Although the Norwegian government is funding the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, containing seeds from all over the world, the country itself is more or less totally dependent on importing vegetable seeds. However, two Dutch men, Jasper Kroon and Tom Boersma, founded a seed shop called Solhatt in 2011. Before describing the company, a short history of seed production and control will be presented.
Short history
At the beginning of the 1800s, the first seed shops were founded in the Netherlands and France. Increased knowledge of inheritance and systematic breeding led to that new plant varieties, which had a much higher yield than ones made by farmers, were developed. Slowly, but surely, new plant varieties were replacing the old ones. The first Norwegian seed shop was established by Johan Olsen in Oslo in 1833.
Before the seed shops were founded, farmers produced seeds themselves or they exchanged seeds with their neighbours, making their harvests adapted to local conditions, but also having a large genetic variation.
Seed controls were founded across Europe in the late 1800s in order to secure high quality seeds for farmers. There was a lot of cheating with seeds, which wouldn’t germinate, but also seeds which were mixed with seeds for other plant varieties or was of low quality in any other way.
The first seed control in Norway was founded by Bastian Larsen at the agricultural school at Haug in Vardal in 1884, but it was taken over by the Royal Norwegian Society for Development in 1889 and next by the Norwegian state in 1898. A private seed control company, called Kristiania Frøkontroll (Christiania Seed Control), was founded in 1887, while it was nationalised in 1899. and renamed to Statens Frøkontroll (Seed Control of the State).
Nowadays, seed control is done by Såvarelaboratoriet and Mattilsynet in Norway. Såvarelaboratoriet perform analysis of seeds in order to find the germination rate, the cleanliness and any infectious diseases of the seeds.
As the 1800s progressed, farmers in Norway started importing more and more vegetable seeds from the Netherlands and the UK. However, during the First World War, all imports of seeds were abruptly stopped, and the Norwegian government founded a committee for breeding seeds and the greatest production took place in the 1920s when various heirloom varieties were developed. In the 1930s, seed production was decreasing again. After the Second World War, the quality of the seeds was variable and the supply was uneven, making import of seeds more important. During the 1970s and 80s, seeds from abroad were cheaper than Norwegian ones such that farmers preferred to buy imported seeds instead.
F.C Schübeler, a professor at the Botanical garden in Christiania, published a book on seed production in Norway in 1889. Being a predecessor of Solhatt, he sent seeds to farmers who, in return, gave feedback on how good the seeds were.
The Royal Norwegian Society for Development founded a farm for testing and breeding seeds for meadows, lawns, but also seeds for root vegetables and various vegetables, at Hellerud in 1950. Due to reorganisation, the farm was closed down in 2001.
Speaking of seeds, it’s impossible to avoid mentioning the Russian and Soviet agronomist, botanist and geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, who collected seeds from many countries and who headed the Institute of Plant Industry from 1924 to 1936. In 1940, he was arrested for allegedly wrecking Soviet agriculture and he died of hunger in 1943. His co-workers at The Institute of Plant Industry preserved the seed bank through the 28-month Siege of Leningrad and in an act of incredible self-sacrifice, they refused to eat the seeds. Nine of them had died at the end of the siege in the spring of 1944.
According to Jasper Kroon, the Vavilov Institute still has seeds from the Nordic countries, but they are not well documented.
Origin of select vegetables
Having covered very briefly how seeds have been produced and controlled in the past, it’s also necessary to know where the seeds of vegetables come from. This will only cover a few of the vegetables being grown in Norway, but readers are encouraged to seek out more information elsewhere.
All the cereals and vegetables we are eating come from domesticated plant varieties because ancient peoples needed something to eat.
Peas
Cultivated peas have been found in Syria and date from about 9300 BCE.
Wild peas ripen over a long period of time, they grow near the ground and seeds arise all over the plant and peapods shatter on maturity. Ancient peoples, living in the Fertile Crescent about 11,000 years ago, domesticated wild peas by selecting those that had a soft shell and ripened during the wet season.
Carrots
Wild carrots were domesticated in present-day Iran and Afghanistan and they could be black, white, red and purple. Modern yellow or orange carrot may have been developed by selective breeding in the Netherlands in the 1600s as a tribute to the ruling House of Orange.
Originally, carrots were grown for their leaves and seeds rather than their roots. Selective breeding over centuries were required to reduce bitterness, increase sweetness and minimise the woody core.
