Seed is an essential starting point for successfully growing a crop, and its quality is therefore of the utmost importance to farmers. Access to new varieties with enhanced traits gives farmers the tools to efficiently produce food in a safe and sustainable way.
There are challenges facing the seed sector at the moment, with border checks severely disrupting the movement of plant material into the UK, to such an extent that the trade is no longer viable in many cases.
Furthermore, the long-term future of parallel imports and imported seed treatments remains uncertain, and the concern is that British farmers could find themselves in the disadvantageous situation where the availability of crop protection tools is decreasing and the cost of those still available is increasing.
These factors will all be affected by the SPS Agreement, which is currently being negotiated as part of EU alignment.
The NFU Combinable Crops Board is aware of concerns that some seed used in mixes for SFI schemes do not fall under the Seed Marketing Regulations, and as a result may not necessarily meet the quality that farmers expect. The NFU has published guidance for growers on how to mitigate these risks.
Collection
Seed royalties are collected from farmers and growers to enable plant breeders to invest in future varieties, driving improvements in yield and crop performance. The money, paid on both certified seed and farm saved seed, is collected by two main organisations – the BIPO (Breeders’ Intellectual Property Office) and the BSPB (British Society of Plant Breeders).
The royalties help to safeguard the future of crop production by enabling breeding programmes to develop new varieties suitable for an evolving marketplace, which requires significant long-term investment. Bringing a new variety to market costs between £800,000 and £1,000,000, and can take anywhere between six and 20 years.
Strict criteria
The UK’s official seed certification scheme ensures that seed can only be sold to farmers and growers once it has met strict criteria. For a new variety to be marketed in the UK, it must pass a number of rigorous tests.
Two of these are DUS – distinctness, uniformity and stability – and VCU – value for cultivation and use. They ensure that the variety’s characteristics are consistent across each plant, and that the variety is delivering improved performance from what is already available on the market.
Varietal purity and the cleanliness of seed is important to minimise the risk of weeds and other material that can threaten yield performance. When a grower decides to plant a crop, they should ensure that what they put in the drill is both clean and pure as well as having appropriate levels of germination and vigour to protect the traits which that variety has been bred to deliver.
Varieties are protected by the Plant Variety Rights, which give breeders exclusive control over the propagating and harvesting material processed for 25 years. When using farm saved seed, it is a legal requirement to declare its use and pay the royalties for that variety. Royalties can often be paid on either an area basis or a tonnage basis, depending on which is most appropriate.
Exclusions
Farm saved seed royalties do not need to be paid by farmers and growers who produce under 92 tonnes of combinable crops per harvest. Above this, they do have to be paid on any crop that is sown, regardless of whether it fails or not. A farmer can only farm save seed which they have grown on their own farm, and seed cannot be traded with other farm businesses.
If a grower intends to farm saved seed, when initially choosing their variety, they should consider what level of royalty is going to be charged and how that royalty is going to be collected.
The royalty owed will be determined by the collecting organisation which the variety is tied to, with BIPO and BSPB charging different rates for farm saved seed compared to certified seed, and taking different approaches to how they collect it.
BIPO
BIPO was set up by three breeders to originally focus on minor crops, but it now covers some major crops too.
Varieties administered by BIPO have a single royalty for both certified seed and farm saved seed, which the breeder sets and BIPO collect. Farmers will sign a contract on purchase of the seed to commit to payment if farm saving at a later date.
BSPB
The BSPB collect royalties based on an agreement between the BSPB and the farming unions. The farm saved seed royalties are set as a percentage of the certified seed royalty, so are lower than the initial certified seed royalty and increase in line with the certified seed royalties set by the breeders.
The BSPB lobbies on policy issues in the seed breeding sector alongside their royalty work. This enables the NFU and BSPB to work together on securing a brighter future for the farming industry, lobbying to secure policy changes that promote the opportunities of the UK plant breeding industry.
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