winter from
the grinding caused by freezing and thawing. Some
have a time delay – they don’t like to germinate
right away. In tomatoes the membrane contains
things that prevent the seed from germinating too
fast. Many seeds have requirements before they can
germinate, but if we need to do a germination test in
the fall, we use either cooling or a chemical solution
the USDA recommends to break dormancy.”
“The USDA puts out standards,” she continues, “for
how you do germination tests for various plants.
These two machines are germinators. One is set
at 20˚ Celsius (68˚ F) and the other is set at 20˚ at
night and 30˚ (86˚ F) during the day. They also have
lights. The seeds are germinated on these blotter
papers. A few plants need nutrients to germinate,
but most don’t. Beans and peas and cucurbits are
rolled in special paper towels. But basically you put
out 100 seeds and count how many germinate. All
seed companies are required to do seed testing every
year. The USDA has a different legal percentage
for each variety. We would never like to settle for
the legal minimum germination rate, though. Some-times
that is as low as 50%!”
The germination rate for each lot of seeds (the seeds
from a particular field grown by one person in one
year) is printed on the package. Turtle Tree makes
up their packages in the fall, listing the germination
rates, and then publishes their seed list and sends it
out to customers – mostly individuals, small CSAs
and market gardens.
Turtle Tree is relatively small, even in the organic
seed world. “We started the same year as High
Mowing,” relates Lia. “Tom Sterns and Beth and
Nathan all knew each other. High Mowing has gone
on to be about $3,000,000 in annual sales. We’re
about $150,000. We’re pretty small. Southern Expo-sure
Seed Exchange, Hudson Valley Seed Library,
Wild Garden Seeds in Oregon – those are our col-leagues.
“But I think we shouldn’t expand a huge amount,”
she continues. “I wouldn’t want to be a multi-million
dollar a year business. We would need more
mechanization. Why we fit so well here is that at
our scale there is lots of handwork. Not only in the
seed handling, but also hand digging our beds in the
spring when it is too wet to use a tractor. There was
this crucial moment this spring when everything
had to get in. So we said to the garden people: ‘You
use the tractor and we’ll do the handwork this year.’
If we were a lot bigger, that wouldn’t be possible.
The same with cleaning the seeds. We would have
to mechanize to handle the load. The community is
only a certain size and doesn’t plan to get bigger.
We would have to have more outsiders employed.
Right now we have Ian and another full time em-ployee,
and one part time employee, but the rest of
us are volunteers and live in the community.”
Ian says sales picked up immediately once the com-pany
began marketing on the Internet. He feels their
prices are competitive with similar companies. They
base their rates on the competition, rather than their
costs, however. He says that just like a farmer at a
market, you can’t always charge what the product is
worth if others are selling it for less!
Robb reflects on the changes he has seen as a grow-er,
and why he feels seeds are so important: “I came
to America in 1981. There was little organic and no
biodynamic growing here then. I was even growing
hybrids in my CSA in Amherst. I still meet many
growers in farmers markets who do the same -- the
idea of even open pollinated seeds is a big step. I
was growing for 10 years in Amherst before I first
heard of them.”
“One of my strongest memories,” he continues,
“was when I was at Brookfield Farm in Amherst
many years ago. We were connected to Hampshire
College and they were bringing over groups from
developing countries to get ideas to take back. There
was a group of women from Bolivia visiting, with
their beautiful costumes and hats. They asked many
questions and admired many things. Then one of
the women said to me: ‘Where do you get your seed
from?’ At that time it was Fedco and Johnny’s. That
concept was foreign to them. They wanted to see my
seed bank. I could see their disappointment. They
were thinking: ‘This is a nice man, he has a won-derful
farm, but he doesn’t know where his seed is
from.’ That was enough to get me thinking. I wanted
to be so self sufficient, but something as basic as
seed I didn’t control.”
He farmed for 28 years before getting involved in
Turtle Tree. He thinks that farming for an extended
period is necessary before one can grow good seed.
“That is where it should start,” he insists. “You need
to grow vegetables before you grow vegetables out
to seed. I’m not saying you need 28 years of ex-perience
to grow seed, but you need some kind of
solid foundation. It wasn’t until 11 years ago that I
thought I was in the next level where I could grow
out to seed. I didn’t know much about it, but I had
enough background to have good judgment.”
“It’s funny,” he continues, “but probably because
I was born in Scotland I was brought up not to be
against something, but to be for something, to pur-sue
what you are for. Now things may have changed
over the years, but you can put all your energies
against what Monsanto is doing. Or you can de-cide
how you are going to be for something like
this. There have to be both, of course, but we need
people working on projects like this. I think this is
the next big thing. I don’t think we need to explore
CSAs or community farms anymore. They’re doing
all right. We need to work on the next problem. All
the young people who are interested in agriculture,
how many are just passing through and will become
doctors and lawyers? And how many will save and
breed seeds as a profession?”

20. B- 20 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
by Mary-Howell Martens
The label on a bag of certified organic seed is a complex legal document,
carefully designed to satisfy several complex sets of requirements. The New
York Seed Law and the Federal Seed Act, as administered by New York Dept
of Ag and Markets, specifies the information that must be on the seed quality
portion of the label, and the USDA National Organic Program, as administered
by certification agencies, specifies the information that must be on the organic
portion of the label. Seed companies then use additional label information to
describe the variety, offer valuable agronomic tips, or cover their own liability.
This information should be clearly visible on each bag of seed. Some companies
sew or stick the label to the bag, while others stamp or print this information on
the bag itself. Regardless of how it is attached, the purity (% pure seed and %
contaminants) and the germination of the seed should be clearly readable, along
with the seed lot number (for traceability), the seed company and its address.
Purity - New York law requires that seed companies clearly identify the
composition of the contents of the bag - both the intended crop seed and also any
contaminants such as weed seeds, other crop seeds and inert material (broken
seed, chaff, or dirt)
To obtain this information, New York Ag Markets recommends that seed
companies pull a composite sample of each seed lot, using a standard technique
developed by AASCO (American Association of Seed Control Officials), to
insure that an adequately representative sample of the seed has been evaluated.
When a seed sample is analyzed, weed seed and other crop seeds are identified,
and determined to be “noxious “ or not. A low percent of most weed species is
tolerated, but some common weeds are considered so undesirable that they are
termed “prohibited noxious weeds” and are not allowed in commercial seed.
Other less undesirable weeds are considered “regulated noxious” and must be
identified separately on the label. Weeds can be considered noxious because they
are difficult to remove from small grains after harvest (vetch, wild onion and
garlic) or because they are invasive, overly competitive, or toxic to animals (corn
cockle). Any farmer/processor who has battled with trying to get vetch, cockle
or garlic seed out of small grains after harvest can certainly understand why it is
much better to avoid having them in the seed lot to begin with!
An Organic Seed Bag Label - Demystified!
In a seed mixture, like a pasture or lawn mix, all component species must be
identified on the label as % of the total by weight with their separate germination
rates. The seed label should also include the state or country of origin where the
seed was grown, and the total weight of seed in the container.
Germination - all bags, packets and bulk seed sold in New York must state %
germination and a test date that is within 9 months of the date of sale. This does
not imply that all seed sold must be fresh ‘current year’ seed, because it often is
not. But if seed is carried over from a previous year, it must be re-tested in the
calendar year of sale, and tagged with the current germination rate.
This germination labeling requirement applies equally to seed you buy from a
farmer dealer, from a seed company, or from Walmart - this is New York state
law. New York has requirements for minimum germination for most species,
below which the seed must be clearly labeled as being inferior quality. New
York Ag Markets employs seed inspectors whose job involves visiting seed
companies, farmer dealers, and retail stores throughout the season to take random
samples that are sent to the NY Seed Lab in Geneva. The results are matched
to the stated information on the label and if there are discrepancies, the seed
company is required to re-tag, or in severe cases, stop selling the seed.
Certain species, such as clover, alfalfa and other legumes, typically produce some
hard seed. These are live viable seed, but have a hard impermeable seed coat and
often take longer than one year to grow. Other species, such as many grasses,
exhibit a different type of dormancy and may also not germinate the first year.
These types of seeds are considered live seed, but on the label, the % dormant or
hard seed must clearly be distinguished from the germination rate.
Seed companies are allowed to put additional information on a label such as seed
count, seed size, planter plate recommendations, days to maturity, inoculant date,
and agronomic suggestions.
What is NY Certified “Blue Tag” Seed? Most newer varieties of small grains
and other seed are ‘protected’ by the breeder/owner under the Federal Plant
Variety Protection (PVP) laws and are legally allowed to only be sold as Certified
Seed. In most cases, a farmer may save back enough seed grown from PVP
protected varieties for their own re-use, but legally they are not allowed to sell
any of the seed, not even to their neighbors. This process ensures two things
- royalties to the breeder/owner and a higher level of genetic purity and seed
quality for the farmer.
The process of producing Certified Seed is rather similar to organic certification
– a lot of paperwork, extra expense, significantly more time, and thorough
inspections for the privilege of selling a product at a slightly higher price.
The primary difference is that the possibility of “flunking the test” with seed
certification is much higher! Certified Seed growers are carefully selected by NY
Seed Improvement Project as farmers with proven ability to produce high quality
and pay attention to details. They purchase super-pure Foundation seed each year
as planting stock. Their fields are thoroughly walked and examined by inspectors
who evaluate the genetic purity and plant quality of the crop, and weed species
present. Only fields that are visually free of noxious weeds pass the inspection.
In order to pass the inspection, most seed growers walk their fields before the
inspector arrives to carefully rogue (remove) off-types and weeds that might
jeopardize approval, and to be confident themselves in the crop.
After harvest and cleaning, Certified Seed quality and germination analysis
must be done at the state seed lab, such as the lab in Geneva, by licensed seed
analysts (non-Blue Tag seed quality analysis can be done “in house” by the seed
company). A much larger and more carefully drawn seed sample is required for
Certified Seed to ensure that the analysis is representative of the seed lot, and
the tolerances for allowed quality and germination are much more stringent.
