Two important facts you may not know about seeds:
1. Seeds have a limited shelf life.
Did you know that for many crops, their seeds only have a shelf-life of one year, or a few years? After that, the seeds begin to degrade and may not grow. Those crops need to be “grown out” each year or two, so fresh seed can be harvested, in order for the seeds to remain viable.
2. There’s a difference between "open-pollinated" varieties and "hybrids".
Did you know that some crops are not true-breeding? That is, if you take a seed from their fruit and plant it, the next year you will NOT get the same variety of plant. You’ll get something a little different. So if you want the same thing, next year you have to go back to the seed seller and buy seeds again. This is true of “hybrid” plants.
(Hybrids* are created by crossing two parent plants that are true-breeding, to get desirable traits from both parents. Hybrid plants have many good features, so they’re commonly grown. But the “children” of hybrids don’t -- the hybrid can’t reliably pass down its good features, and has to be created fresh every year by breeding the two stable types together. It takes many years to “stabilize” a hybrid into a true-breeding plant that reliably passes on its features.)
Most older varieties, however, are true-breeding – they are called “open-pollinated.” These true-breeding varieties are valuable and should be preserved. One reason to preserve them is because they allow independence from seed sellers. They allow the home grower to save seeds from her own plants and know that she can grow those plants in the future.
So:
To preserve many open-pollinated varieties as viable seeds, the seeds need to be grown out every year. The more people who want to eat a variety, the more reason farmers and seed companies have to grow out that crop.
Building demand for an open-pollinated variety helps to preserve it as viable seed stock.
* Hybrids are not sterile; they can produce offspring, but their offspring are just not of the same type. Also, the general process of hybridization is part of conventional plant breeding and has been around for much longer than today's lab-based genetic modification methods.
