01/28/2025
I had to go to Walmart today. For fun, I went to look at the seeds they had out.
I saw seeds by Ferry-Morse, Burpee, and a third company, Back to the Roots.
Some Ferry-Morse and Burpee seeds were marked as organic and some were not. Back to the Roots ONLY had organics. They also had a little display that read "Organic is Always Non-GMO".
I chuckled and made a video that I posted on TikTok that appears to maybe might be going viral...I guess we will see in the morning.
Here's the thing: Not one person can walk in to Walmart nor any other retailer and buy a pack of corn with 25 seeds and those seeds be GMO, regardless of whether the packet says they're organic or not...because regular people can't buy GMO seeds at the store.
GMO seeds are genetically engineered in a lab and the DNA of the seed itself is altered. The company that owns the patent on that seed is the only one selling it, and to grow it, you have to sign a contract and grow so many more than a handful in your backyard.
So, using the "Organic is Always Non-GMO" was a little marketing ploy to trick the consumer. After all, this company was charging over $1.25/per packet MORE for their organic seeds than the other two companies were for their non-organic seeds. If you didn't know better, you might read that and think if it didn't say "organic" it might be a GMO. Most people wanting to grow their own food understand the basic concept that organic should be good and GMO is bad, so I can just see people the next 2 or 3 months buying this company's seed, thinking the extra cost kept them from unwittingly buying GMO seed. And it's just not true. It's a gimmick to sell more seeds.
Here's some other tidbits to know, and I will walk through these things many times over this growing season:
1. Organic is a growing method. And it's something the government regulates the use of - if a seed says "organic" it means the plant it was harvested from was grown using the methods the government says is organic, and that the grower filled out all the paperwork and paid all the fees to get that designation. Not everything "organic" by the government's standards is actually earth-friendly, by the way, but it's definitely better than RoundUp.
2. There's basically 3 types of seed these days. One is heirlooms. These have been around a LONG time - at least 50 years. Every year you save a seed and grow it the following year, you get the same plant. They breed true every time (unless they cross pollinate - and squash are notorious for that). The second is hybrids. Hybrids are selectively bred through cross pollination outside of a lab. We do this to increase yield, size, improve taste, for color, or for disease/pest resistance. It's like the labradoodle of the garden. If you save these seeds and grow them next year, you're more often than not getting something that resembles mostly the lab or the doodle, but not usually both. The third is GMO, which is seed modified in a lab, sometimes using non related materials and it changes the very DNA of the plant.
3. You can grow Hybrids or Heirlooms using USDA-approved organic methods or not. That decision is yours. A certified organic seed can be grown using conve tipnal methods that are not organic. That decision is also yours. GMO corn and soybean are typically bred to withstand treatment with pesticides and herbicides that would be poisonous to us normally. They are never organic because they never started out that way, so the growing method becomes irrelevant.
Some people will INSIST that Hybrids are GMO in a technical sense because that aren't straight up heirlooms that are open pollinated every year, year after year. I don't subscribe to that thinking and most of the plant breeding community would agree. They have human intervention but they are not GMO.
So, as you select seeds this season, just know you can't buy GMO seed and grow it in your backyard garden. And if you want to save money and get non-organic seed, you can still grow it using earth-friendly methods and still be healthy!
As for being viral, we will see how that goes. Apparently I hit a nerve with a few people, but it's important that you know the marketing ploys are found even in gardening!
