This month we’re featuring High Mowing Organic Seeds as part of our Business Membership Spotlight series. High Mowing is one of the only companies in the trade committed to selling 100% organic seed, with over 600 varieties in its catalogue. For more than 20 years, the team at High Mowing has helped advance organic seed in the field and marketplace, often through public and private collaborations.
OSA is proud to be counted among its many partners. For example, in 2014, High Mowing supported the commercial release of ‘Who Gets Kissed?’ sweet corn, an open-pollinated, organically bred variety developed by University of Wisconsin – Madison breeders and graduate students in partnership with Minnesota organic farmer Martin Diffley and OSA’s research team. The variety quickly sold out and continues to be successful, serving as just one of many examples where High Mowing facilitated the release of a new organic variety to help fill organic seed supply gaps and ensure farmers had high-quality seed that met their production and market needs.
This is especially important given that most seed is not bred for organic production systems: “Too often organic farmers are forced to use seeds that were bred and developed for a different kind of agriculture,” says High Mowing’s founder Tom Stearns.
High Mowing is also committed to growing a lot of their own seed, including on its 40-acre farm, which also serves as a research site. This year, as part of the Carrot Improvement for Organic Agriculture (CIOA) project, OSA and university breeders partnered with High Mowing by using its farm as a site for replicated carrot variety trials to see how breeding lines perform in the Northeast. The trial includes traditional orange varieties in addition to purple, yellow, red, and white varieties as well. Partnerships like this allow us to integrate the goal of breeding for organic farmers in the Northeast region.
Learn more about High Mowing and the organic, non-GMO verified seed the company offers.
