Seed production requires attention to detail

ALMIRA — Small hobby farm or multimillion-dollar operation, most agriculture starts with seeds. Growing them successfully starts with close and careful attention to detail.  

Jerry Emerson, chief financial officer for McKay Seed, said crops intended for seed are tracked every step of the way, even before they go in the ground. MacKay Seed, with facilities in Almira and Moses Lake, grows mostly barley, buckwheat and mustard seed.  

“We have to make sure that the parent seed that we start with is the correct seed and not contaminated. And then there’s restrictions on where we can grow that seed, crop rotation, so the generation of seed that we’re raising doesn’t get contaminated,” Emerson said. “There’s an inspection process in the field when the crop is still standing, and that has to pass a physical inspection. Then there is a laboratory inspection or criteria to that the seed has to pass.”  

Paula Lundt, seed program manager for the Washington Department of Agriculture, said most Washington seed growers produce certified seed. Getting to certified seed quality starts with a carefully monitored process, and Lundt used grass as an example.  

“Producing a certified grass crop – keeping in mind, there are many species of grass for sod – the organization would have worked with breeders, producers, other state seed certification agencies, and set a crop standard, what this crop needs to look like in the field,” she said. “How pure is it in the field? What contaminants (are there) from other crops?”  

There’s no controlling the atmosphere around a crop in the field; stray seeds, from weeds to neighboring crops, can land in the field at any time.   

“What contaminants of other weeds, noxious weeds, common weeds, objectionable weeds, are allowed?” she said. “Then (certifying organizations) write a standard for that crop.”  

A second generation of the seed must be produced to ensure it’s consistent. The third generation is the certified seed, and it is what’s sold to farmers, she said.  

“There is an advantage because there’s a level of traceability,” Lundt said. “If I’m a farmer and I’m putting certified seed, it has (a) lot number. If I had a problem with that seed stock after I planted it – say I bought wheat, and then you (plant it) and you don’t see it until the next spring, and it pops up barley – if I bought certified seed, I could then take that lot number. Then I could go back to the certification agency and say, ‘Hey, let’s trace this back.’ It will be able to be traceable back to the lab report.”  

All seeds come with a paper trail.  

“In theory, you can trace it all the way back to that original breeder seed, even if that seed came from out of state. All of the state certification agencies work together, and if a certified class of seed is grown, for example, in Oregon or Idaho, in order for that seed to come into Washington for a certification tag, they do an interagency transfer. It’s a value-added program, where it’s all traceable back to that original breeder seed, two, three, four generations back,” she said.   

While certified seed is not required in the United States, a lot of farmers use it.  

“One of our larger commodities in the state is wheat. Something like 80% to 90% of wheat that is planted for consumption is planted from certified class wheat,” she said.  

As there’s not one variety of apple, for instance, there’s not one variety of wheat or barley. Emerson said seed farmers have to keep very careful track of which variety is which, and which field and truck is which.  

Keeping close track of everything continues once the harvest leaves the field. Seeds are tiny, trucks are big, and there are a lot of places where seeds can go astray. Anything that’s gone astray has to be located and removed before the next load.  

“You have to clean the trucks out completely to make sure there’s no residue seed left,” he said. “That means you’re in the (truck) trailer, meticulously picking out any loose seed in the cracks and crevices.”  

Different varieties are kept separate throughout the whole process.   

“Every variety is stored individually and its own individual bin. We have to make sure that we clean the bin between uses all the equipment that handles the seed gets cleaned out completely to make sure there’s no cross-contamination in them,” Emerson said. “You have to be very careful with cleaning procedures.”   

Washington produces a lot of seed, but production can change a lot from year to year, Lundt said.  

“For our field staff, it’s anywhere between 95,000 to 130,000 acres annually that we’re inspecting,” she said. “I know that sounds like a wide swing, but it’s very market-driven. Any particular year can be up or down 5,000 to 10,000 acres.”