Seed Money
Most farmers grow plants for the food they produce; few consider the food for the seeds—and the next season’s harvest those seeds contain. Anita Thompson is one of the few. Owner of Double T Bar Farm in Taylor, Thompson is many things: seed farmer; grower of heirloom vegetables, herbs, and native plants; value-added producer of hydrosols and essential oils, and deeply curious.
“When it comes down to it, I’ve always wanted to look at the history of food—where it comes from and why it’s so important to a community,” Thompson says.
Farming is in her DNA. Her family’s roots trace back to England and Eastern Europe. Both groups were farmers escaping religious persecution. “My lineage comes from places that have peasant seed—seed that was grown by peasants and kept in the family lines and protected,” she explains.
“During Covid, I realized the importance of having access to quality seed.” She took classes from Colorado State University and is currently enrolled in the Organic Seed Alliance Seed Production Cohort. “I wanted to do something more than sell vegetables at the farmers market,” she says. “I started selling seeds [at markets], but I didn’t do enough research.”
These Hopi White Tepary beans will be donated to Native Seed/SEARCH to be given to members of the Hopi nation. When Thompson first started growing these beans, the germination rate was two plants out of ten seeds. She has since increased it to 80 percent.
Seed Rules
Selling seeds to the public requires at least one license. In Arizona, there are two options: the seed dealer and the seed labeler. The dealer sells the seed. It could be Walmart, Tractor Supply, a local nursery, or a small-scale seed farmer like Thompson. The labeler is responsible for putting their name on the seed packet and attesting to its quality, as well as germination and disease testing. A farmer can get a labeler license, but not all labelers grow their own seeds.
“In some people’s minds, every farmer who produces seed should be a licensed labeler and do germination and disease testing,” Thompson says. “Diseases and insects are passed very easily in seed. A tiny seed can harbor a ton of different diseases or pests.”
The theory is sound. No farmer wants to spend precious resources (time, money, water, soil amendments, etc.) on seeds they aren’t sure are viable. Thompson puts it more simply, “If a carrot goes to seed without creating a taproot and people save that seed, they’ve now saved a really nice flower, not food.”
A cursory search of the internet reveals a long list of problems caused by pathogens transmitted through seeds. Arizona derives significant revenue from row crops including melons, potatoes, sweet potatoes, grains, and beans, not to mention nuts, fruit, and cotton. Diseased crops are not in anyone’s economic best interest.
Labeler and dealer licenses are relatively inexpensive—$100 and $50 a year—though a seed dealer must have a physical location for their business and cannot be home-based. Germination tests— which range between $40 and $100 per plant species—add up. “If I do germination tests in a lab, I need to send a certain number of seeds—up to 400 or 500. I am a boutique seedery. For example, I have 100 seeds from my Omega Flax. If I send that to a lab for testing, I have nothing to sell,” Thompson says.
Complex Biological Process
Thompson is a licensed seed labeler and cultivates 200 species on a wind-blown acre in between Fort Apache and the Navajo Nation. What appears to be verdant chaos is actually careful Tetrising.
Seed farmers are more invested in their plants’ genetics. “Understanding the nuances and biology behind seeds is a learning experience. When you look at how seeds are produced, it’s a complex biological process. The plant is trying to push its progeny out and continue its existence,” Thompson says.
She refers to the variety of ways plants are pollinated [wind, water, winged things, other animals] and the equally varied ways humans control the process such as growing a specific distance away, pollinating by hand, growing certain species in a closed environment like a greenhouse, tenting, and using pollination-control bags or blocks around self-pollinators.
The variables are many, and the results take time. Unless you have a large controlled environment, you have to wait until next season to find out the results. “When you’re working with a seed company that wants to buy your seed, you have to plan ahead for how many of each category you’re going to have,” Thompson says. “If you’re doing biennials, that locks up space for two years.”
Small Versus Large
Thompson grew for bigger suppliers, but decided not to this year. “The contracts I had before paid so little that I don’t want to deal with that anymore. I was getting maybe 50 cents per pound of seed, and then they’re selling that pound for $30 or $40. It doesn’t make sense for the small grower to try to stay in business,” Thompson says.
This year, she’s focused on growing for local herbalists and selling directly to consumers. “I do my own disease and germination testing because I have the training and the equipment to be able to do it. But I also sell to my customers face-to-face or they buy from me online. They get my business card, website, and email address, and I tell them to email me if you have any questions. I have such a small volume that I am able to provide one-on-one customer service.”
This is a stark contrast from the larger model where seed labelers don’t always know from whom or where the seeds they’ve labeled come. “A lot of these companies aren’t public. There’s a list you can get on to be able to receive the information about what these seed companies are growing, but you have to know someone to get it,” Thompson says.
Large-scale production may be the only economically viable option, but it also means large-scale problems like Peppergate. “About two years ago, people were buying pepper plants from different retailers but the plants weren’t what they were supposed to be. What happened is something went wrong at a really big pepper farm in the United States. Six varieties of peppers were mislabelled. They’re still being circulated. And as long as they’re still germinating, they can still sell them,” Thompson says.
Beyond The Bucks
Plants, like people, adapt to their environment. To ensure their survival, plants pass information to their seeds through genetics. Seeds harvested from a plant grown in the Netherlands—a major seed producer exporting all over the world—will not be as adapted to Arizona’s climate as seeds from a plant grown by your local seed farmer.
“I would love for there to be—especially in Arizona and the Southwest, where you have these really small boutique seed companies—some sort of group that gets together and says, ‘Hey, let’s look at what the bigger seed companies are doing, downsize it, make sure we still fall within the correct legalities and everyone is protected, but now we can profitably produce seed for our communities.’”
An alternative proposal suggested by a local grower coalition would modify existing licensing rules to be similar to those allowing the sale of nest-run eggs at farmers markets. Such a classification could include factors like growers registering with the State, earning below a certain amount from sales, and collecting and selling seeds within a limited radius.
