Where Seeds Come From

Do you know where your seeds come from? Until I worked for a seed company, I didn’t have a clue. I assumed each seed company grew their own. It does seem odd, given how wildly interested most people are in food - organic, biodynamic, in season, and Slow food. Where DO seeds come from, anyway? Welcome to the global marketplace, and bio-agribusiness. Virtually all seed retailers (catalogue-senders) obtain seed from the same suppliers all over the world. That’s right - Mackenzie, Mr. Fothergill, Johnny’s, Stokes, Burpee’s, you name it. Everyone buys from major producers, then repackages and sells to you, the home and market gardener.

Since 1926, Christianson, of Mt. Vernon, Washington, has managed seed production in one of the world’s most fertile agricultural areas, the state of Washington. If you’ve ever wondered what’s growing on either side of that interminably long stretch on I5 between Bellingham and Seattle, it’s beets or cabbage being grown for seed. Parts of Washington state like the Skagit Valley suit these crops to a “T”. Maybe I don’t get out much, but I was impressed when I visited Christianson, was taken on a tour, and found out every beet I’d eaten in my whole life (OK, I love beets - pickled beets, roasted beets, steamed, boiled, with orange sauce, in salads with Belgian endive and goat cheese...), not to mention beet seed I’d planted, originated here. The state of Washington produces 95% of the beet seed for North America, and 50% of the world’s seed.
Until the recent emergence of the huge Asian seed producers, 90% of the world’s cabbage seed was produced here as well. Cabbage, you say? Canadians aren’t huge cabbage-eaters, but go to the Czech Republic and, ye gods - it’s zeli (cabbage) everywhere - for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Cabbage is a mainstay of the global low-income diet - cheap, full of vitamins, and you can stir-fry it, make cabbage rolls, coleslaw, and sauerkraut which keeps forever.
As our tour continued, I spied a field of stuff that looked as if it had been set afire. I learned that these were potatoes, and they’d been sprayed with a defoliant. What was once green potato leaves were now as withered and blackened as John Kerry’s hope of being President. Making a mental note to buy organic potatoes from now, I learned that Christianson manages the local growers, hosting an annual meeting known as a “Pinning Date”. Together, the farmer/growers determine what chard, beet, or cabbage variety will be sown in what fields (like vineyards, growers may grow in more than one field) keeping in mind suitable distances between varieties to avoid cross-pollination. Stock seed, grown by Christianson in pristine mountain valleys is distributed to the growers, planted and tended.
In fall, gone-to-seed vegetables are gathered and transported to the Christianson warehouse situated in the centre of town or their facility at Quincy, in central Washington. The seeds are cleaned, hulled and graded - small chard seed, for instance, will be marketed for growing as ‘baby leaf’ for mesclun salad mixes. Seed is tested for viability (aliveness) and germination rate (which must meet rigorous standards), then packed in giant crates labelled with the name of the grower and growing field - crates weigh anywhere from 500 pounds to one ton depending on the seed. Later, they’ll be packed and shipped to seed retailers starting in late fall, for sale the following Spring.
Varieties are kept pure by constant monitoring. Otherwise, beets for example, might go the way of natural selection - mutate or genetically ‘drift’ into roots with three heads - or lose the root entirely. Chard originated this way - by mutation: long ago in Switzerland, a beet shriveled in the ground but the leaves continued to grow lushly. It was assumed that it was a type of cardoon - thus the name “chardon”, in French.
I found out that Alf Christianson had been bought by Sakata Seeds of Yokohama, Japan. Nothing has changed, asserted my tour guide, including their “ChrisSeed” brand, 50 employees year-around, and another 50 in busy season. I picture the owner and founder, grandfather Alf Christianson, turning in his grave...but zipped my lip, and took a deep cleansing breath.
