Driftless Seed Supply Collaboratively Grown Seeds for the Midwest
Driftless Seed Supply
Collaboratively Grown Seeds for the Midwest
By Joe Pedretti, Client Services Director
Dylan Bruce, co-owner of Driftless Seed Supply and owner of Circadian Organics Farm near Ferryville, Wisconsin did not intend to become a farmer, even though he came from that background. “I grew up on a farm, my parents (David Bruce & Sara Tedeschi) were one of the very first CSA farms in the state back in the 90s, early 2000s. Growing up a farm kid, by the time I went to high school, I wanted to get as far away from the farm as I could. After a gap year, I ended up going to school out in Los Angeles at Occidental College, a small liberal arts school, where I majored in Biology with a focus on Plant Physiology. I ended up managing the student garden there, which was something that I found I really enjoyed. I actually met my girlfriend, now wife there, managing that student garden. I found through that experience that I really did appreciate a lot of aspects about rural life and agriculture, and doing work that could really impact the world positively,” said Dylan.
“After my college experience, I moved back to Wisconsin and took a job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison doing vegetable research. I worked on a big collaborative organic vegetable variety trial that involved Oregon State, Cornell, Colorado State, UW Madison, and farms all across the northern tier of the US. It was in that job that I really got back to my roots. This was what I wanted to do and enjoyed doing. It was my first exposure to plant breeding, and a lot of the people I met there are now my colleagues and mentors. But farming for research is very different from farming for production and I had the itch to start my own production farming.”
“So in 2018, my wife and I and a couple of friends decided to start our own farming business, Circadian Organics. We tested the waters of a lot of different markets. We had a small CSA, we were going to farmer’s markets, we were selling through an aggregator, direct to restaurants, just trying to see what was the best fit for us. Another thing that we tried was some seed production contracts. Growing a tomato for seed isn’t so different from growing one for the fresh market, but growing lettuce or radish for seed is very different. We started with only doing a little seed production on the side, and we focused on the CSA. We got up to 115 members, and we loved that, but eventually, because we wanted to be full-time farmers, we had to look at the numbers and realized that we needed to double the CSA to be sustainable for us. We decided then to look at other production options,” noted Dylan.
“Over the course of our discussions, we decided that it made the most sense to go all in on the seed production. It takes specialized knowledge. I enjoy the work more. There’s a different seasonality to it, and because we can clean and pack in the winter it allows us to hire people year round. At that time, I started talking with another colleague, who I had met during my research years, Cody Egan, who farms in southern Minnesota. He had been managing the commercial production for Seed Savers Exchange, but had left to do his own full time contract seed production. We got to talking and realized we had a lot of alignment and liked the idea of more collaborative farming businesses, farms that are in it together.”
“We started by looking at the companies we were producing for, and we realized we wanted to see companies treating seed growers differently. The seed industry has grown so convoluted and concentrated over the last 50 years, that small seed producers really have very little power in contract negotiations. They are not even true contracts, more like agreements to buy with no real teeth in them. For instance, we are receiving the same per pound price for tomato seed today as we did in 2018, from some companies, even with the huge increase in input and labor costs. Even though those companies are charging a lot more for the same seed. We wanted to be a better model, and to build markets for Midwest produced and adapted seeds.
“The Midwest is not traditionally a seed production area, except for corn and soy. We recognized that there was very little focus on Midwest specialty crop needs. Sure we have great options from traditional organic seed suppliers, but their programs are focused on much bigger markets and different production regions. Many are also replacing productive and disease resistant open pollinated varieties with hybrids as a market strategy to make more money.”
“We decided to focus on creating a company that offered the best varieties for the Midwest. Our goal is to produce as much of our own seed as possible, or work within our own grower network. We started our new company, Driftless Seed Supply in 2023 with eight growers producing seed, and will have about 35 growers this season. Everything we grow, with only a few exceptions, are grown by us and our grower network. The exceptions are things like basil, which needs mildew resistance. The best option for the Midwest is a patented variety, so we buy outside our network for that seed. Only about 5% of our seed is sourced outside our own growers. We wanted to flip the assumption on its head that the Midwest couldn’t produce our own high quality seed,” remarked Dylan.
“We focus on resilient, disease resistant, quality, high germination seed produced sustainably in the Midwest through collaborative grower networks, which are our main values as a company. On my own farm we work hard to reduce erosion. We use a lot of living mulches, we do very little cultivation, and use a lot of no-till practices. This approach has informed our choices about what varieties we want to carry. We are looking for things that can perform well in challenging environments, not just seeds that are bred for full-tillage, high input systems. And that is often the case for organic varieties. The big multi-national corporations take hybrids that do well in a conventional system and trial them in organic. If it does well enough, and produces seed at a profitable enough margin, then they will release it as an organic variety, but they are rarely breeding in an organic system. They are not trialing in reduced tillage systems.”
