Page 64 - Breeding and regulatory opportunities, Renaud

Chapter 2

noted that a major factor limiting wider use of organic seed was “an emerging

organic seed industry that may, in certain cases, lack the diversity, quality, and

quantity of organically grown seed to meet the needs of the organic production

sector” (NOSB, 2008c). This conclusion was supported by the SOS survey which

found that grower respondents ranked their reasons for not using organic seed

as: (1) speciic variety not available (77 %), (2) insuicient quantity of seed (50 %),

(3) lack of desirable traits (46%), and (4) price (40%) (Dillon and Hubbard, 2011).

Currently, many seed companies still supply organic farmers with conventionally

produced but post-harvest untreated seed. If the organic seed rule were to

be consistently enforced, seed companies would need to produce their most

requested varieties in organic form. Seed company respondents, however,

indicated that if they were to invest in organically produced seed, it was in their

interest that the rule be strictly enforced, without exceptions. Since then the on-

going discussions and inconsistent enforcement of the organic seed regulation

has stimulated difering responses by seed companies. Respondents working

for companies that had invested in producing proprietary conventional varieties

in organic form (n=3) in order to support the ‘equivalent’ variety requirement,

reported that they were in fact losing sales to lower-priced conventional varieties

because of the lack of enforcement of the organic seed rule (Seed company

interviews, 2007-2013). Members of companies that had decided to stay out of

the organic seed market (n= 3) indicated that the market was not large enough

for them to consider and potentially conlicted with other aspects of their

business (e.g. because their business was associated with genetic engineering

research or they had a chemical agriculture division).

A respondent working for one seed company stated there was widespread

dissatisfaction within the seed industry with the consequences of the continuing

lack of formal endorsement of the recommended regulation for technical

decision-making such as how to produce organic seed, how to avoid seed-

borne diseases without chemical treatments, how to manage weed competition

without chemical herbicides, how to avoid lower yields in seed production,

and how to select varieties appropriate for organic production systems (Seed

company interview, 2009). Four of the 10 companies interviewed are recognized

experts in conventional seed production. These respondents noted that not all

conventional seed production norms are directly transferable to organic. For

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