Alf Christianson is known in the agri-business trade as a major producer, along with sister companies Sakata America and Sakata Japan, Takii & Known You (both Taiwan), Tokita (Japan), Slavia (Mexico). There’s lots of growing going on in the third world - lots of cheap labour. Just like running shoes and everything else. There are companies with scary names: Syngenta, Monsanto, Novartis - major players in the Agribusiness game - big bio-technology companies which create GM seeds as well as OP and hybrid varieties. Many have jumped on the bandwagon and proffer seeds for every karmic gardening level from organic to genetically modified.
Romano beans were probably grown by Fratelli-Ingegnoli (Italy) in their fields. Skinny little filet beans come from Vilmorin in France, ditto the stylish heirloom Rouge d’Etampes, AKA “Cinderella” pumpkin. Eggplant seed might be wholesaled by Seminis (USA) after being contract-grown in Thailand or Vietnam. Tokita Seeds (Japan) developed ‘Sungold’ - a particularly wonderful and delicious F1 hybrid. People are mad for this tomato, available at local farmer’s markets, but there’ll be a lineup. Flower seed producers like Daehnfeldt (Denmark), Kieft (Holland) and Benary (Germany) manage and contract flower seed growers in warm climates all over the world - the Third World, mostly. Thompson and Morgan seem to indicate that they breed their own seed in England. Actually, they do a portion of their own breeding, but in New Jersey, USA.
Major seed producers don’t deal with the public. Although they are big companies doing gazillions worth of business annually, you’ve never heard their names, with rare exceptions: a couple of Italian producers market traditional varieties of beans, herbs, and about two dozen varieties of radicchio. These packages are loaded with seeds (no middle man), have excellent germination rates, and are likely fairly organically-grown. Look for these Italian seeds near the gorgonzola in Italian grocery stores.
On the road again, past a hydroponic greenhouse on Britt Slough Road, we arrive at one of Christianson’s Trial gardens, where seed is ‘grown out’ to make sure varieties perform as advertised: days to maturity, colour, taste, size. The grey-brown clay soil explodes with bionic-looking veggies: mammoth cabbages, stalwart kale, Italian parsley the size of giant celery stalks. And the carrots - mother of God - the size of cricket bats, poking their ruddy ‘shoulders’ up (it’s actually called shoulders in ag-language) out of the clay soil. I spot the biggest red cabbage I’ve ever seen, labelled ‘B9911’. Veggie varieties often have unromantic names until released to the market place, when the name is changed to ‘Purple Wonder’ or ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’. I get to take the gigantic red cabbage home. It’s enough to make slaw for three hundred picnickers and it takes two of us to wrest this silver-sheened behemoth from the soil - one to hold on, the other to cut the core. I could hardly lift B9911, easily 40 pounds and a wing-span of three feet.
If you want to save your own seeds, buy open pollinated seeds ("OP") ALL beans, peas, lettuce, most Asian greens, and many varieties of tomatoes, cabbage, beets and more are OP. An ‘heirloom’ is always OP, 100 years old or more, passed down through generations. An example: the teensy ‘Currant’ tomato, Lycopersicon pimpinellifolium, the one Martha calls “five-in-a-spoon”. It’s thought to be a descendant of the wild tomatl of the Aztecs. “F1” means hybrid, like you and me, children of two parents manifesting qualities of each parent. During hybridization, desirable traits from each parent are identified then combined to produce an offspring. Traits selected for might be disease-resistance, cold or heat tolerance, flavour, colour, or storage quality. If you save seed from an F1 veggie, and sow that seed, what comes up will have reverted to either of the parents. Squash and other cucurbits are particularly promiscuous, so it’s best to buy fresh seed rather than save your own, as you never know what will come up.
Don’t be worried (yet) about being sold GM seed covertly. It’s too expensive, and with rare exception not available to home gardeners. Google search engine turns up the dirt about world bio-agribusiness. For who owns who, check out the business watchdog site Hoovers.
If you’re feeling jet lagged trying to keep up with where your seeds come from, visit Seedy Saturday online. You’ll find information on local seed companies who raise their own.