Germination requirements for Certified Seed are fairly high - for example,
Certified oat seed must have a germination of no less than 85% to be eligible for
Blue Tag status.
If the seed passes all the requirements for Certified Seed, then the seed company
is permitted to purchase the Blue Tags, which generate royalties to the breeder
and income to the Seed Improvement Project. Each Blue Tag is numbered and a
producer is only allowed to purchase an appropriate number of Blue Tags for the
quantity of seed they certified.
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21. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-21
of vigor is required on the seed tag. This is largely
because vigor is difficult to measure accurately and
quantitatively with lab techniques, especially in
a way that is likely to estimate field performance.
Damaged or old seed may be technically alive,
and therefore the germination will look fine, but
the vigor can be low, and the seed will grow more
slowly and unevenly. This makes the seedlings
more susceptible to disease and will make timing
mechanical weed control operations much more
difficult, This is why using new seed, or testing any
carryover or “bin run” seed yourself, is especially
important for organic farmers, either by sending
your own sample into Geneva, or doing a casual
kitchen counter germination test.
Another reason seed companies are unwilling to
provide vigor assessments is that they have no
control over how seed is handled or stored after
purchase. When farmers store seed, for a few
weeks or until next year, many things can happen
to damage seed quality. Seed that gets wet, is
stored under damp and moldy conditions, is left
in the back of the pickup truck overnight in the
rain, gets excessively hot, or is damaged by pests
will deteriorate rapidly, first losing vigor and then
germination. Leftover seed bags, stacked on the
gravel floor in a hot warehouse over the summer,
are going to contain a very different quality product
then when they were purchased in the spring! Bean
seed (soy and dry bean) that is banged around,
thrown from the back of a truck or dropped, can get
physically damaged with tiny interior cracks that
increase rot susceptibility and reduce germination
and vigor. Rhizobium inoculant, either in bags or
on seeds, will rapidly die if it gets hot - a barn or a
pickup truck seat is NOT a suitable place to store
inoculant! If you must store inoculant, even for a
few weeks, put it in a freezer.
Unfortunately, every year, farmers often end up with
leftover seed than that they didn’t get planted and
want to carry over until the next year. With some
species, such as corn, small grains and grasses,
this can be successful as long as the seed bags are
stored off the ground, in a dry location, and are
protected from rodents and other pests. Soybeans,
and other seeds high in oil tend to deteriorate much
more rapidly and usually have much lower quality
the second year. It is always a good idea to test
germination on any seed you carry over before
planting.
Assessing seed germination and vigor at home -
for many crop species, this is fairly simple. Put 100
seeds on most paper towels and cover. Keep moist
(but not dripping) and in a warm room for 7 days
- do not let it dry out, but do allow air exchange
(don’t put in a plastic bag). After 7 days, count the
number of seeds that have germinated - this will
give you an estimate of percent germination. Then,
look at the germinating seeds. If all are about at
the same point of development (roots, shoots and
leaves) the seed probably has pretty good vigor,
but if the seedling development is variable, with
some much farther along than others, it is likely
that some of the seeds are weak. As you evaluate
the seedlings, it is important to remember that
when a seed lab tests for germination, they only
count normal seedlings as “germinated seeds”. You
can still use the seed, but you will probably want
to plant a little heavier and make sure the field
conditions are better. Seed that sprouts unevenly
and produces non-uniform seedlings. often yields
less and is less competitive with weeds.
For more information about seed quality, or about
how to submit seed samples for testing, contact
the NY State Seed Lab at the NY Agricultural
Experiment Station, Geneva at 315-787-2242 or
www.nysaes.cornell.edu/hort/seedlab/main.htm.
At the website, there is a list and pictures of weed
species considered noxious in New York.
The label or bag for certified organic seed must
contain several other key pieces of information
to meet USDA National Organic Program
requirements. The USDA NOP seal is eye-catching
and a good verification of the organic status, but it is
actually not required. What is required is the name
of the organic certification agency, which must be
stated immediately below or next to the name of
the seed company. A farmer must be easily able
to identify and be able to contact that certification
agency if desired to verify the valid current organic
certification of the seed company for that product.
Farmers should also request a copy of the seed
company’s current organic certificate in addition to
their statement on the seed tag.
Sufficient information about any seed treatments,
including inoculants, must be clearly stated on
the label so organic farmers can determine before
purchase whether the treatments are allowed for
organic use. If the treatment is OMRI listed, often
the OMRI seal will be on the label. Organically
approved seed treatments are generally a
combination of coating materials that form a
pathogen barrier, plus protective bio-fungicides,
bio-stimulants to energize the good soil microbes,
and extra nutrients for strong early plant growth.
Especially under marginal conditions, organic seed
treatment on corn is often well worth the additional
$10-20/bag cost.
The results of other seed tests, such as % GMO and
GMO testing procedures, are generally not printed
on seed tags/bags, but may be available for certain
species where GMO contamination is likely to be
an issue (corn, soybeans) upon request. If you ask
for these tests, it is important to understand that
in the seed industry, “non GMO” does NOT mean
“GMO-free”. It is widely accepted, both in the
conventional and organic seed industry, that a low
level of “adventitious transgenic presence” or ATP
(we call this contamination) is nearly universal
and is not necessarily cause to discard a seed lot.
There is not, and never has been, a widely accepted
definition for the maximum % ATP allowed
for “non-GMO” status of seed. Organic seed
companies do generally discard organic corn and
soybean lots that test above a certain level of ATP
(often 0.25%) but to conventional seed companies,
“non-GMO” means simply “not a transgenic
variety” – they do not routinely discard (or even test
for) mild contamination.
** For organic certification, always be sure to save
at least one complete label and bag of each type of
seed you use for your organic inspector to see. It
also is a good idea to save a sample of the seed,
just in case you need to refer back to it. Make
sure you obtain the certificates/letters needed for
seed treatments and inoculants to show they are
organically approved. If you use any non-organic,
conventional untreated seed, be sure to document
your search in writing for organic seed of the same
type and be prepared to justify your choice to use
non-organic seed.
Most seed bags also include some form of
disclaimer in very small print. Essentially, this
disclaimer states that if the seed does not perform as
the farmer thinks it should, compensation is limited
to the original purchase price of the seed, and that
by buying and planting the seed, the farmer has
already accepted these terms. The disclaimer also
describes the process a farmer must use to place
such a claim. Most seed companies will only accept
seed back on trade or for credit when returned by
a certain date (usually in June) in unopened clean
intact bags that are in salable condition.

22. B- 22 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
by Kiki Hubbard
Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) is a national non-profit
organization established in 2003 to advance the ethi-cal
development and stewardship of seed. OSA grew
out of Abundant Life Seed Foundation (founded in
1973) after its founders realized that the agriculture
community was losing seed knowledge – how to
manage and improve our seed – as quickly as we
were losing seed as a diverse resource.
Today, through research and education, OSA works
with farmers and other seed professionals to restore
and develop seed varieties for current needs while
safeguarding plant genetic resources for future gen-erations.
We believe the best way to meet the seed
needs of farmers is to engage them in creating region-al,
decentralized seed systems. And we advocate for
policies that impact the integrity of the seed systems
we help create. OSA is sustained through public and
private funding sources, including grants received
from federal programs, private foundations, and indi-vidual
contributions.
In 2009, OSA set out to take a snapshot of the bur-geoning
organic seed sector. We knew organic agri-culture
continued to expand as demand for organic
food increased, but was organic seed keeping pace?
What were the barriers to building seed systems that
met the diverse needs of organic farmers, and how do
we overcome them?
These were just some of the questions behind OSA’s
State of Organic Seed project, an ongoing effort to
monitor the status of organic seed systems in the U.S.
Our report provides the first comprehensive analysis
of organic seed usage on U.S. farms, research invest-ments
into organic seed, risks to the integrity of or-ganic
seed, and a roadmap for collaborative actions.
The National Organic Program (NOP) requires the
use of organically produced seed when commercially
available. Yet the organic seed sector was almost
nonexistent when the organic program began. De-spite
continued growth in the organic industry – now
a $29 billion industry that experiences growth each
year – organically produced seed is still only used on
a small percentage of organic farmland. Responses to
our nationwide survey in 2010 indicate the organic
sector is underserved in genetics specifically adapted
to organic systems, regions, and market niches. For
varieties in organic seed that are available, many
farmers are challenged by a lack of sufficient quantity
and scarcity of information on variety performances
under organic conditions.
Organic seed availability is low because there is little
investment in these programs. This is in part due to
consolidation in the seed industry, where few regional
seed companies are interested in meeting the diverse
needs of organic farmers. Market consolidation has
also concentrated the ownership of invaluable plant
genetic resources. For example, patents are aggres-sively
enforced by seed firms, and inhibit farmers
and breeders’ ability to protect and enhance genetic
diversity. Diminished funding for public plant breed-ing
programs has also contributed to the problem.
As industry investments in public research increase,
research priorities narrow to focus on proprietary and
profitable products that benefit larger industries, like
agricultural biotechnology, as opposed to the diverse
needs of farmers.
The good news is that, despite these troubling trends,
organic seed systems are developing. Farmers report
increased attempts to source organic seed and more
pressure from certifiers to do so. Public research in
organic plant breeding has increased slightly, with
investments from both the public and private sector.
Still, challenges and needs loom large for expanding
organic seed systems. The lack of organically bred
and produced seed is a barrier to the ongoing growth
and success of organic agriculture.
Because conventional seed production often relies on
toxic chemicals, using conventional varieties creates
a conflict with the principles of organic agriculture.
But beyond the NOP organic seed requirement, there
are many benefits to expanding organic seed sys-tems.
