98% of the worlds seeds come from one of six companies:
Monsanto
Syngenta
DuPont
Mitsui
Aventis
Dow
If you don’t make a conscious decision to buy your seed from somewhere else, they will almost certainly come one of these companies.
There are two kinds of seed retailers. The first kind simply resells seeds from these companies, a commercial seed retailer. While it’s not impossible that some of your seeds may come from somewhere else, these retailers enter into very restrictive marketing agreements and promise never to clearly label their seeds for what they are. Instead they use marketing terms like ‘old style’ or ‘like what your grand mother grew’ or even ‘heirloom’ (because this is not a legally defined term).
The second kind of seed retailer makes a clear public statement that all of their seeds are non-hybrid or ‘Open Pollinated’. With these type of seeds you can grow the plants and resave the seeds for yourself or to share with others. Have a look in the Links section in the front of this blog for ideas of seed retailers like this. Of course there are others around I don’t link to. If a seed company sells a single F1 variety, they are a commercial seed retailer, and you cannot trust anything you buy from them!
If you live in Europe you will have a much harder time finding a non-commercial seed retailer. This is because in Europe we have laws requiring seeds offered for sale have to be registered and on official lists. Since the big six seed companies control these lists, it makes sense of course their seeds are featured. There are a growing number of non-commercial seed companies operating in Europe, but they are technically illegal, and may not be around much longer. If you live in Europe you may need to buy your seeds from abroad, probably North America where there are no seed laws.
The Blogger Seed Network only has non-commercial seeds, and at least some of the members will ship seed anywhere in the world! You don’t need to have a blog to participate, and while offering some payment to cover the costs of sending the seeds is always appreciated, most people will send seeds for little or no payment. You don’t need to offer seeds yourself to request them.
I’m not sure where we fit in here. We grow all our own seeds, none of them hybrids and although profit might not be our primary aim, we do try to make a living from growing and selling seeds. I do enjoy your blog and would like to be added to your links.
The only problem with this type of definition Patrick is it leaves out independent companies that do their own breeding work like Johnnies, here in the states. It would also automatically disqualify my seed project in the future as many of our lines are segregating hybrids to be selected for the home garden, this would also disqualify us because at some point in the future we make available some limited lines of our own F1 seed from varieties that we are crossing, it would also most certainly eliminate Ken Ettlinger and Long Island Seed, Tom Wagner and Tater Mater, and Alan Kapuler and Peace Seeds, all orginazations working for and in the public domain for the betterment of agriculture as a whole. I don’t think you meant for your post to come off sounding that way, but it may be something to look at and further outline. Very seldom are the lines in life drawn in black and white, what you might point out instead would be a seed companies willingness to sign the “Safe Seed Pledge”. Just a thought my friend.
Like Alan,. I think you are painting this just too black and white. I’m also not entirely sure of the relevance of linking to a Google search for those six names.
I’d much rather see a citation to how someone calculated that 98%. I’m not arguing that there is enormous concentration within the commercial seed industry. I’m just wondering: does it include bulk cereals? Is it based on number of varieties sold, or tonnage, or some other figure? How does it deal with the rather large number of Registered Maintainers in Europe?
Madeline, I’m pretty sure I know where you fit in here. You’re the perfect example of the right place to buy seeds from, and you don’t resell seeds from these ‘big six’. I’ve known about you for a while now, and it was just an oversight that I hadn’t added you to my links. You’re added now! Thanks for stopping by and leaving the comment. Please visit again!
Alan, I’m pretty sure we are just having a misunderstanding over the interpretation of what I wrote, and maybe I wasn’t clear. My point was that if a company resells commercial F1 hybrids, they have to enter into a marketing agreement agreeing not to make clear which are the OP varieties and which are the F1s.
