Seed Grower Planning

We often are asked how we know what varieties, crop type, and how much to grow. It is pretty challenging and we do a lot of guessing and speculation. We also will carry over some seed and reduce what is grown the following year but that does take bin space and cash flow to do that. We don't dump seed any more because once we have spent the money and time to produce seed we would rather carry it and retest for quality.

Some seed markets can be challenging such as peas, durum & flax as they can be double or half of the previous years sales and can be very variable.

Rotation can be challenging as we sometimes need two year breaks between cereals & volunteer management  between crops is our biggest challenge.
Variety flow is also challenging as we look to replace varieties in the lineup. We start planning 2-3 years ahead of launch date what varieties we pick to sell.

For those who don't know, each year we grow a variety it drops a pedigree. it flows like this:

• Breeder (we receive 20-200 kg of breeder seed usually
• Select (2.5 ac plot size max, 3 years with no cereal)
• Foundation
• Registered
• Certified 

We can demote down to certified for sales as needed. 

Some customers love to have the newest and the best, some want to move slower into new varieties, and others like the older one they know and trust. Our on farm variety trials help us to understand varieties better so we have confidence in the information we provide when recommending products to buy and allows us to add or remove varieties from the lineup before launch year.

This season we will have 88 varieties across the crop types below. This chart is a % of each crop type we will be growing (adjusted for dryland to make it comparable as a % of seed acres)