For starters, seed bred under organic conditions
provide organic farmers with the optimum genetics
for their production systems. Seed is the critical first
link in organic production, and provides farmers the
genetic tools to confront day-to-day challenges in the
field. Organically bred seed also provides food pro-cessors,
companies and retailers with improved traits
that organic consumers value, including nutrition,
flavor, and other beneficial traits.
We believe the benefits are even greater. The chal-lenges
of resource depletion, climate change, and
population growth require ongoing improvements in
agriculture, including innovation in plant breeding
to deliver beneficial traits that address these issues.
Organic farming and organic seed systems are well
suited to address these challenges in a socially ethi-cal
and environmentally responsible manner. With
further investments in organic research and breeding
we will see exponential improvements that recognize
local ecological systems and address food consumer
needs, including regionally adapted seed varieties that
are suitable to a range of growing seasons, resist im-portant
crop diseases, and have enhanced flavor and
nutrition.
That’s why OSA’s research and education programs
are helping farmers restore the skills needed for seed
production. Our work responds to the urgent need to
protect our genetic resources for future generations
while ensuring farmers have adequate seed choices to
feed their communities today. Expanding knowledge
and skills for developing alternative seed production
and distribution networks at the community level is
one solution that lays the foundation for long-term,
transformative change.
One example of these alternative networks is the
Northern Organic Vegetable Improvement Collabora-tion
(NOVIC). NOVIC brings together researchers
and organic farmers in northern states to breed new
varieties, identify the best performing varieties for
organic agriculture, and educate farmers on organic
seed production and plant variety improvement. The
collaborative includes researchers and educators from
OSA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and four
universities: Washington State University, Oregon
State University, University of Wisconsin, and Cor-nell
University.
NOVIC’s regional breeding projects focus on traits
important for season extension, flavor and horticul-tural
traits crucial to organic agriculture. Plant breed-ing
projects are underway in five states – Minnesota,
New York, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin – and
focus on five vegetable crops. The breeding goals in-clude
broccoli (heat tolerance, marketable uniformity
in an open-pollinated variety); carrot (cold-tolerant,
weed-competitive, ‘Nantes’ type); snap pea (heat-tolerant,
disease resistant, stringless variety); sweet
corn (good cold soil emergence in a sugar enhanced
variety); winter squash (long term storability).
NOVIC is committed to education and shared re-sources.
Collaborators have hosted workshops for
farmers to gain skills in seed production and plant
variety improvement. Participants are also developing
publications and a national database of organic vari-ety
trial results through eOrganic (to be shared with
the public on www.eXtension.org).
In the Northeast, breeding efforts at Cornell Uni-versity
are focused on squash and peas, and trialing
continues for all six crops mentioned above. (NOFA
farmers interested in participating in on-farm tri-als
should contact Michael Glos at mag22@cornell.
edu to learn more.) Eventually farmers across the
U.S. will have access to new varieties to better meet
compliance with organic regulations and through new
resources that help identify which organic varieties
perform well in their region. The collaborative is an
example of a working model that the organic com-munity
can embrace and replicate to collaboratively
build infrastructure for developing and distributing
organic seed.
We employ traditional breeding techniques, including
population improvement, controlled pollination, and
family selection. We use many of the same techniques
that conventional breeders use in public breeding pro-grams
and in the seed industry. However, our breed-ing
program is based on principles not generally seen
in conventional breeding programs. We use partici-patory
plant breeding to produce genetically diverse
varieties adapted to organic agriculture.
In our participatory breeding work, there is a true
and equal partnership between a farmer and a plant
breeder. The farmer understands how the crop re-sponds
to the challenges of their environment and
the agronomic traits needed to excel under those
conditions. They also know what horticultural traits
are essential for their markets. The classical plant
breeder knows how to isolate those traits and how
to test the new crosses in the field, relying on the
farmer’s expertise to select the best material as the
farmer gets to intimately know the material over the
course of the season.
We strive to produce varieties that have the broad
genetic elasticity necessary for continual adapta-tion
to shifting climatic, environmental, and energy
constraints. This diversity allows them to be se-lected
for local environments. They will stand up
over time, thrive under organic conditions, and be
worked with and handed down by farmers and gar-deners
for many generations to come as “heirlooms
of tomorrow”.
Due to the lack of plant varieties that have been de-veloped
or screened in organic (or other low-input)
systems, most organic producers rely on conven-tionally
bred varieties that have been selected to
perform well under high-input chemical systems.
Fundamental to the success of organic agriculture
is the use of plant varieties that are most suitable to
organic production challenges and methods. OSA’s
breeding objectives support sustainable and organic
agriculture, recognize local ecological systems and
address food consumer needs.
As an organic community, we need to keep chal-lenging
threats to the integrity and expansion of or-ganic
agriculture, especially consolidation of market
power and genetically engineered organisms. But
we also need to devote attention to real solutions,
including organic seed systems that restore farmers’
role and rights, ensure new varieties are available
and shared for breeding purposes, and provide a di-versity
of healthy food now and into the future. We
hope you’ll join us in this important work.
Organic Seed Alliance Studies State of Organic Seed
$15 for a US address, or
$20 for a foreign address

23. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-23
These are excerpts (selected by Jack Kittredge) from the Executive Summary and
sections on history of seed in the organic movement, and concentration in the
seed industry. For a copy of the full report, visit www.seedalliance.org
State of Organic Seed (SOS) is an ongoing project to monitor the status of
organic seed systems in the United States. The project aims to develop diverse
stakeholder involvement in implementing policy, research, education, and
market-driven activities that result in the improved quality, integrity, and use of
organic seed. Organic Seed Alliance (OSA), a national non-profit organization
committed to the ethical development and stewardship of the genetic resources
of agricultural seed, facilitates the project with the belief that developing and
protecting organic seed systems is a top priority for organic food and farming.
This report is the first comprehensive analysis of the challenges and
opportunities in building the organic seed sector. A planning team of farmers,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), certifiers, and food industry and seed
industry representatives directed project activities. To collect information from
a broad and diverse group of stakeholders, OSA and its partners conducted a
series of surveys with farmers in 45 states, and gathered questionnaires from
researchers, certifiers, food and seed industry representatives, and farm and food
policy experts. OSA also hosted a full-day SOS Symposium to discuss data and
prioritize next steps.
Why is the State of Organic Seed project important?
The USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) standards require the use of
organically produced seed. Yet, even with the organic industry’s impressive
growth, the organic seed sector has not caught up to meet this demand. There
is a limited availability of appropriate organically produced seed for a variety
of reasons, including cutbacks in public plant breeding programs, lack of
investments from the private sector, seed industry consolidation, and ongoing
disagreement regarding implementing NOP requirements pertaining to organic
seed, among others.
The lack of organically bred and produced seed is a barrier to the growth and
ongoing success of organic farming. Seed is the critical first link in organic
production, and provides farmers with the genetic tools to confront day-to-
day challenges in the field. Organic systems have different challenges
than conventional counterparts and have fewer spray-on solutions. Further
investments in organic plant breeding will yield adapted genetics suitable to a
range of pest and disease pressures, growing seasons, and flavor and nutrition
needs. Organic seed that is appropriate for regional agronomic challenges,
market needs, regulations, and the social and ecological values of organic
agriculture is therefore fundamental to the success of organic farmers and the
food system they supply.
State Of Organic Seed 2011 (excerpts)
As we work to build organic seed systems, other challenges must
simultaneously be addressed. In crops for which there are genetically
engineered (GE) counterparts (i.e., alfalfa, canola, corn, cotton, soybeans,
and sugar beets), organic seed increasingly contains detectable levels of GE
material, a technology that is explicitly excluded in NOP regulations and
rejected by the organic industry and consumers alike. The lack of federal
protection for organic markets from GE contamination poses a serious risk to
the credibility, viability, and success of organic farmers and the NOP.
Concentration in the seed industry is another challenge. The seed industry
has consolidated quickly, concentrating the ownership of seed resources
through corporate acquisitions and mergers and the restrictive use of utility
patents. In addition to placing constraints on germplasm, this consolidation has
decreased the number of regional seed and genetics firms with the potential to
serve organic markets. Alternative intellectual property models that enhance
innovation while protecting investments must be explored.
Key findings: Organic seed systems are improving but require increased
attention and resources
SOS data shows that organic seed systems are developing. Farmers report
increased attempts to source organic seed and more pressure from certifiers
to do so. Research in organic plant breeding has increased slightly, with
investments from both the public and private sector.
Still, challenges and needs loom large for expanding organic seed systems.
While this project captured an array of priorities that varied by crop, region, and
perspective of different professional sectors, overarching priorities are clear,
including the need to:
• Develop seed systems that are responsive to the diverse needs of organic
farmers through increased public-private collaboration.
• Refine understanding of organic plant breeding principles and practices.
• Engage the National Organic Program in policy initiatives that move organic
seed forward.
• Reinvigorate public plant breeding with an emphasis on the development of
cultivars that fit the social, agronomic, environmental, and market needs of
organics.
• Protect organic seed systems from threats of concentrated ownership of plant
genetics.
• Protect organic seed systems from threats of contamination from genetically
engineered traits.
• Improve sharing of information in the areas of organic seed availability, lack
of availability for specific varieties and/or traits, and field trial data.
• Create opportunities for organic farmers to work with professional breeders
through trialing networks and on-farm plant breeding to speed the development
of regionally adapted organic cultivars.

24. B- 24 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
History of Seed in Organic Movement
In any history of seed we have to first recognize the 12,000 years of farmer
and plant breeder innovation that existed before the advent of 21st century
agriculture. We have been bequeathed an incredible living resource that is
beyond economic valuation. We have no modern food crops, only modern
variations on crops from the centuries before. From the diversity of grains, to
the broad array of brassicas, we have been the beneficiaries of more than we can
ever give back. That said, it is our responsibility to leave this seed inheritance
better than when we received it. The authors want to recognize the diversity
of cultures, individuals, breeders clubs, and early scientists who observed,
recorded, studied, and selected. They have left us with much to appreciate,
protect, and improve.