Onions
Unfortunately, wild onion is extinct and there is no agreement of when and where onion was domesticated. Onions were grown in Ancient Egypt 5,500 years ago, in India and China 5,000 years ago and in Sumeria 4,500 years ago.
Cabbage
Cabbage still grows wild in Europe and peoples of the northern Mediterranean started domesticating it by means of selective breeding about 3000 years ago. The wide variety of cabbage seen today may have taken a few thousand years.
Rutabaga
Rutabaga arose in the 1500s when seeds from B. Napa and B. oleracea were interbred in Sweden.
The Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin discovered that the predecessors of cabbage, which were cultivated in the 1620s, were growing wild in the Swedish countryside.
The company
In 2011, both Tom and Jasper were working as organic gardeners in Norway when they were asked to take over a small company called Biofrø, which was importing and selling seeds for biodynamic agriculture. Having accepted the offer, they wanted to expand the company by selling to hobby gardeners. They started with selling seeds from Bingenheimer Saatgut in Germany, but they gradually expanded their product range by selling seeds from other seed shops and various garden tools and books on gardening. Next, they hired a piece of land on the farm Alm Østre, which is located in Stange. There, they grow organic vegetables practising a 5-year crop rotation. They started selling organic seeds produced in Norway from 2015.
Instead of selling hybrid F1-seeds, Tom and Jasper wanted to produce and sell seeds from heirloom vegetables. F1 hybrid seeds are produced by large companies and those who grow seeds from them have to buy seeds from them yearly. Instead, by growing heirloom varieties, the growers themselves can extract seeds and plant them the next season. Thus, Solhatt is maintaining a tradition which has been applied for tens of milllennia.
As regards pollination of the plants, seed producers need to keep plants which can pollinate each other far apart, amounting to at least 100 metres.
In 2012, when Solhatt started growing cabbage, rutabaga and peas using seeds from NordGen, none of the seeds were being used. If it hadn’t been for Solhatt, they would probably have disappeared.
Further, the large seed companies have been working to make the vegetables make more energy by means of sugar.
Speaking from experience, I can attest to that many vegetables and fruits bought from supermarkets and almost certainly made by F1 hybrids, don’t taste anything, removing the pleasure of eating.
Due to global heating, climate researchers expect more extreme weather, making it necessary to grow plants which are more resistant against drought, rain and diseases. Since the vegetables grown at Solhatt don’t get any help from pesticides and no soil treatment by machinery, they may be better than F1 hybrids at extracting nutrients from the ground and have a more robust root system.
In addition, all seeds sold by Solhatt will give new plants that resemble their parent plants and these properties will be led on to future generations.
The seeds produced by Solhatt have been selected among those plants, which have been most resistant against diseases and weeds, requiring least nutrients and giving a good and even harvest. In addition, the plants should be as nutritious as possible, taste good and flower late in the season. The last property ensures that the child plant is as big as possible before it starts flowering. Finally, the seeds should be able to be stored without degradation for some years, but they should be used within 12 years, else the germination rate will decrease.
Interbreeding of the plants have to be done over 6 to 8 generations before the harvest is more or less stable. Jasper said that most of the seeds aren’t suited for seed production and only a very few are approved for production. In addition, some plants are perennials like chives and they are grown on a field the first year, thereafter the seeds are extracted and sown in a greenhouse the next year. Then, interbreeding for 6-8 generations entails 12-16 years before, hopefully, the seeds are ready for certification and finally production. All the seeds made by Solhatt have been approved for sale by the Norwegian Food Safety Authority.
Another feature of seed production is that seeds from seed banks often aren’t documented well and the germination rate of the seeds are quite low when they are planted. The seeds have to wake up somehow and this takes several generations.
The field at Alm Østre is open land, but Solhatt also grow vegetables in greenhouses and they work in partnership with other seed producers, 7 in all. Some of them are presented here.
In autumn, it’s time for harvesting seeds. Next, the seeds have to be cleaned by various means, like using a sieve, a berry winnower and even an air separator. After the seeds have been cleaned and controlled, they are put in small paper bags and put in boxes at the premises of Solhatt, ready for sale.
Jasper and Tom want to invite cooks and anyone who is working with food to discover if there is a market for their products. As of now, only a chosen few buy vegetables form farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture, food festivals and so on. They think there is a market for 2-3 types of rutabaga and white turnip.
Let’s hope that Solhatt will expand and get many more customers. They are the only ones in Norway who produce organic vegetable seeds as a profession and they are keeping alive an age-old activity, which may die out.
