Our Seed Prices

Seed prices and Racism in Seed Industry

One of the best-kept secrets of the small seed industry in this country is how much seed companies pay for the seeds their growers produce for these companies’ catalogs. However, how seed contract prices were/are identified directly speaks to the whiteness of seed industry and the racism in the farm and food system as well as to the extractive labor system.

Based on a content analysis I did in October 2019, using the limited data provided in Organic Seed Alliance’s Organic Seed Producer’s Directory, it is not hard to predict that about 90% of the seed growers who make money from selling the seeds they grow to seed companies in the U.S. are white. This is not surprising since a significant chunk of the organic seed production was centralized in Pacific Northwest.

Oregon, for instance, a state 76% of which population is white only has 2% Black people living in it. Main reason for this is because Black people were not allowed to settle in the state until 1926 due to racist exclusion laws. Hence, land ownership and generational wealth stayed predominantly white. In addition, climate of the region was taken granted which directly speaks to white entitlement, to produce the “best quality” seeds (especially dry seeds) in the country (this is still an argument frequently used by white seed producers who make a living from growing seeds in the region). As an example, racism and this entitlement are two very important reasons specifically for the majority of collard greens seeds still being produced in PNW by white growers rather than in the South and Southeast U.S. by Black growers. In addition, now that floods, droughts and wildfires are happening every growing season more than before due to the colossal stupidity of white supremacy which never prioritized nature or climate, it is a big question for me how in foreseeable future we can shift and spread seed production from PNW to other regions at a scale that keeps us from facing a seed shortage while the seed production system becomes less racist.

If you are a white seed grower farming in PNW on a lot of land that was passed to you from your ancestors and on which you can harvest hundreds of pounds of seeds for a specific crop, you can definitely contribute to dropping the poundage price of that seed when you sell the seed to seed companies. Hence, the seed’s unit weight price and whiteness of/racism in seed industry go hand in hand.

• Ethical Pricing of Seeds

I am in this business for about a decade now and I still don’t know who produce certain seeds to be sold in bulk to seed companies to retail. If you are a white American (especially man) and owner of a small seed company that you founded only a few years ago, it is a moral choice for you to not buy the seed grown by the priveleged white seed growers because their seeds are “cheap” so that you can all of a sudden offer hundreds of varieties in your catalog. If you have access to these growers’ seeds in the first place, it means that you are benefitting from your white privilege that helped you make connections in your white network to have the proximity with those white growers to purchase those seeds from.

Instead, you can focus on elevating small growers (some of them have families to take care of) and pay them the full price of the seed they produce when they deliver the seeds to you. This will perhaps increase your seed cost and push you to offer less varieties in your catalog. So be it! You don’t have to be so greedy!

Small seed growers: Unless you have a special arrangement with a seed company that makes you believen in and support their mission and if you are already able to financially support yourself, don’t let seed companies pay you per seed packet they sell. Ask them to sign a seed contract with you before the growing season, and ask to get paid in full once you deliver the seeds and the germination rates of the seeds your grow meet or pass federal standards.

• Our Seed Prices

We grow a majority of our seeds on our farm in Reedsville, WV. I prioritize building and maintaining relations with our seed growers, and do my best to be fair to them. I want to know who grows our seeds in person. This means that we take our time expanding our catalog year by year since we don’t have many growers to help us grow all the seeds I would like to be grown. In addition, seed varieties in our catalog are not grown in bulk elsewhere so I need to facilitate this challenging task while making sure that we sell enough seeds to cover the cost of the seed we purchase from our growers. Our company’s slow growth also means that we can’t and don’t need to offer hundreds of seeds in our catalog, and I am perfectly fine with that!

 

Seed Crop	Unit Weight	Price ($)
Beans	lb	15
Black-eye Peas	lb	15
Cabbage	lb	70
Collard Greens	lb	70
Cucumber	lb	60
Eggplant	oz	30
Garlic (small bulbs)	lb	10
Gourds	lb	60
Melon	lb	65
Okra	lb	60
Peas	lb	15
Peppers	oz	30
Summer Squash	lb	60
Sunflower	lb	40
Tomatoes	oz	30
Watermelon	lb	65
Winter Squash	lb	60

Table 1. Our current seed production contract prices.

Current prices we pay for each seed-crop assignment are given in Table 1 (please note that this list will expand with other seed crops, soon). While we typically pay the prices given in the table, prices may vary from one year to another, depending on the quantity we need to have produced, rarity of the variety, and the condition of the volume of our sales given the fact that we are a very small seed company. Also, please note that in 2022, I will work with West Virginia farmers to understand the financial viability of growing seeds better through a SARE grant. Depending on the outcome of this grant and communication with other growers in other regions, we will update our price list.

We typically set up the contract prices when the assignments are made, based on what we need and what you, as a grower, are willing to grow. Once your seed crops are assigned to you, we will send you the actual contract that, if applicable, will override any prices shown in the table above. For example, for paste tomato varieties which have less seeds than cherry tomatoes, unit weight price we pay will be higher.

If you end up producing more seeds than you are assigned for in your contract, we also will do our best to purchase the extra seeds up to as much as %25 of your contracted seed weight, as long as our contract budget allows us to do so. However, please note that up until 2022, we managed to purchase all the excess seed our seed growers were able to produce. This topic is directly related to estimating seed yields which requires substantial data collection which is discussed in Chapter 6. I continuously work on compiling a more extensive seed yield database based on real data which I am hoping will help seed growers estimate how many seedlings or foot length of direct-sowing they need to grow to meet but not wildly exceed the volume they are expected to grow for a seed contract. Please note that this is one of the most rare if not only publicly available seed yield databases shared.

While certain crops, when produced in certain quantities, can be profitable for you, you may not want to commit to seed assignments for other crops due to your limitations such as required labor and space allocation. You can also benefit from the seed production economic analysis chart (Appendix A) to decide which seed crops you would like to grow for us.

We will supply your foundation seed stock for the contracted seed variety at no charge, unless there is a special arrangement made prior to preparing your contract.