Territorial Seed Company sold?

[Larry Fisher]

Territorial Seed Company sold?

 

Someone at our Feb. Trellis meeting yesterday announced that the Territorial Seed Company had been sold.

I searched the web today and could find nothing about the company being sold. To the contrary, I found it still privately held by the owners since 1985:

on the present company web site:

http://www.territorialseed.com/aboutus

“Territorial Seed Company is a privately held company, wholly owned by Tom and Julie Johns.”

a 28 Dec 2009 local Oregon article:

http://www.growingthegrove.com/2009/12/territorial-seed/

“By 1985, Steve sold the company to current owners, Tom and Julie Johns, who now have successfully established the company as a premier seed supplier for the home gardener.”

 

Would the person who announced that Territorial Seed Company had been sold, please check their source, then add to this discussion so that we have more information so we can confirm it? Thanks.

[Cheryl Conklin]

Hey Ruth

I missed this in the meeting. I DO know that the original owner/founder, 'Steve', that the above link refers to is Steve Solomon, the author of a couple gardening 'bibles' for the Pacific Northwest.

Cheryl

[Denise DuBose]

We ordered some seeds over the phone and asked. She said that they are still privately owned, but that all of their hybrid seeds come from Monsanto Corp. So if you are at all interested in genetic engineering and/or what Monsanto does (for more information, the documentary Food, Inc. is a great source), I would be careful about what seeds you order. Territorial still produces all its own heirloom seeds.

[Cheryl Conklin]

Denise

Having seen Food, Inc., read Omnivores Dilemma, etc., this news really disturbed me. While I've already purchased my Territorial seeds for this season, I will need to think about a new source for next year.

After just a couple of minutes surfing on the web, I realized that there are very few options out there. Per the Organic Seed Alliance, http://www.seedalliance.org/Seed_News/SeminisMonsanto/ , it appears that Monsanto's seed customers include "Johnny’s, Territorial, Fedco, Nichol’s, Rupp, Osborne, Snow, and Stokes".

If anyone has any suggestions or would like to work together on finding a non-Monsanto source for next year's seeds, please let me know.

[Denise DuBose]

Unfortunately, Monsanto is the prime producer of hybridized seed crops for the US and the rest of the world. Our best choice may be just to grow heirloom varieties or go through something like Seed Savers: http://www.seedsavers.org/. The downside of Seed Savers is the varieties are not necessarily good for this area. Many of these folks are in the midwest.

When looking through Territorial's catalog, varieties that are labeled with an "F" in parentheses (F1 seems to be a popular label) are hybrids and not produced by Territorial. The other labels (OP, etc) are produced by Territorial. We're not going to give up on Territorial completely. We'll just try to skip the hybrids.

[Larry Fisher]

My previous research showed similar to Denise’s. Monsanto has bought out its competition---biggest competitor it bought in 2003, if I remember right. Larry

[Cheryl Conklin]

I'm posting a link that I found in regard to this topic. It includes a message from one of the owners of Territorial Seed with their thoughts and plans in regard to this and, for me, was very interesting.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/nwest/msg0400130331580.html?4

[Larry Fisher]

Thanks, Cheryl.

Anyone reading this link (I suggest you do) before you read the main discussion and get angry, read the reply from Territorial Seed Co owner Tom Johns titled:
Posted by tseedhead (My Page) on Thu, Apr 8, 10 at 23:45

Larry