Why We Need Seed Legislation

There is a strand of thought out there that believes any and all legislation to do with seeds is evil and unnecesary. It is wrong. Here’s why. This is not the sunflower we were looking for This spring, The Squeeze, who delights in dark-coloured sunflowers, bought a packet of Red Sun sunflower seeds. She sowed them, potted them on, planted them out and waited patiently for them to bloom. This they did a couple of days ago. They were not Red Sun. They were sunflower yellow. All of them. That’s the fundamental problem with seeds. They carry no outward signs of the particular variety within. As, I wrote, long ago, “a dishonest merchant can take the worst rubbish and label it as a good variety with a fine reputation. Buyers will be none the wiser until the crop fails to meet their expectations.”1 Sharp practice was practically the norm in the 19th century, either passing off trash as something of note or stealing someone else’s variety and renaming it as your own. In 1885 William Robinson,…