Giant Highlights

Every business, every person has a unique position in the seed business.

We’ve selected some of the highlights from all the Giants Views of the Industry

questions, capturing some of the thoughts that stand out.

Patent options Tighten

Bob Jondle: The patent office has become much more conservative in terms of broad claims. And the U.S. patent examiners have taken a very negative stance; a lot of patents are being delayed, and basically the patent examiners are saying you get only what you’ve produced. If you haven’t done it in another crop or you haven’t gone beyond a certain level, let’s say an oil per cent, they’re not going to give you even a little bit of breadth other than what your data shows. I think in the next year, and maybe even longer, we will be in an era of more restricted claims.

e-marketing made easy

Stephanie Turner: Our approach to electronic marketing is… really quite simple. We take a look at what our customers need and try to figure out how we can provide that in the electronic world. We know our customers would like to buy gardening products so we make our web site as sophisticated yet easy to use as possible. We know they want to be current with gardening products, so we send them newsletters with introductions and information about new products that they can get their hands on through our web site. We also know they want a good deal so we send them offers electronically that have value priced items or specials when we have them. They also want a forum where they can communicate, either with experts or other gardeners, so we run several blogs where they can go in and read comments from others and make comments themselves. We also know that they need just information, so we offer a couple of web sites like plantcoach.org and successwithseeds.org that are completely informational – there’s no selling and they can go there and find what they need to know about what they want to grow.

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resisting consolidation

Tom Stearns: I don’t want to get to a point of selling my seed company to somebody else. Growing quickly means that you are cash strapped and yes, everything looks good and exciting because sales are really high, but your balance sheet looks like crap. So that’s when someone would come and bail you out and buy you off. Who knows what would happen to the mission I’ve established for my company, so growing more slowly and more sustainably means that on the financial side of things I’m not going to get in that position. I think an independent voice in the organic seed sector is extremely important, because, unlike most other seed companies or any other seed company, seeds and selling to our customers is our singular focus. We’re not distracted by any other product lines, we’re not distracted by conventional organics or by selling to lots of home gardeners and home growers. It’s our singular focus.

radical regulations

Pat Miller: What I have seen that is probably the most interesting [regulation] is an initiative that passed in Minnesota last session to ban any type of genetic engineering testing on wild rice. The logic is because the Native Americans of Minnesota feel like they descended from wild rice and they don’t want people messing with their ancestors. It’s a very small segment of the business and very small community; however, I thought it was fascinating that they used it for spiritualizing. There is a similar situation with maize in New Mexico. The Native Americans there feel like they descended from maize, so they don’t want any genetic testing on that. Poi in Hawaii is a similar type of thing and the initiative in Hawaii almost passed this year. They had a similar initiative with coffee as well. So I just think that’s interesting to use a spirituality concern, and

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