Organic seed has developed slowly, at a pace behind many other innovations
in the organic movement. Modern U.S. organic farming can be traced back to
the early work of the Rodale Institute in the 1940s. Organic farming gained
proponents and practitioners throughout the next two decades, but it was not
until the early 1970s that formal organizations developed, including California
Certified Organic Farmers, Maine Organic Famers and Gardeners Association,
Tilth Association, and many other regional groups. In the early years these
organizations focused attention on farmer education, certification standards, and
research (e.g., field trials), but have left no public record of specific programs
focused on seed system development.
In fact there is little formal historical documentation of the development of
US organic seed systems prior to the 1990s. Certainly organic farmers from
the 1940s through the 1970s were engaged in seed saving and basic breeding,
but we have no record of commercial organic seed development in this period.
We know that the early back to the land movement, which valued a “do it
yourself” approach, supported the seed saving movement. Backing up this idea,
Rob Johnston, founder of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, said that his motivation in
starting the company and publishing a seed saving guide was to promote the
“hand crafted aspect of seed work.”
The first Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog was published in 1974. Johnny’s
became a mainstay for organic gardeners and farmers, and was very likely the
first seed company with its own certified organic research farm (1979). In 1975,
two organizations with missions of conserving and distributing heirloom seed
launched: Abundant Life Seed Foundation published its first seed catalog, and
Seed Savers Exchange (originally “True Seed Exchange”) published its first
yearbook annual newsletter (which became the yearbook). These organizations,
along with companies such as Peace Seeds (1975), Fedco (1978), and Territorial
(1979) were suppliers to many organic farms, and indeed worked with organic
farmers to produce some of their seed.
While no studies from this period indicate farmer preferences or behavior
in purchasing seed, it is likely that organic farmers in the 1970s and 1980s
used heirloom varieties much more than their conventional counterparts. This
preference was likely tied to a philosophical response to the conventional
agricultural industry, as organic farmers were opposed to the negative
environmental, economic, and social justice impacts of industrial conventional
agriculture, while valuing diversity, local systems, and the sovereignty that
comes with a “do it yourself” approach to life. Along with concerns about
genetic diversity, early organic advocates were also concerned about the taste
and nutritional value of their crops and expressed concerns that conventional
breeding systems favored the development of crops with heavy chemical inputs.
The focus in the organic movement on open-pollinated (OP) and heirloom
varieties is apparent in that many of the first seed companies serving the organic
vegetable market primarily sold heirloom seed. Seeds of Change (1989) is
considered by many to be the first seed company that only offered 100%
certified organic seed, and it was nearly twenty years before the company
offered hybrid varieties. A scan of commercial organic vegetable seed catalogs
in 2010 continues to show more OP and heirloom varieties than hybrid varieties.
In conventional seed catalogs, the majority of options are hybrids, with few if
any OPs available (for crops in which hybrids are available.) Interest in using
hybrid vegetable varieties has increased among organic farmers, yet the market
offers very little in hybrid options. The corn seed market is an exception to the
OP-Hybrid ratio, with major organic corn seed dealers offering primarily hybrid
seed. These dealers are even breeding new parent lines specifically for organic
systems. There is talk of U.S. vegetable seed companies developing organic
parent lines and experimenting with hybrid production, but the small U.S.
market at present comes primarily from European firms.
The majority of organic breeding projects funded through USDA programs are
also focused on OP development (see Public Initiatives section). This may in
part speak to a “do it yourself” value that remains among organic farmers, as
well as a desire to decentralize seed systems and increase farmer involvement.
However, organic farming is diverse, and requires varied approaches to seed.
Not all farmers want to or could save seed, and not all favor OPs. The seed
saving movement has pointed out that the shift toward hybrid varieties resulted
in a reduction in crop and genetic diversity, and was a by-product of the
monoculture approach to agriculture. We do not contest this, or that the seed
industry dropped OP varieties in favor of hybrids to have customers who had to
return for the next generation of seed. However, hybridization in and of itself is
only a tool, one used often in creating OP populations. Many organic farmers
rely on and are strong proponents of hybrid varieties. If organic seed systems
are to move forward and provide high quality organic seed to meet the needs of
diverse organic farmers, then we will need diverse varietal offerings, including
both OP and hybrid seed.
While the appreciation of seed saving and heirloom varieties by early organic
vegetable farmers may have been a factor in the slow development of certified
organic hybrid varietals, the factors that continue to slow development today in
organic hybrids likely has more to do with investment and access to germplasm.
The development of breeding lines for organic systems requires time and
significant resources, and seed industry professionals who gave input for this
report have stated that they have been slow to make such investment due to
concerns that they will not be able to recoup costs. These financial risks are
real not only for hybrid development but for improvements or breeding of new
OP varieties, which also require large amounts of time and resources to deliver
a finished product. One factor that has slowed investment in organic breeding
is uncertainty regarding the implementation of the National Organic Program
(NOP) rule as it pertains to seed. In particular, there is concern that allowing
organic farmers to use conventional untreated seed has been, and will continue
to be, a loophole without sufficient auditing, oversight, and metrics to determine
if or when allowances should be denied, or the allowance itself removed from
the rule.
The lack of investment from the private seed sector in organic seed is directly
related to this regulatory quagmire around seed. It is not the only reason for
inadequate investment, but one that must be addressed for the seed sector to gain
confidence in delivering varieties appropriate for organic agriculture. The seed
sector fears the cost of unsold organic seed due to farmers claiming a lack of
equivalent variety and requesting allowances for conventional untreated seed.
In this scenario, seed companies stand to lose huge investments in breeding,
production, and marketing expenses.
Farmers also fear they will be forced to purchase organic seed that is not
equivalent or does not meet quality standards. The NOSB attempted to give
guidance in addressing these concerns and others, but initially it gained no
traction at the administrative level of the NOP. Fortunately there are signs that
the new NOP leadership will provide more clarity. Still, the lack of clarity has
damaged organic seed systems as well as organic stakeholders’ confidence in
the public process. These are difficult but important issues, and at stake is not
simply a regulatory rule or the development of a niche seed industry.
Regulatory History of Organic Seed in National Organic Program:
Prior to the NOP in 2002, farmers who purchased organic seed did so based
on philosophical or agronomic reasons, as there was no federal regulatory
requirement to do so. A brief review of the development of organic standards
shows that, from the start of the federal program, there was recognition that seed

25. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-25
systems needed investment and action if organic producers were ever going to
use 100% organic seed.
The first federal codification of organic occurred in the 1990 Farm Bill with the
passage of the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA), which gave the federal
government authorization to create national organic standards and initiate
a National Organic Standards Board. From the outset of the discussions on
national standards, there was recognition of the importance of requiring the use
of organic seed, but also the lack of availability – pointing to a need for allowing
conventional seed to be used. OFPA recognized the importance of organic seed
in stating, “For a farm to be certified under this title, producers on such farm
shall not apply materials to, or engage in practices on, seeds or seedlings that are
contrary to, or inconsistent with the applicable organic certification program.”
In a 1994 interview, NOSB founding Chair Michael Sligh said, “We recognize
currently there is not enough of untreated organic seed of every variety
necessary to say this is required tomorrow. At the same time, we don’t want to
discourage companies from making this type of progress.”
When the NOP rule was published in December of 2000 it included the seed
section as it exists today, requiring the usage of organic seed except that
“Nonorganically produced, untreated seeds and planting stock may be used to
produce an organic crop when an equivalent organically produced variety is not
commercially available.”
In the public response to the published rule, the federal register noted that the
“seed and planting stock practice standard in the proposed rule generated a very
diverse array of responses that, while largely favorable, highlighted a potentially
disruptive impact on organic producers.”
The NOP responded that while some comments identified the seed and planting
stock requirement as unreasonable, they had chosen not to change the standard,
stating: “The objectives of spurring production of organically grown seed and
promoting research in natural seed treatments are compatible with the OFPA’s
purpose of facilitating commerce in organically produced and processed food.
We designed the practice standard to pursue these objectives while preventing
the disruption that an ironclad requirement for organically produced seed and
planting stock may have caused.”
The NOP rule became effective in October of 2002. There was an immediate
backlash from farmers on certain aspects of the rule, including the price of
organic seed. Some farmers protested that their seed bills would triple, and
that the certifying fee was not as expensive as the extra cost of organic seed.
Within the first few years of the seed requirement farmers also began to voice
concerns about the quality of organic seed, with complaints in the media and at
conference discussions about germination rates and varietal off-types.
Complaints from the seed industry also emerged almost immediately. The
American Seed Trade Association’s Organic Seed Committee noted these issues
fourteen months after the rule became law. The following are direct quotes of
their concerns:
• Organic growers are reluctant to use organically produced seed because of the
higher cost over conventional seed.
• While some certifiers are imposing the organic seed requirement on their
clients when there are equivalent varieties available, other certifiers hesitate to
do so. Some of these certifiers have said they would not force growers to use
organic seed if the price difference was over a certain amount—even though the
NOP has confirmed in a letter that price is not a factor in determining whether
an organic seed is “commercially available.”
• Most organic certifiers are not well informed on the varieties of organic seed
that are currently commercially available. Many certifiers are calling for a
central database to tell them what varieties are available in organic form.
• When a grower claims to a certifier that he needs a particular variety for which
there is no equivalent organic seed, most organic certifiers are not well equipped
to evaluate the grower’s position. Thus there is a danger of haphazard decisions
by certifiers, and no third party oversight of these decisions.
American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) members also issued a statement
to the NOSB on the equivalency issue with a deadline for the usage of organic
seed: “ASTA believes equivalence should be measured by ‘species’ when the
transition period is over and organic producers will be required to select the
most suitable variety [within the same species] for their production location and
time. ASTA’s proposed transitional deadline for variety and species certification
and equivalence is October 2004.”
