Why is saving seeds illegal

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Fight disinformation. Get a daily recap of the facts that matter. It makes next year much easier! Referral links are used in this post. This post was sponsored by Indiana Soybean Alliance. All thoughts and opinions are my own. This is not true. One of the reasons that farmers choose not to save seeds from year to year is because they need special equipment to clean the seeds to get them ready to plant, and extra storage space to store the seeds from harvest until it is time to plant again.

Not all farmers have this equipment or the storage space. Another reason that farmers do not save seeds to plant is that they may not want to plant the same hybrid or variety again. Purchasing seeds every year means that farmers can choose a different crop to plant corn instead of soybeans, or barley instead of wheat , or they can simply plant a different hybrid or variety of the same plant. For example, if we are expecting a dry year, a farmer may choose to plant a drought-tolerant corn hybrid instead next year.

Or if a farmer had an exceptionally bad year with a pest this year, she may choose to plant cotton that is resistant to that pest next year. Saving seed from one year to the next means that you have to plant the same crops and the same variety next year. Purchasing new seed every year gives a farmer a lot more flexibility. Farmers may also choose to purchase new seed every year, rather than saving their seed, so they can purchase seed that has been treated.

Many seeds are pre-treated with a fungicide or a starter fertilizer. A fungicide pre-treatment will help protect growing seeds against fungi that live in damp soils and will kill seeds as they start to grow. Starter fertilizer pre-treatments makes sure that each seed has exactly the nutrients it needs to start to grow.

Farmers who choose to grow genetically modified GM, or GMO seed sign a contract stating that they will not save their seed to grow next year.