Are you a seed farmer? A vegetable grower saving some of their own seeds? Looking to produce larger lots of seeds the support the local seed economy? See below for resources and opportunities to grow or expand seed production on your farm. This is an in-progress resource, please reach out if there is a great resource missing from the list.
Our Seed Enterprise Budgets help farmers determine their cost of labour and materials input, as well as potential sales revenue for projected seed crops.
An enterprise budget is a carefully developed spreadsheet template where growers can input their crop data to determine its profitability. This information allows farmers to evaluate and estimate yields, returns, inputs, and labour hours when making a farm plan. These tools help BC growers develop new sales streams by exploring efficient and economically viable methods of seed extraction and food redirection.
We first developed and tested our seed growing budget model in 2018 alongside the University of British Columbia as part of the Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement program. We continue to test our enterprise budgets with data from our Research and Education Seed Farm in collaboration with BC farming partners.
In response to the inability to add seed production by-product sales to existing enterprise budgets, our team is developing a new Enterprise Budget spreadsheet that will help farmers determine the viability of selling not only the seeds, but also the vegetables which are a by-product of seed production. We have begun inputting records from our Research and Education Seed Farm tomato seed and sauce production to estimate the sales of these by-products. This data will serve as an example for farmers who wish to start a seed business or as a resource to compare data.
These spreadsheets are based on the work of Dan Brisebois and Richard Wiswall, and populated with findings from our field team and community partners. Whether crop output is based on speculative or expected sales, our enterprise budgets allow growers to more accurately track inputs, account for multiple sale sources, and utilize personal yield data to estimate combined sales of seed crops.
Check out our short video for a detailed tutorial.
Seed Heads Podcast: Seedheads in the cross-pollinating podcast where our Canadian Seed Heroes tell their stories, share their “how-to” tips and talk about the seeds they loved. Hosted by BAUTA
The Seed Growers Podcast: Hosted by Dan Brisebois of Ferme Tournesol Coopérative, every episode features a conversation with a farmer who has integrated growing seeds into their own farm systems.
Seed Production
Breeding
Flower Seed Production
Connect, share and collaborate with a wide range of seed growers through listservs and newsletters.
Closeseedworkerorganizing-subscribe@lists.riseup.net to join the listserv Seed Workers Organizing Group.Isolation distances
Stratification
Flower Seed Production
From Appendix A of The 2010 manual Seed Processing and Storage: Principles and practices of seed harvesting, processing, and storage by Dr. Jeffrey H. McCormack