NOSB did not recommend this deadline to the NOP, and if they would have it
is likely that many organic farmers would have protested given the wide range
of diversity within a species, versus the more localized adaptation of varietals.
But the NOSB was hearing from enough stakeholders for them to create a joint
committee to address the varying concerns over how the seed rule was being
interpreted, implemented, and enforced.
NOSB Recommendation on the Commercial Availability of Organic Seed:
In August of 2005 the NOSB presented the NOP with their “Recommendation
on the Commercial Availability of Organic Seed.” This statement received so
much public feedback that in 2006 the Crops Committee of the NOSB began
a new round of discussions and public comment periods to further develop a
guidance statement on organic seed.
The final document – “Further Guidance on Commercial Availability of Organic
Seed” – was approved in November of 2008 with the intent of having an
“increased level of compliance with Title 7 Part 205 National Organic Program
(§205.204)” (the seed section of the rule). The introduction states: “This Joint
Committee acknowledges that only a small proportion of the seed currently
used by organic farmers is certified organically grown seed. Also that, many
certifying agents do not believe they have been given viable guidelines for their
role in verification procedures concerning organically grown seed availability.
The Committee now offers adjusted guidance that we hope will bring clarity to
the issue and accelerate the utilization of organic seed in all sectors of organic
crop production.”
The document goes on to give specific guidance to the NOP, Accredited
Certifying Association (ACA) and to certified growers for their specific “role in
increasing organic seed usage.”
The development of the guidance statements received mostly favorable
comments from the seed industry, mixed comments from accredited certifying
agencies (with some very opposed and others supportive), and no comments
directly from farmers.
Particularly polarizing was the following recommendation to the NOP:
“Emphasize to ACA’s that organic seed usage by clients must be monitored
and improvement in percentage usage is expected and must also be monitored.
Documentation of the levels of organic seed usage and evidence of improvement
in the percentage vs. total seed usage by the ACA’s clientele should be audited
as part of the NOP accreditation reviews.”
Also controversial was this recommendation to ACAs: “Maintain and submit
upon request to the National Organic Program documentation of the organic
seed usage status (current percent levels as compared to historical levels of
usage by acreage) of each certified operator.”
Comments made by the National Association of State Organic Programs
(NASOP) were emblematic of those ACAs who responded negatively to the
guidelines. Miles McEvoy, NASOP President at the time (now director of
NOP) wrote in his comment letter, “The suggestion that organic growers and
certifiers maintain records on the percentage of organic seed usage by acreage
is unworkable. The additional recordkeeping requirements will not increase the
availability of organic seeds.”
The letter points out a burden in both record keeping and increased cost in
certification. Going into further detail in a breakdown of the guidance document
by sections, McEvoy writes: “There are problems with determining compliance
with the commercial availability of organic seed requirement by the percentage
of organic seed used. The standards require the use of organic seeds if they
are commercially available. The percentage of organic seed usage could
decrease from one year to the next because the producer is planting different
seed varieties that are not available organically. On the other hand if organic
seeds are available then the producer should be using 100% organic seeds. A
producer may be increasing the percentage of organic seed used but still be
in violation of the organic seed requirement if they do not use organic seeds
that are commercially available. Another complicating factor is that many
diversified direct marketing operations do not calculate the acreage planted to
their various crops. Calculating the percentage of organic seed used could be a
recordkeeping nightmare and not lead to any greater adoption of organic seed
usage. Organic seeds can only be used if they are commercially available.”
These NOSB recommendations – with hundreds of volunteer hours in research
and writing, review, revisions, and further review and input from stakeholders
over a three-year period – were approved and presented to the NOP in
November of 2008. And yet, two years later, there has been no formal response
from the NOP.
Current Situation with National Organic Program: Many of the certifiers we
spoke with during the course of this project expressed a positive opinion that
the NOP, under new leadership as of 2009, is taking actions to strengthen the
integrity of the organic label, including encouraging greater enforcement of the

26. B- 26 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
use of organic seed and that they expect additional input on seed from the NOP
in 2011. Several ACAs report that they are strengthening their own policies and
procedures regarding commercial availability of seed.
Oregon Tilth is one example of a certifying organization that has changed its
approach to the seed issue. If a new farming operation applies for certification
and has not performed a commercial availability search (contacting or searching
through a minimum of three seed company lists/catalogs), Oregon Tilth’s
previous practice was to give the producer “a reminder of the requirements for
using organic seed and demonstrating commercial availability.” Beginning in
2010, Tilth started to issue a notification of noncompliance, asking the operator
to demonstrate that the seed was not available in organic form. If the operator
fails to demonstrate this, Tilth now denies certification of that specific crop.
Kristy Korb, Certification Director of Oregon Tilth, states that “If it happened
the next inspection there would most likely be denial of [certification for that
particular] crop or suspension [of certification] if it was all crops or a pervasive
problem. In a renewing client situation if it moves to suspension there would
have to be ongoing issues from year to year, as otherwise we would simply deny
that specific crop.”
NOP staff recently said they were in a “new age of enforcement.” The USDA
Agricultural Marketing Service reports of “adverse actions” taken on organic
producers and handlers provide examples of this commitment. In August of
2010, suspension of organic certification was issued to producers in Georgia and
Oregon for “failure to use organic seeds or demonstrate absence of commercial
availability.” In July, a New York producer was issued a suspension for using
“seeds treated with a prohibited substance.”
While some may be encouraged by signs that ACAs are tightening procedures,
we caution that regulatory enforcement will only be as good and fair as the
information that all stakeholders have regarding commercial availability of seed.
The goal from the perspective of SOS is not to move as quickly as possible
to 100% usage of organic seed, but to move as quickly as possible to 100%
usage of high quality organic seed that is optimal for organic farming
systems. Certifiers, farmers, seed companies, researchers and the NOP itself
all need more information. The development of a pubic database that allows
all parties to search for seed availability, track allowances of conventional seed
(including variety name or characteristics, volume of seed, and crop type), verify
certifiers, and provide seed suppliers with information to promote and market
their varieties was one of the highest priority actions requested by multiple
stakeholders involved in this project (see “Priority Actions, Information-
Perception” in section seven). Developing this public database is also in line with
NOSB recommendations. Good regulation requires good information, and we do
not have that at present.
Concentration in the Seed Industry: Implications for Organic Agriculture
Seed is not only an input for crop production, it is a natural resource that
demands management in a manner that is ethical, sustainable, profitable, and
effective in delivering agronomic adaptations for the diverse agricultural systems
and markets within the U.S. Plant genetic resources were once managed and
maintained as a public commons with intellectual property rights in the form of
Plant Variety Protection Act certificates that were adequate to compensate private
innovators, while allowing both farmers and other researchers to save seed, sell
seed and further adaptation and the development of new characteristics within
the crop. Diversity and competition thrived through most of the twentieth century
with public and private breeding programs delivering improved genetics to a
broad array of farming systems. This changed dramatically when the Supreme
Court upheld the use of utility patents on living organisms. Large corporations
that had little to no previous investments in seed and genetic traits rushed into the
market to take advantage of this powerful intellectual property tool. This trend
led to the highly concentrated seed industry that we face today.
Concentration in the seed industry has a negative impact on organic farming.
It has resulted in decreased public and private research and development of
varieties and breeding populations for minor markets, such as organic. As the
industry consolidates, farmers have seen varieties sold in smaller volumes, often
those that serve organic farming systems. In 2000, the world’s largest vegetable
seed company, Seminis (prior to being bought by Monsanto), acquired several
smaller international seed companies. The mergers resulted in a decision by
Seminis to drop over 2,000 varieties from production in a single season, a trend
that continues. The result has been fewer options for organic farmers, and for
the researchers and seed companies trying to serve them.
Seed Industry Concentration: The seed industry stands out as one of the
most concentrated in agriculture. Once comprised of mostly small, family-owned
companies, the industry is now dominated by a handful of transnational
biotechnology/chemical firms. The top three firms, for example, account for
more than 75% of U.S. corn seed sales. One firm’s patented genetic traits are in
nearly all corn, soybean, and cotton acreage planted in the U.S. Vegetable seed
is following a similar consolidation trajectory and is dominated by a single
player – Seminis (Monsanto) – that dwarfs any competitor.
Rapid and extensive consolidation is a consequence of the following factors:
• Weak antitrust law enforcement allowed large firms to acquire and merge
with a significant number of competitors;
• Supreme Court decisions paved the way for firms to patent plant parts,
including seeds, traits, and described plant characteristics (and Congress has
not acted to clarify the intent of the Plant Variety Protection Act);
• Federal legislation (1980 Bayh-Dole Act) encouraged the privatization and
patenting of public research; and
• Funding for public plant breeding and cultivar development has dramatically
reduced.
These factors have led not only to fewer choices in the seed marketplace, but
also concentrated control over important plant genetics needed for research and
development for all agricultural systems. This level of concentration has severe
consequences for the organic community.
Impacts to Organic: Organic farmers are underserved in genetics specifically
adapted to their cropping systems, regions, and market niches, and experience
a basic lack of availability of organic seed, with an even greater gap in varieties
specifically bred under certified organic conditions. As private concentration
and intellectual property control of plant genetics expand, the public sector
weakens, innovation stagnates, and minor markets such as organic do not
receive needed investments in seed system development.
Other consequences of seed industry concentration on organic agriculture are
clear:
• Dominant firms do not serve organic interests: This is because the organic
community embraces ecological alternatives to biotechnology and has deemed
genetic engineering an excluded method in the National Organic Program
(NOP). The organic and biotechnology sectors are generally in conflict with
each other’s goals, objectives, practices, and values.