“What I learned from my mentors, like the late Casey Piscura, who bred a lot of varieties under reduced tillage, was that his varieties, like squash and peppers, when grown side by side with hybrids, his varieties were often twice the size when grown in our crimped rye system. They were outperforming because they were adapted to those low-input, low-tillage systems. So that’s what we strive to do with our seed production and breeding work,” emphasized Dylan.
“When we are working with an older open-pollinated heirloom variety, we don’t just take seeds from everything. We carefully select the top performers. When we are breeding for a pepper to taste a certain way, we taste every single plant to make sure it meets our standard. If it doesn’t, we don’t harvest seed from it. It is not uncommon for us to remove up to 75% of a seed crop if it is not performing as intended. We select for a lot of different traits in addition to resilience in challenging environments including disease resistance, taste, and storage qualities. We try to think through the whole product life cycle and how it will be grown in different ways and then doing intensive selection for those traits.”
“When we started our first seed production year, we hired a marketing firm to help us create a brand that really spoke to Midwest growers. Our marketing strategy was to focus on seed racks in retail stores and online sales, and not to compete with Johnny’s or High Mowing. Instead, we wanted to compete with the Burpee’s and other large brands in the stores. If we could get even a tiny, tiny fraction of their Midwest market share it would be more impactful than competing with our peers like North Circle or Nature and Nurture Seeds. We still produce a lot of seed under contract for other companies, probably about 40% contract and 40% branded rack sales, and 20% online sales right now,” noted Dylan.
“We came out of the gate with 45 seed racks in Midwest stores, with a focus on Minnesota and Wisconsin. We’re looking for mission alignment so a lot of these stores are natural food stores or cooperatives and also a lot of independently owned businesses like hardware stores and garden centers. We also got into some gift and floral shops. We have a focus on gardeners, but a goal, and one we plan to lean more into next year, is Midwest market farming, and we think we can tackle that market with our focus on producing Midwest adapted, disease resistant and productive open pollinated cultivars.”
“We work with a company called Clean Crop Tech to do some preventative disease management and testing and germination improvement. We want to build some high performing varieties that we can build a lot of trust around because they are adapted to our region. As more and more open pollinated varieties get dropped for hybrids we think we’re in a good position to add value for Midwest growers. This fits right in with our goal of resilience and local food system sustainability.”
“People don’t realize that most hybrid tomatoes, peppers, and cucurbit seeds are produced in China or SE Asia. When you go to the farmer’s market and buy a local tomato to support the local food system, the seed was likely produced by some company in China taking advantage of cheap labor and playing in the opaque, multinational supply chain. We need affordable and reliable sources of local seed. There is still a perception that open pollinated seed will be highly variable, but that is not necessarily true. The main reason is that this type of breeding has fallen by the wayside. It’s especially true of the mass market supply which is focused almost entirely on hybrids. Our goal is to re-select for the best traits and the original integrity. The late, great John Navazio (organic seed breeder) once said to me ‘anything you can do with a hybrid you can do with an open pollinated variety. It just might take a little longer,’ and I love that,” said Dylan.
“The Midwest is a challenging production environment. Being able to get out there in the Spring. Dealing with humidity and disease pressures. If a crop is inflicted with a seed borne disease, it’s a total loss for us. Extreme weather is an issue. We have dealt with a lot of flooding. By having a cooperative network of seed producers across the Midwest, we can alleviate some of these challenges and produce better quality seed. Seed that is adapted to our conditions.”
“I had some experience with seed packaging, and Cody quite a bit with Seed Savers, but we had to find a manufacturer for the seed packets and we had to find a facility to package our seeds. We had to figure out the fulfillment piece of the puzzle. The first year it was based out of my farm, but now we have a facility in a shared warehouse, The Food Enterprise Center in Viroqua, which is awesome. We have a walk-in that we keep super dry and cold for bulk seed storage and we have a packing line and shipping area. We do all of our packing now, and we trained some contractors to come in and there’s a list of seeds to pack and orders to fulfill. Seed packing and order fulfillment has been a big, but exciting part of our learning curve,” explained Dylan.
“For 2025, we are trying to regroup a bit and downsizing production on our own farms. We want to focus on our inventory and sales. We have 140 varieties available for wholesale and another 70 to release. We want to secure the foothold we’ve developed and build upon those relationships. On my own farm I want to do more trialing and putting in a demonstration garden, so we can invite buyers and farmers to see our operation. In the longer term, we want to build out our catalog from a little over 200 varieties, where we are at currently, to 400 or 500 eventually, which will allow us to become more of a one stop shop. We don’t ever want to go national. We want to focus on Midwest production.”
“I want to challenge farmers to think about where their seed comes from and the system that produces them. Often growers are supporting seed systems that don’t align with their values. And they need to know that there are other options out there that do. We are all in this together, and more people using organic seed, and more people buying seed from local seed companies, helps fight growing consolidation and benefits our local communities. This will put us in the best position to deal with changing climate and geopolitical systems. We are more resilient with localized food production, and regional seed production sets the strongest foundation for a sustainable food system.”
To learn more about Driftless Seed Supply, visit their website: Driftlessseeds.com