Small Seeds, Big Knowledge: A Seed Shop with Its Own Seeds

I found a seed shop in Tainan online that does its own seed saving. The information said it was a seed shop in the East Market and also gave the surname of the owner, Fang, so with just these two clues I set off for what was once the largest traditional market in the Tainan urban area.

I walked all around the market. The food and goods, meat and vegetarian alike, were truly dazzling in their variety, but I just could not find the seed shop we wanted to discover. So I asked a woman selling sundries next to me: "Excuse me, is there anywhere around here that sells seeds?" She pointed to the road we were standing on and said: "Just go all the way to the end."

At the end of the road, sure enough, there was a seed shop that looked quite old. Since we did not know the name of the seed shop we were looking for, I was a bit nervous, afraid we had found the wrong place. I pretended to look around first.

The shelves were a bit old-fashioned, with some packaged seeds and some bulk seeds in large glass jars. A few posters with Japanese writing and a bit of age hung on the wall. Finally, looking up at the plaque above, I saw it was dedicated to a certain Fang. Hmm, surname Fang, so this should be it! So I started chatting with the owner, who looked a bit young, and asked a few questions. When the owner said that the seeds in those glass jars were his own seeds, I shouted inwardly: Yes! It's you!!

The East Market is a traditional market in Tainan that has developed since the Japanese occupation era, and it was once a market where seed shops clustered. But through the changes of the times and the development of urbanization, only Gongnong remains today. Besides selling seeds from some seed companies (such as Known-You), Gongnong also produces its own seeds. The owner pointed to the seeds in the large glass jars on the wall and said: If these were Known-You's seeds, they would cost several thousand. For their vegetable seeds, one pack costs 20 yuan for a certain amount; if it were seed company (Known-You) seed of the same amount, it would probably sell for 50 yuan.

I started chatting with the owner, and he shared a lot of experience.

As for storing vegetable seeds, given Taiwan's humidity, they are not really good after a year, because the humidity is high; in drier regions they can last four or five years, so in Taiwan they generally have to be kept in the refrigerator. As for the era before refrigerators, seed shops every year had to take out the stored seeds and sun them under the sun, using sunlight to sterilize and dry them. In the past they were sunning seeds almost every day, and after the seeds were harvested they had to be sold and used up within one or two years. In the past the quantities used were larger; now, because people raise and grow seedlings in advance before planting them in the field, and also use protected facilities, unlike the past when seeds were directly broadcast sown, farming is now more refined, so the amount of seed used is less.

Seeds that are taken back have to be tested for germination rate in petri dishes. Besides guaranteeing quality, this is also for consumers to compare against, to avoid consumers blaming the seed shop when germination in the field is poor. There are too many variables in the field; temperature, humidity and sunlight are all different, and it is hard to say what will happen once planted. But the germination rate in the petri dish can prove that the seeds are fine. It can only guarantee germination, not the harvest. "You cannot be the matchmaker and also guarantee a son!"

Gongnong Seed Shop also cooperates with several seed shops in central Taiwan. The central Taiwan seed shops provide the vegetable seeds they need, and then Gongnong is responsible for producing and supplying seeds to these seed shops. Central Taiwan is a major vegetable production area, so it is simply impossible to find a plot of land specifically for seed production.

Generally, fast vegetables can be rotated once in one month to a month and a half, but if you are saving vegetable seeds, that plot of land has to be occupied for nearly half a year! The vegetable grows for more than a month, then waits to flower and set fruit for another month or so, and then waits for the seeds to mature for yet another month or so. With the rapid vegetable production model of central Taiwan, it is simply impossible to use land for seed saving.

As for coarse grains, Gongnong does relatively little contract production. The owner feels that currently soybeans and black beans imported from abroad cost only a little over ten yuan per kilogram, and if Taiwan saved seed, the cost would be far higher. As for sesame, red beans, mung beans, peanuts and so on, there are still people specifically saving those.

Another thing that surprised me was that quite a few vegetable seeds are not actually grown in Taiwan. This is true of big companies, and also of these small seed shops that save their own seed. At present, although Gongnong has contract farmers in Tainan and Chiayi helping with vegetable seed cultivation, some vegetable seeds are grown abroad. Besides Southeast Asia, which we imagine has low labor costs, there are also production bases in Italy in Europe, Australia (such as radish, broccoli, cabbage), New Zealand and other places, mainly because of differences in yield and price. The owner explained that some vegetables are more suited to being grown in those places, and the costs really are lower.

In Taiwan, contracting with farmers for one jin of seed costs 120 yuan, but contracting abroad costs only 60 or 70 yuan. Moreover, one vegetable can be planted on five fen of land (one fen can produce 200 to 250 jin), and once shipped back it is one ton. But the drawback is that it is dried with a dryer, and the dryness is not enough, so after it is often shipped back the germination rate is not very good.

Compared with coarse grains and cereals, saving vegetable seed requires more technical conditions. At present Taiwan seems to have a great variety of vegetables, and people have a lot of choice, but after understanding it this way, I found that actually more than half of our vegetable seeds are not self-sufficient at all! And the conditions for seed saving are not the same everywhere. They involve crop characteristics, local climate and many other key factors. In some places the difficulty of doing it is indeed relatively high, so there must be some more local knowledge that needs to be learned, such as how to grasp the timing or how to store seeds, and so on. Different places and different species all contain a great deal of knowledge.

After the start of autumn this year, strange autumn and winter rains fell all over Taiwan, badly battering many crops, and vegetables were certainly no exception. The owner said seed collection also has to respond to climate change. In the past people always looked for cold-tolerant varieties; from now on they may have to look for heat-tolerant varieties. At present the seed shop is also entering its busiest time. Besides the fact that many people come to buy seeds during the vegetable-planting season, the seed-saving side also begins to require going out to the fields to inspect, and if variation occurs or the plants grow abnormally, they all have to be removed.

Young Mr. Fang encouraged us, saying that doing the work of seed collection, seed saving and seed preservation is actually not hard; it just requires investing money and time, especially a very long time, and you have to be prepared for one person to be tied down there.