• Loss of regional independent seed companies: Companies that for decades
served the regional needs of farmers by breeding varieties with agronomic
traits adapted to very specific environments – including some that were serving
or preparing to serve the organic market – have been lost with seed industry
consolidation. What regional companies exist often struggle to get access to

27. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-27
optimum parent lines, or when they can access them they are expensive with
cost-prohibitive and restrictive licensing agreements. Firms such as Monsanto
have a clear strategy of purchasing independent seed companies, many of whom
once served the organic market with untreated conventional seed and certified
organic seed. In general, these smaller regional independent companies have
greater flexibility in serving local markets and minor markets such as organic.
The loss of regional companies has limited the number of seed companies
investing in conventional and organic, limiting not only availability but also the
continued research and development that all markets need to evolve and thrive.
• Public breeding programs are increasingly privatized: Private funding of
industry research surged after 1980 as public funding declined. This coincided
with passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, which allows the patenting of publicly
funded research. Land grant universities and other public breeding programs
now find themselves financially dependent on a concentrated industry sector
to fund infrastructure, graduate students, and breeding programs. As a result,
research goals narrow to meet the needs of larger industries, such as agricultural
biotechnology, rather than the diverse needs of farmers. The influence these
companies have on Land Grant Universities (LGU) impacts not only innovation,
but distorts objective research and education, and weakens the mission of public
institutions. While the private and public sector should and can be mutually
supportive, agricultural research is currently imbalanced and tipped toward
benefiting a few corporations and their shareholders. Ideally the public research
sector would add competition to the market by continuing to release significant
volumes of finished public cultivars, with an increase in innovative germplasm
for emerging agricultural markets such as organic.
• Patents lock up important genetics: Patents hinder innovation by removing
valuable plant genetic material from the pool of public resources breeders rely
on. Breeders are restricted or prohibited from using patented varieties, traits, or
tools unless onerous licensing agreements are signed and expensive royalties
paid. The result is a public sector that lacks an ability to provide for – and an
understanding of the underlying values and needs of – the organic market. For
example, in field corn a utility patent was filed and granted to Hoegemeyer
Hybrids (now owned by DuPont-Pioneer) for a trait they call PuraMaize. This
trait has been bred and recorded in public research for decades, yet the flawed
patent system has provided a single company the proprietary rights. This is
a trait that the organic seed market is very interested in using, as it creates
a characteristic in corn crops to accept only pollen from genetically similar
plants. Such a trait can significantly reduce cross-pollination of organic corn
crops from GE corn crops. Yet seed companies report that restrictive licensing
fees make it cost-prohibitive for them to lease the trait from Hoegemeyer.
Conclusions: The trends described above put the integrity of organic
agriculture at risk and hinder the success of this growing sector. Organic
farmers already find it difficult to access quality certified organic seed. Varieties
they once relied on have been abandoned as the industry consolidates. Seed
companies looking to serve organic markets do not have access to genetic
traits tied up by patents, or parent lines that are proprietary and held by larger
firms. Public breeders looking to serve smaller markets such as organic are
not encouraged to work on these projects, as they do not return high royalties
on intellectual property to their universities. Concentration and the misuse
of patents also have global impacts, as they encourage biopiracy -- where
indigenous knowledge of nature is exploited for commercial gain with no
compensation to the indigenous people -- of public resources and threaten food
security. The system is broken.
Confronting industry concentration must be coupled with efforts to create
an environment in which new innovators, private and public breeders, and
entrepreneurs interested in organic seed systems have an opportunity to thrive.
Investments need to be made both at the public and private (e.g., food industry)
level. See Priority Goals section of this report for additional actions and policy
recommendations regarding seed concentration.
by Roberta Bailey
When people visit my farm for the first time, one of the comments often made
is that they are surprised by how little space it takes to grow seed crops. On the
home scale it can be quite small. Erase the vision of acres of dry beans or fields
of wheat. Picture a ten foot row of garden peas or a trellis of Morning Glories,
ten tomatoes or peppers. On the farm scale, rows of seed crops can be inter-cropped
with market crops.
You may ask why make the time in your extremely busy farm life to save seed?
A bit more seed security may be one answer. How many times have you gone to
order your favorite seed variety only to find that it is no longer available in any
seed catalog? Or have you ever wished a certain crop was just a little hardier or
that all of it performed like that one plant in the row did that one year? Are you
concerned about Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) contamination? Are
you having trouble finding pea seed that is not full of other types of peas (off-types)?
Do your spring seed bills scare you? Are you looking to diversify your
farm income? Or looking to get away from weekly deliveries and markets?
The seed industry continues to merge into a few very large multi-national corpo-rations.
When small companies are bought out, their locally adapted varieties are
dropped in favor of varieties that perform pretty well in many climates. If not for
an upsurgence of local seed saving efforts and of small seed companies special-izing
in hardy heirloom varieties, we would be left to grow varieties that do well
in Texas and just barely produce in New England.
GMO contamination is a growing concern. It is increasingly more difficult to
find clean corn, soy, and beet or chard seed. Even organic seed is getting con-taminated
by pollen drift from nearby GMO crops. Much of the beet and chard
seed available in the seed industry is grown in or around the Willamette Valley.
And Monsanto keeps trying to grow GMO sugar beets there too.
Saving your own seed is not going to lower that spring seed bill by as much as
we would all like but every little bit helps. Perhaps a greater gain comes from
an increase in quality. Peas are a good example. Pea seed is fairly cheap. It can’t
be turned into a fancy expensive hybrid. So pea growers are trying to produce
it with as little cost as possible. And it costs money to pay the labor of rogueing
the fields. So no one is walking the field pulling out the plants that are not true to
the variety being grown. The result is that we farmers are seeing huge amounts
of off-types in our pea rows. The same is happening to inexpensive radish and
rutabaga and carrot crops. As a result farmers lose productivity in their rows
Seed Saving on the Farm
photo by Rob Lemire
Author with her seed crop of Lutz beets which have become difficult
to find in the seed market. The roots were overwintered in a root
cellar then re-planted in early spring.

28. B- 28 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
and incur added labor time to avoid or sort out the
problems.
It is worth the time and money to grow your own or
at least buy organic seed produced on a small scale
by farmers who are rogueing their fields.
If you save your own seed, you always have that
variety. I save Lutz beet, Blizzard snow pea. Mi-ragreen
shell pea, Scarlet Keeper carrot, Beer Friend
and Sayamusume soybeans because I was tired of
going to my seed catalogs and finding that they were
no longer available.
In New England, it is not possible or practical to
save seed for everything we like to grow. It is pos-sible
to save seed from many crops. Our short grow-ing
season and cold winters limit us to plants that
can mature seed in under120 days. Peppers, toma-toes,
peas and beans are an easy place to start.
When you save seed on your farm, it begins to adapt
to your micro-climate and growing techniques. Of-ten
the seed that we buy has been produced under
intensive chemical spray regimens. A convention-ally
grown cabbage seed crop may be sprayed ten
times in its lifetime. The plants produced from that
seed know how to grow best under those conditions.
A plant grown on your farm in your soil and climate
and with your organic farm practices will adapt to
those practices. The Czech Black hot peppers that I
grow are now more uniform and produce more pep-pers
per plant because I saved seed from the plants
that had the best yields and the fruit shape I desired.
My Bread Seed poppies no longer have any vents in
the heads and the seed does not fall out of the heads
when I harvest them. I am selecting a Russian vari-ety
of rice for early maturity in central Maine.
Growing seed as a cash crop can also be profitable.
The seed can be the entire goal or it can be part of
a value added system. I started saving seed from
tomatoes because I was making sauce and removing
the seed. I looked at all the seed and realized I could
be selling it. One farmer who raises Long Pie pump-kins
as a seed crop removes the seed then sells the
pumpkins to a dog biscuit maker. Hot peppers can
be grown for seed and the flesh made into hot sauce,
salsa, or a chili paste to sell.
Value added products may fit well into your farm
system or they may add more work than your life
can support. A successful farmer is always look-ing
at systems, figuring what works and what can
be added, trying new things and scaling up the
ones that fit well. On my farm, the Green Doctor
cherry tomato seed crop is grown solely for its seed
because that is the most efficient use of time. The
pulp goes to the chickens. The Goldie tomato is a
beefsteak with a solid core of pulp. I extract the seed
and make a golden salsa from the pulp. Some of my
pepper crops get ground up and the seed extracted
while the pulp gets fed to the chickens. When chick-ens
eat pepper pulp, their egg yolks turn scarlet.
Seed crops sometimes need more time in the field
than food crops. Plan your field rotations accord-ingly.
Peas planted for fresh eating are done 3-4
weeks before seed peas. When I save seed for farm
use, I usually tie off a section of the row and do not
pick any of it. Once the peas are all mature and dry
I pick the entire section and save it for next years
seed. Twenty feet of peas will usually yield at least
one pound of seed. I plan my rows so that the seed
section will not interfere with tilling and replanting
of the next crop.
Some years I plant a long row of each variety and
save all of it, harvesting enough seed for three or
four years. Most seed will last three years, many
will keep five to ten.
One needs to know some basics in order to save
seed well. The web site savingourseed.org has very
thorough seed saving information in free pdf down-load
form. Here are some of the basics.
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photo by Rob Lemire
Duborskian, a short grain Russian variety of rice that Bailey grows in central Maine

29. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-29
Plants are arranged by botanical class and within
each class are families. Families are broken down
into genus and species. When you see the latin name
for a plant (Daucus carota, for carrot), that is the
genus and the species. Such classifications help us
identify plants and figure out if they will cross pol-linate
or not.
Open pollinated varieties grow seed that will pro-duce
the same true variety for generations. Hybrid
varieties are the offspring of a cross between two
parent varieties. The seed saved from a hybrid will
not produce that same plant, but some genetic com-bination
of the two original parents.
