Organic Depends on a Seed Trade Being Made Illegal

(Photos courtesy of A Growing Culture)

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The U.S. organic industry is a massive net importer, particularly from developing countries — and those supply chains rest on seed systems abroad that organic has barely examined.

Across six countries and some 40 crops, a 2016 study found that smallholder farmers sourced 90% of their seed outside the formal commercial sector, nearly half of it bought in local markets.

That trade is now being criminalized — and contested.

A new alliance called Free the Seed — launched by A Growing Culture and the Non-GMO Project — says that governments around the world are increasingly enacting seed laws that make it a crime for farmers to save, exchange or sell their own seed.

HIDING BEHIND FOOD SECURITY

The cover comes from UPOV, an international treaty system that gives plant breeders exclusive control over a variety for at least 20 years under its 1991 act. To qualify, a variety must be new, distinct, uniform and stable.

GMOs and hybrids are uniform and stable by design. Farmers’ varieties are diverse and adaptive by design — therefore not uniform, not stable — so they fail the test.

That same test does double duty. National seed registers bar the sale of any variety not on them, and one that isn’t uniform and stable never makes it. The breeder’s seed gets a two-decade monopoly. The farmer’s seed gets none.

In Ghana, both instruments are law. No one may “produce, condition or market any seed” unless it is of a registered variety — a bar a farmers’ variety cannot clear. Separately, willfully selling the propagating material of a protected variety without authorization carries a fine or 10 to 15 years in prison.

In Kenya, that model went further. Selling or sharing uncertified seed — which is most farmer seed — carried a fine of up to KSh1 million or two years in prison. In November 2025, in a case brought by 15 smallholder farmers, the High Court declared those provisions unconstitutional, finding that they violated the rights to life, livelihood and food. The state has appealed.

Loren Cardeli, executive director of A Growing Culture, said organizations including USAID (before it was dismantled), the Gates Foundation and AGRA spent years pushing this model across Africa under the guise of food security.

“They call this food security, but they are replacing farmer-controlled seed systems with systems farmers have to pay to access again and again,” he said. “When you criminalize the seeds people have adapted, saved and shared for generations, you undermine the very resilience you claim to be building.”

A RISK THAT ARRIVES SLOWLY

Nothing in the organic supply chain has visibly broken, and that is the nature of this risk. Seed systems fail slowly, and by the time a sourcing team notices that a variety has become hard to buy, the farmers who kept it alive left that business a decade ago.

What is measurable is the narrowing. The top four companies control 56% of the global seed market. By one widely cited figure, India grew more than 110,000 varieties of rice until the 1970s; rice conservationist Debal Deb estimates roughly 6,000 survive.

GMOs are prohibited under organic rules, which means organic depends on a pipeline of non-GMO, open-pollinated, regionally adapted seed — the exact pipeline these laws squeeze. As the legal seed supply consolidates around uniform proprietary varieties, organic does not get worse options. It runs out of them first.

WHAT BRANDS ARE BEING ASKED TO DO

There is no quick fix for a risk on this timeline, which is why Free the Seed’s asks are structural: amplify farmer and Indigenous leadership, contribute to a Seed Solidarity Fund supporting frontline seed keepers, and publicly sign a declaration defending farmers’ right to save and exchange seed. Early signatories include Lotus Foods, Mad Agriculture, Alter Eco, Wild Orchard and One Step Closer.

Free the Seed is also running a free four-part learning journey beginning September 1.

“Seed sovereignty is not a distant issue for the organic and CPG industry — it is the foundation of our businesses,” said Caryl Levine, co-founder of Lotus Foods.

“If a brand can only see as far as its cacao supplier in Peru, it has lost the picture,” Cardeli said. “The next rice milk is sitting in a variety somewhere, and that potential is being taken from you.”

With gratitude, Max Goldberg, Founder