Availability of organic seed improves, but remains tight

As the demand for organic vegetables, grains, forage and cover crops continues to increase, so does the need for more organically grown seed to produce them.

Although organic growers say seed availability has gotten better in recent years, they still aren't able to find organic seed for all their production.

Several public and private initiatives are underway to help increase not only the volume of organic seed, but also the seed quality and the diversity of available varieties. But the changes won't happen overnight.

"The business of providing organic seeds is still a fledgling industry," said Tom Gordon, U.S. organic vegetable seed coordinator for Oceano-based Bejo Seed Inc. "There's been a lot of growth, but there's still growing pains and challenges within the certification industry."

Bejo has 120 different vegetable varieties and hybrids this season as certified organic seed. But Gordon said not all of them are available to growers because of seed dealer constraints.

Even though consumption of organic vegetables continues to grow at an 8 percent to 12 percent clip annually, Gordon said he didn't believe that organic vegetable seed use has kept pace.

"A lot of growers are still weaning themselves off conventional seed," he said.

Under the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Program, producers are required to use organically certified seed. But they can receive an exception if none is available, if the quality isn't there or if the desired variety or hybrid isn't available in an organic version.

Dick Peixoto, owner of Lakeside Organic Gardens in Watsonville, said organic seed availability has gotten better, but he still ends up using a large amount of conventional seed.

"It's a huge challenge to be able to get the seed of the quality and the varieties we need," he said of organic seed. "It's getting better and better, but it still has a ways to go. There definitely are more varieties available today than there were five years ago."

Certified organic seed for dandelion greens, for example, is readily available, Peixoto said. But organic seed for lettuce hybrids that perform well in his Watsonville and Imperial Valley locations is practically nonexistent.

Organic lettuce seed is available, but he said the varieties don't contain natural resistance to red lettuce aphids, which feed in the heart. Should buyers find a single aphid in lettuce, they may reject the entire load.

Instead, Peixoto said he uses untreated, conventional hybrid lettuce seed that has natural aphid resistance but isn't genetically engineered.

Peixoto's experiences with sourcing organically certified seed aren't unusual, according to studies by the Port Townsend, Wash.-based Organic Seed Alliance.

As part of its State of Organic Seed Report, the group surveyed organic growers nationwide in 2009 about the challenges they faced finding organic seed. In California, only 38 percent of organic vegetable crops were produced from organic seed, according to the survey.

Preliminary findings from a similar poll of organic growers nationwide in 2014 found about 70 percent of organic vegetables were produced from organic seed, said Jared Zystro, the alliance's California research and education specialist based in Arcata. About 60 percent of organic cover crops and 75 percent of organic field crops were grown from organic seed.

In California, the preliminary results showed about 60 percent of the vegetable acreage was produced using organic seed, but only 22 percent of respondents said they were able to source all organic seed for their crops.

"The biggest issue typically is varietal availability," Zystro said. "There are particular varieties that farmers know they can rely on or they are varieties that yield, and wholesalers or processors request specific varieties."

The questionnaire, which polled more than 1,350 growers nationally including 115 in California, also asked what crops needed the most improvement. The top three vegetable crops were tomatoes, squash and brassicas, which include broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.

The seed alliance's goals are three-fold: help foster breeding of open-pollinated varieties by public entities and farmers; help educate farmers on how to produce high quality organic seed; and encourage more federal support for public organic breeding programs.

The efforts are focused on open-pollinated—or OP—varieties, so farmers can save seed from season to season and know it will breed true, Zystro said.

Hybrids, which involve the cross of two dissimilar varieties—mostly through conventional breeding techniques—frequently produce off-types if the seed is saved and planted the following year.

"One of the stories we hear from farmers who are interested in breeding is they want to develop their own OP varieties, for the reason that once you find a variety you can rely on, you want to know you have some sense of security around that seed source," he said.

Already, several collaborative efforts are yielding results. The four-year Carrot Improvement for Organic Agriculture program, led by the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has developed 36 different experimental carrot varieties now in field trials.

Joe Nunez, a University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisor in Kern County, is a cooperator with those trials.

In the second four years of a breeding effort, the Northern Organic Vegetable Improvement Collaborative has already released an OP hardy sweet corn variety—"Who Gets Kissed?"—with sweetness similar to sugar-enhanced hybrids currently available. But farmers can save the seed of this OP variety.

Zystro said he will help coordinate three separate trials this season in Northern California for promising new sweet-corn candidates from the breeding program.

The seed alliance also hosted the inaugural California Organic Seed Summit in late February, which involved organic seed producers, organic seed dealers and organic breeders to discuss challenges the seed business faces. They also brainstormed about how to increase the availability of quality organic seed and organic seed varieties.

Zystro said he was heartened that five UC Davis representatives attended.

(Vicky Boyd is a freelance writer in Modesto. She may be contacted at vlboyd@att.net.)