Some plants like peas, beans, soybeans. tomatoes,
peppers, and lettuce are self pollinating. You can
save the seed and it will grow true the next year. All
of the fruit on the plant, big or small, have the same
genetic make up. To maintain a full array of the
plants genetic diversity, grow and save from twenty
or more plants. If you save seed from one self-polli-nating
plant it will grow fine but you are narrowing
the genetic diversity.
Starting with self-pollinated varieties is the easiest
way to begin saving your own seed. If you decide
to save some tomato seed, plant those plants as far
away from your other tomatoes to reduce any inci-dence
of crossing. Potato leaf varieties will cross
with each other and the double blossoms can get
pollinated by another variety. If possible, isolate va-rieties
by about 25 feet.
Cross pollinated plants like brassicas, corn, carrots,
beets, squash, cukes and melons rely on the pollen
from other plants to produce viable fruit. They need
much larger populations to maintain health and vig-or.
Twenty five to one hundred plants are the mini-mum,
and corn needs at least two hundred plants.
They need isolation distances of 250 feet to many
miles. The easiest approach is to only grow one va-riety
of a given genus and species. Tall barriers like
a corn patch or row of trees can break insect flight
patterns and help reduce the distances needed be-tween
varieties that could cross pollinate. A physi-cal
barrier such as a screen cage or row cover can
keep the seed crop isolated. I use wire hoops and
poly row covers on some seed crops to keep them
pure. I also alternate years, growing one variety one
year and another the next. My Lutz beet seed crop
produced enough seed for 5-10 years leaving me
free to produce other beet seed crops in the interim
years.
Think about your spacing. A tomato or pepper plant
does not need any more space as a seed crop, but
a spinach or lettuce or carrot does. My beet plants
took up close to 2 feet apiece. A lettuce plant will
spread to 18 inches or 2 feet. I give my seed crops
extra minerals (usually in the form of azomite) to
help feed the seed production.
Good record keeping is essential. Label your seed-lings,
then the planted rows, and the stored seed.
Keeping a map as a back up record covers situa-tions
where a critter eats the row marker or weather
washes out the ink. When I harvest seed I label the
harvest bucket and throw the row marker inside the
container as well.
If you notice an ‘off-type’ plant or one which is very
different from the other plants, it should be rogued
or pulled out. Any diseased plants should be pulled.
Rogueing will keep your seed pure and healthy.
Sometimes a variety takes a few years of rogueing
before no off-types are found. You can save the seed
from an interesting off-type and grow it out the next
year to see what happens. You may be on your way
to creating a new variety or at least on a little bo-tanical
adventure.
When you save seed you are changing the plant. It is
adapting to your growing area and conditions. What
are you selecting for? You may save from the dis-ease
resistant plants. Or the highest yielding plants.
Or the blemish free ones. Over time you can tailor
your varieties to your own farm needs. Avoid sav-ing
from the first lettuce plants to go to seed as you
are selecting for lettuce that bolts early. Rather try to
save from the ones that bolt last.
Yields vary widely with varieties. Generally 100
tomato or pepper plants yield one pound of seed.
A 300 foot row of soup peas yields 30-40 lbs seed.
Thirty feet of bread seed poppies yields 1-1/2 lbs
seed.
To grow seed for profit, try it on a small scale first to
see if it fits into your farm operation and time con-straints.
Some crops need little attention other than
planting, weeding and harvest. I do all my pepper
seed cleaning in late October, whereas tomato seed
is an ongoing harvest throughout the late summer.
Seed companies usually contract with growers in the
early months of the new year. Contact companies
then to see if they want specific crops grown for
them. Growing their crops with their seed stock is
usually easier to arrange than growing a seed crop
on your own then trying to sell it. Seed companies
will want to trial any new varieties before picking
them up. But they are often looking for farms to
produce crops for them.
Some companies have a seed contract. Some are far
less formal. Some have specific delivery deadlines
and bonuses for early delivery or penalties for late
delivery. Some will clean the seed. Others expect
seed to be delivered completely cleaned. Some
charge for the cleaning process. Get these terms
spelled out.
Whether for farm use or for income, seed saving
connects you with generations of farmers who saved
their own seed. Your farm thrives on the results of
the work of these ancestors. Is it time to select a few
varieties for future profits or future generations?
by Bethany Schroeder and Suzanne McMannis
Tompkins County has a population of 100,000 resi-dents,
about 50,000 of whom live in the city and
town of Ithaca. The rest make their homes in rural
and semi-rural towns, hamlets, and villages through-out
the county. Many, many residents garden for
food or work small farms, and many hale from gar-dening
and farming backgrounds.
Cornell, the single land-grant university in New
York, is situated chiefly at the east end of the town
of Ithaca, with project centers, fields, and green-houses
found around and outside of the county. Seed
saving at an institutional level, either in particular
academic departments or specific greenhouses, is
likely, without being publicly known. On the other
hand, the Cornell Cooperative Extension program
hosts a small, informal seed saving effort, and many
casual growers use it. Otherwise, experienced grow-ers
save seed in some measure at their own proper-ties.
Local seed savers cull for size, taste, weather hardi-ness,
regional availability, disease resistance, genet-ic
variation, and they invariably note the attraction
of managing the earth, from the choice of plot and
seeds to choosing the source of nitrogen. An infor-mal
survey of area growers indicates that local gar-deners
and farmers would appreciate an accessible
and disciplined seed saving program, and plenty of
them have the expertise to support such a project
into maturity. Three profiles of Tompkins County
growers testify to individual skill and determination
in saving and using seed.
Sean Dembrosky: Permaculture Gardener
When you visit edibleacres.org, you will see a
lively and creative approach to getting food into
the ground. Sean Dembrosky, chief designer and
steward, started this enterprise in Trumansburg with
a view to modeling responsible gardening behav-iors
and giving others a place to see his ideas about
permaculture principles in action. In exchange for
Seed Saving in Tompkins County, NY
disturbing the soil as little as possible and using
conventional winnowing for those specimens he has
access to in small amounts, Sean says he can expect
biennial or over-wintering activity in his garden,
even without the use of cold frames or hoop houses
to protect against inclement weather.
Along with developing the gardens and other proj-ects
of Edible Acres, Sean has been saving seeds
from many of his plants. Employing an observation-al
approach, in which he tries one method of plant-ing,
culling seeds, and then selecting from among
them, he opines, “There’s not any mystery in plant
communities. You just need to look and listen, and
they’ll show you what to do next.”
True to form, Sean is for the most part a self-taught
gardener. He took a weekend permaculture for-est
farming intensive with Dave Jacke before fully
starting the maintenance and further development
of his own groves and hedgerows. Otherwise, he
scours the web during winter months to learn more,
meeting with local gardening enthusiasts, some well
known and some not, to pick up new ideas.
One inspiration has been Steve Bryer of Tripple-brook
Farm in Massachusettes. The farm, using or-ganic
practices since 1904, includes more than 1000
perennial examples rated to Zone 5 hardiness. Bryer
invites other gardeners, established and aspiring
alike, to sleep in the greenhouse and work alongside
him for a living wage. Another of Sean’s mentors
photo by Jon Bosak
Sean Dembrosky with (left to right) stinging nettles, orach, and dill

30. B- 30 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2
has been Erik Toensmeier, author of Perennial Veg-etables.
Toensmeier’s website includes growing tips
and lists beyond the author’s original 100 edibles, as
well as choices by climate and useful links for gar-deners
across the U.S. and elsewhere.
Sean says he primarily selects seeds from plants with
the best yield and the greatest number of seeds. For
example, in choosing kale seeds, he considers the
plants in his garden with the largest leaves among
plants that have demonstrated both hardiness to ex-tremes
in weather and resistance to predation. Along
with the methods he has found to be easiest and most
useful for seed saving, Sean is not averse to acquiring
seed through the area’s seed bank housed at Cornell
Cooperative Extension. “Germination rates might
sometimes be low and I might not always have a lot
of variety to choose from, but it’s a good way to use
what’s locally available,” says Sean.
With a decidedly low-tech approach, Sean tethers
and hangs ideal plants upside down in his airy equip-ment
shed before broadcasting the thoroughly dried
specimens onto raised beds. Called the “magic wand”
approach, Sean shakes seeds onto the ground, loosely
covers them with surface dirt, and then sticks the
stems into the center of the planted area. “That way I
am reminded of what I put into each bed,” he says.
An inveterate contributor of time and energy, Sean
shares his techniques with the community through
work on his property; education at the Veteran’s
Sanctuary in Trumansburg; and, this autumn, through
Freeskool programming, which will include sustain-able
farming practices.
Sean’s favorite vegetable seeds over the past several
years have included orach, a lovely spinach-like leaf
with great color; kales of all varieties, especially
“krepe,” a combination of red Russian kale and rape;
collard greens; spinach; dill; fennel; cilantro; parsley;
calendula; borage; leeks; and heirloom tomatoes.
For more information go to: edibleacres.org,
http://veteranssanctuary.blogspot.com/ and
http://ithacafreeskool.wordpress.com/class-descrip-tions/
Teresa Vanek and Brent Welch: Market Farmers
Red Tail Farm, in Jacksonville, is a four-acre organ-ic
farm and the home of Teresa Vanek, Brent Welch,
and their young son, Milan. Teresa and Brent have
owned the land since 2004 and are close to finish-ing
work on their straw bale house. The couple sells
produce at two Ithaca Farmers Markets, as well as to
a home delivery service and some area restaurants.
They also produce and sell raw honey.
Traveling abroad in their formidable years, particu-larly
in South America, fostered in Teresa and Brent
a fascination for seeds. They agree that whereas no
single farmer mentored them, farmers in the area
have always been generous with time and advice.
Michael Glos gave them how-to information on
seed saving strategies, and they have returned to
this local well-known resource for more help when
needed.
