[Scpg] FROM THE GROUND UP All Good Things Organic Seeds -Ag start-up sows a market in organic seeds By Jane Hulse

Mon Jul 15 05:50:13 PDT 2013

FROM THE GROUND UP
June 21, 2013 at 11:23am
Ag start-up sows a market in organic seeds

By Jane Hulse

Quin Shakra ventured into farming with a master’s degree in history, and his business partner, Justin Huhn, was a carpenter. They’re not what you’d expect in today’s world of young, hard-driving, agricultural entrepreneurs, but in June 2011 they founded an organic seed company on a 1.3-acre patch overlooking the Ojai Valley.

You won’t find a sign leading to All Good Things Organic Seeds, a cluster of small buildings at the end of a dirt road that simply peters out in a grove.  Until this spring, the mainoffice, lab, and seed warehouse was a yurt. Now they’re settled into new headquarters in an Airstream-like trailer they gutted and redesigned.

With an online seed catalog offering vegetables, herbs and flowers and a new deal with Whole Foods to sellseed packets at three local stores stores, Shakra and Huhn are optimistic. They’re among a growing number of small, certified organic seed producers int he U.S., a niche industry fueled by public interest in growing things from scratch.

On a warm spring afternoon the two were beaming: they’d received 10 online seed orders that day, an all-time high.“The demand is higher than we can meet,” Shakra said. “It’s challenged us to get more organized.”

And to be creative.The Whole Foods deal meant they had to design and produce a colorful, eye-catching cardboard rack to showcase 24 varieties of seed.

As the debate over genetically engineered food rages, the two young men are hoping that consumers see a difference between organic seeds, which come from plants grown with organic methods, and traditional seeds exposed to synthetic pesticides and fungicides. They’realso banking on what they say is a market hungry for organic seed in this area, based on their own search for local seeds.

 “The organic seed movement is relatively young compared to the organic food movement,” Shakrasaid. “It's only recently that U.S. organic certifiers have begun ensuring that organic farmers source organic seed for growing their crops whenever it's available.” For so long the supply of true organically produced seed was insufficient.

Huhn, a native Venturan, and Shakra, a transplant from the Pacific Northwest, grow most of the seeds they sell through their mail-order business. The rest come from other organicgrowers in the U.S. They offer more than 100 varieties – everything from amaranth to watermelon – in colorful packets that sell for $3.50 apiece. They also sell their seeds at three locations in Ojai and one in Goleta.

Quin Shakra, 32, left, and Justin Huhn, 33, right, grow organic produce at their Mano Farm in Ojai. The two have started an organic seed line call All Good Things Organic Seeds. Photo by Stephen Osman.

One of their best sellers is Fizz Kale,which, they say, is especially hearty and apparently more resistant to the bagrada bug that has bedeviled growers of other brassicas, such as broccoli and cabbage. Other big sellers are Wild Calendula, Aji Amarillo Pepper, Santo Cilantro, and Costoluto Genovese Tomato.

Shakra and Huhn didn’t set out to start a seed business. They took over Mano Farm from long-time organic farmerS teve Sprinkel in 2009 and launched a Community Supported Agriculture program, serving up organic produce to as many as 30 customers a week.

As their farming experience grew, they realized that seed quality influenced a crop’s success, Huhn said.

“For us – it was profound, he said. “We immediately began to grow and save seedfor our own use. More and more we grew crops from our own saved seed, with excellent results.”

It wasn’t long before they saw there was a niche for open-pollinated organic seeds produced locally -- seeds better suited, they say, to the local climate and soils, as well as organic growing methods. Such seeds, they figured, would have a better chance of producing healthy plants than seeds from elsewhere.   

While still distributing veggies totheir members, they plant thickly, saving the bigger, heartier plants for their seeds and harvesting the rest for CSA customers. They have plans to “stage the field differently” this year, Shakra said, so they can increase the space they already devote to trialing and testing their seeds.

Both Shakra, 31, and Huhn,33, live on the farm in rustic quarters where cooking is an outdoor affair and seating is provided on hanging chair swings. But don’t get the idea their business is a casual venture.

“The organic movement is growing, it’s becoming a scientific discipline and we want to be part of it,” Shakra said. “We’re trying to think about it in a local context, what grows well here.”

In the summer and early fall, they’re focused on harvesting seed, separating it from the chaff, cleaning it, and drying it, and finally packaging it. Or, in the case of tomatoes or watermelon, it’s a messy, stinky process involving fermentation.

“It’s the most fascinating part of what we’re doing,” said Huhn who was born and raised in Ventura. All their seeds are sent out for germination testing.

It hasn’t been easy at times. The bagrada bug decimated late summer and early autumn kale and broccoli trials and put a “wait-and-see” hold on brassica seed production.

And the organic seed market is still but a tiny fraction of the seeds sold in the U.S.,though it’s growing and many large seed suppliers, like Burpee, now offer some organic choices.

“There are now hundreds of companies, large and small, offering organic seed-- and the numbers increase every year,” Holli Cederholm, general manager of Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, wrote in an email. “While exact numbers aren’t available, it’s widely believed that organic seed at present represents something under 5 percent of the entire U.S. seed market.”

In Ventura County, there were 90 certified organic farms in 2011 – twice as many as there were in 2001, crop reports show. But the total cultivated acreage has crept up only slightly from 3,936 organic acres in 2001 to 5,751 in 2011. And that’s just a fraction of the total 96,340 acres of all commercial cropland that year.

But Shakra and Huhn are thinking beyond the commercial grower. “We’re selling seeds we trust,” said Huhn. “If they’re good for the organic farmer, they’re great for the home gardener.”

— Jane Hulse is theeditor of Central Coast Farm and Ranch.
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