Johnny’s does have this problem, because they do sell commercial F1s. They have said they feel some of the commercial F1s they sell have importance to small and organic farmers, and they don’t want to discontinue them. For a very brief time, they split their catalog in 2, one for ‘amateur gardeners’, clearly labelled as containing only OP varieties, but I guess they weren’t allowed to do this in the end because they don’t make this distinction anymore.
I agree with you that Johnny’s is basically a good seed company, and they do good work. At the same time, I don’t think they are a good place for people who intend to save their own seeds to buy them from. I do in fact know someone who ordered seeds not labelled as F1 from them, exchanged several emails with them over the status of the seeds, then found out 2 years later after saving the seeds they were in fact F1s to begin with. I don’t think it was an intentional act on Johnny’s part, but mistakes like this can easily happen when dealing with a company that sells F1s and beginning gardeners are easily discouraged by these kind of mistakes.
If you or anyone else sees interesting breeding material in what Johnny’s sells, or you don’t intend to save your own seeds or don’t care if you are growing a commercial F1 hybrid, I think Johnny’s is a fine place to buy your seeds from.
You have to remember there is a difference between the people you have in the Homegrown Goodness forum and the people reading this blog! Most people here are not experienced gardeners or breeders, and mostly I’m trying to take what is a pretty complicated subject for them and make it sound simpler. In particular, there are a lot of beginning gardeners reading this blog now, and this post was specifically targeted at them.
If I make short posts people complain they are inaccurate, if I make longer ones people get glassy-eyed and glaze over them. It’s hard to strike a good balance!
I’m pretty sure you aren’t planning to directly resell commercial F1 hybrids. I’m no lawyer or expert on patent law, but what I understand is that with the exception of GM genes, the genetic material in plants cannot be patented, so once you have created your own variety with genes from commercial sources they are no longer owned by those companies and are no longer commercial in nature, until the new variety itself is patented or otherwise protected or registered. I’m pretty sure you aren’t planning to incorporate GM genes into your work. Assuming this is all true, your work would not fall into what I refer to as commercial F1 hybrids here and you would not be a commercial seed retailer.
By the same logic, I’m pretty sure what I said is not identifying work done by the other people you mention as bad in any way.
Jermey, point taken. This in not a very hard statistic. It originally came from the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/
I don’t own a copy of the book, and I have only seen lots of other people on the Internet cite the reference, so I can’t say a lot about it. I assume it does include cereal grains. I’m sure the person who came up with the statistic did it for purposes of making a point, rather than making an accurate statement. Perhaps this was a poor choice of a statistic to give here. If you have other ideas of a more accurate statistic, I’d love to hear.
Actually, in South Africa it is almost completely the reverse: seed labelling laws require accurate labelling and variety-names. Hybrids legally must> be clearly labelled as such.
Hi.
Interesting and relevant post. Just want to note, that Sweden have an exception for seeds, allowing swedish seedcompanies to sell non-EU varieties in small consumer packets. The had this exception, as gardeners north of the polarcircle are relying on special varieties to produce anything.
The small seedcompany Runåbergs fröer http://www.runabergsfroer.se sell some rare varieties, and cooperate to some extent with the swedish seedsavers SESAM.
In Denmark I have the impression, that the EU variety regulations are very likely to be changed more towards the swedish model. In Denmark this practice is now tolerated by authorities, and some new very seedcompanies are experimenting a bit.
I also believe these discussions, and comments, in blogs and boards are important for the future decisionmaking, as we express ordinary peoples needs for freedom when it comes to small seedbatches for private gardens.
Hi Søren,
Thanks for mentioning this!
Here in the Netherlands there aren’t really many new or very small seed companies, so it’s hard to know what’s going on here. I would likely not have noticed anything had you not said something.
I’m starting to feel like there’s nothing left for me to post on my blog. If the EU seed regulations change and they keep increasing support for small farms, there won’t be anything to talk about. I’ll have to go back to taking pictures of the plants in my garden, and talking about them instead!
Like what you said, I believe very strongly that discussions on the Internet have played a big role in these changes, and will continue to play an important role in the future.