They currently save seed for garlic, tomatillos, hot
peppers, and several heirloom tomatoes. They select
for flavor, yield, and disease resistance, but beyond
these obvious traits, Teresa and Brent are drawn to
characteristics perhaps less easily defined. For in-stance,
they have had good luck saving seed from
a hot pepper that came to them from the Bolivian
Andes. About three inches long, this Red Aji pepper
is hot and spicy as one would expect but also very
sweet. A “wonderful flavor,” says Brent, adding that
you can just about completely abandon it in the gar-den
and it will still do well.
The Red Aji dries nicely, too, another key feature
that recommends it to Teresa and Brent. They use
it mostly for cooking at home, but they have given
thought to committing it to seed production, so en-amored
are they of this pepper. They have not found
its match in seed catalogues over the years; hence,
their seed saving efforts with this variety have been
worthwhile.
They also save seed from an heirloom tomato
named Opalka, a luscious sauce tomato with very
little seed and almost no water. Brent notes that
Opalka is still available through the Seed Savers
catalogue. Having been stung by the disappearance
of a San Marzano tomato they really enjoyed, how-ever,
Teresa and Brent are careful with their Opalka
seed, despite its availability elsewhere.
The seed garlic at Red Tail Farm includes German
Red, German White, and what the farmers call Red
Tail Farm Mix, a favorite with customers. Brent ex-plains
that one year their seed garlic got a bit mixed
up, but they decided to market it cleverly and have
found that customers love the variety in it. (Note to
seed savers everywhere: never underestimate seren-dipity.)
Clements Law Office, LLC
9 Damonmill Square,
Concord, MA 01742
978.287.4901
www.clementsllc.com
Appeals and Litigation • Advice and Advocacy
“Agriculture. . . is our wisest pursuit,
because it will in the end contribute most to
real wealth, good morals and happiness.”
Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1787
Clements_4.875x7.5.indd 1 1/10/10 12:07 PM
photo by Jon Bosak
Brent Welch of Red Tail Farm with
tomatillo, garlic, and red peppers

31. Wi n t e r, 2 0 1 1 - 1 2 T h e Na t u r a l F a rme r B-31
Red Tail Farm also produces a favorite tomatillo
with huge fruit but rather low yields. It makes a
marvelous salsa verde, and Teresa and Brent share
the fruit with some of their farmer friends. They
hope other growers in the area will commit to grow-ing
it in the future, so that the “seed bank” for this
variety can be preserved for this bio-region.
For more information go to:
redgooseberry@yahoo.com
Thor Oechsner: Grain Farmer
The equipment at the Oechsner Farm in Newfield is
the most obvious aspect of the operation. As owner
Thor Oechsner points out, “Grain farming is equip-ment
farming, and you have to know how to manage
the machines if you’re going to succeed.”
Schooled in agriculture at Cornell in the early 1980s
and auto mechanics at his own auto shop between
1989 and 1997, Thor sounds a grateful note at hav-ing
learned the skills that make him the rare certified
organic wheat farmer in this southern tier commu-nity.
Although he demurs at the notion of formal
sources, Thor does cite mentors such as Tony Poten-za
of Trumansburg, John Meyers of Ovid, and Klaas
Martins of Penn Yan. As Thor sees it, “They taught
me farming and the principles of organic farm man-agement.
They encouraged me to think about farm-ing
on my own terms.”
In addition to every manner of tractor and truck on
this farm, the air screen cleaner in the main barn
is a sight to behold. Standing almost 15 feet high,
the massive wooden contraption, built in 1910, had
been useful for many decades by the time Thor
bought it in 2009. As the primary machine used
both to sift seeds for saving and to prepare wheat
and other grains for milling, this cleaner has three
screens of varying gauges, down to a 64th of an
inch, and a strong fan to blow out light materials.
After Thor’s preparations, he sends the wheat on for
milling at partner Greg Mol’s Farmer Ground Flour
in Trumansburg. The flour is used to bake bread
and pastries at Wide Awake Bakery in Mecklenburg
(in which Thor has also invested) and at Ithaca’s
food co-op, GreenStar. The flour is sold at increas-ing
numbers of stores across the state and in New
York City. Harkening back to more than a century
ago when New York was called the nation’s bread
basket, the entire Oechsner enterprise is focused on
grain.
Along with growing and threshing, Thor has been
saving seed for many years. For example, he saves
and selects from among the most nutritional oats for
animal feed. He also selects for disease resistance,
agronomic traits and, at the same time, looks for
good baking characteristics in the field products,
all of which he learns through trial and error. Thor
continues to search out different varieties of grain,
including heirloom varieties, by researching a new
seed each year and analyzing the results at the end
of the growing season. He maintains files on seed
types, both for inspection by the state and in order
to compare his observations and experiences over
time. He sets aside specific fields for seed saving,
depending on the size of the grain and its overall
health. Thor notes that it often takes a couple of
years to be confident about a grain. “You can lose a
lot of your investment, either due to bad weather or
just by making the wrong bet on seed.”
One grain that Thor likes is a dark rye from Po-land,
which he says is good for milling. Varieties of
wheat seed that have produced well include Glenn,
AC Morley, Steele, and Warthog, the latter of which
has both wonderful baking qualities as well as hav-ing
proven to be an excellent source of wheat grass
seed, ultimately used for juicing.
Most of his seed saving is for the benefit of his own
farm, but other area farmers have come to depend
on Thor’s seed saving work, too. Estimating his
seed saving activities to be ten percent or less of
his operation, he nonetheless carefully records his
findings from year to year in order to protect the
product.
For moore information go to:
http://www.smallworldfood.com/about/farms/oech-sner-
farm/
A Seed Bank from the Ground Up
The seed saving impulse is strong in people who work
to wrest a living from the soil. Despite frantic sched-ules
and a heavy workload, the interest in seed saving
thrives across the seasons. As growers come to under-stand
both the power and vulnerability of seeds in the
current climate of consolidation, their thoughts might
naturally turn to a community-based seed bank. Noth-ing
seems to compare to the piles of glorious seed cata-logues
that show up in the winter months to encourage
a grower’s appetite, but the work of creating a commu-nity
seed bank could well bring its own inimitable joy.
What would such an effort entail? First, growers would
have to know each other well and trust one another’s
abilities—not only regarding the growing of plants for
seed but also in terms of record keeping. Ideally, they
would then need to make an extensive effort to docu-ment
soil types in order to optimize the seed production
of different plants on each farm. They would need to
analyze current research on the influence of soil, cli-mate,
and other environmental factors. Keeping track
of quantities and varieties of seed and insuring proper
storage and viability records would demand a consis-tency
of purpose, and the group or collective would
necessarily have to be clear about expectations from
season to season, as more varieties of seed were in-cluded
in the bank.
Reflecting on an initiative this seemingly complex,
we might do well to consider that throughout the
Third World, local seed saving has been the basis of
survival for centuries. Although not widely so, the
knowledge is available. Perhaps we just need to be-lieve
that the future of our food is safest when it is in
our own roughened and soil-stained hands.
Bethany Schroeder is a founding member of TCLocal
(tclocal.org), a long-time writer for hire, and a newly
committed food grower in Ithaca, New York. She can
be reached at nidus@pinax.com. With her husband,
Lynn, Suzanne McMannis owns Earth Walk Farm in
Dryden, New York. She can be reached at earthwalk-farm@
gmail.com. The authors thank Kristina Strain
for advice in developing this article.
photo by Jon Bosak
Thor Oechsner with a “new” air cleaner
“The main bene t of Udder
Comfort™ is the milk
quality,” says fth generation
dairy farmer Leon Corse.
He and his wife Linda and
their daughter Abbie milk 50 to 60 cows at Corse
Farm Dairy in southern Vermont, which was certi ed
organic in 2008. “Since we’ve been organic, we get
pretty terri c quality premiums, and that made SCC
an even greater focus than it was before.
“Historically, our SCC was up in the 150 to 200,000
range. Our numbers for the last 12 months show
averages of 95,000 and as low as 75,000 in the
rst few months of 2010. It’s been a gradual
decline since we’ve been using Udder Comfort
consistently.
“We use Udder Comfort on any cow with a known
high SCC, unusual swelling or any akes. We apply
it after both milkings for a few days. We monitor
bulk tanks and cell counts from the milk company,
and we test suspicious quarters and also all fresh
cows for SCC levels. If high, we put Udder Comfort
on for 2 to 4 days to take care of it.
“ I was asked to give a quality milk presentation at
the NOFA Vermont Winter Conference in 2010.
Part of my preparation was to gure out our quality
results for 2009. The interesting number I came
up with was: On 956,000 total pounds shipped,
we received $26,187 in quality premiums for all 4
measures-SCC is a very signi cant portion of that.
“ Initially, I was somewhat skeptical about what to
expect from using Udder Comfort, but I’m glad I was
willing to give it a try because we are totally happy
with it. The best way to see what it does, is to pick
out a couple cows that have got a cell count problem
and try Udder Comfort on them, and see what you
get for results.”
“… glad we tried it because we are totally happy with it.”
Quality Udders Make Quality Milk
For external application to the udder only, after milking, as an essential component
of udder management. Always wash and dry teats thoroughly before milking.
Call to locate a
distributor near you.
Keep the milk in
the system
1.888.773.7153
1.613.543.3263
uddercomfort.com
— Leon Corse
CORSE FARM DAIRY, LLC, Whitingham, VT
LEON AND LINDA CORSE daughter ABBIE
Milking 60 cows – Certi ed Organic
RHA: 16,600 lbs. (2x) - SCC: 75,000

32. Winter 2011-12 Non-Profit Organization
U. S. Postage Paid
Barre, MA 01005
NOFA Education Fund Permit No. 28
411 Sheldon Rd.
Barre, MA 01005
$5.00
photo by Jack Kittredge
The seed bank of India’s Green Foundation Biodiversity Conservation Center in Thally, Karna-taka.
Note the seeds saved in jars and those still drying in bunches hanging from the rafters.
This issue contains news, features, and articles about organic growing in the Northeast
plus a special supplement on Organic Seeds