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Plant breeders

Professional plant breeders create their own pipelines of new breeding releases, similar in some ways to the succession planting pattern of produce growers.  The entire process for a single variety -- only up until the time of release into the market -- spans between four and ten years.  And breeders must additionally invest in variety maintenance, debugging, and updating over time.

It's no surprise that most of today's most impactful plant breeders are housed within larger corporate seed entities.  Situated inside these larger frameworks, breeders' expertise and labor can be leveraged across large sales volumes and market geographies.  Breeding at this scale can be profitable indeed.  The idea is to pair  consolidated development & production costs and with large-market, usual global, seed sales sales per variety.

It is an open question, meanwhile, how very small, nimble freelance plant breeding operations can realize similar economic outcomes, albeit by different pathways.  At CRS, we think that our model will yield solutions to this puzzle.

We think that brands and stories are becoming even more important to consumers than in prior eras.  And so a key part of our and our breeders', long-term financial strategy is building brands that help breeders capture some amount of credit for their work.  Breeders should want this, too -- a strong in-market presence cultivating and watching over breeders' reputations and their product brands.  CRS helps them accomplish this without utility patents, PVP's, or any other seed-restricting mechanism of long length, and most of the seeds we work with are Open Source Seed Initiative Pledged.  (Note: We do not represent utility patented varieties, but do work with F1 hybrids and with PVP-granted varieties.)

 

Part scientist part artist, how their products are received and experienced is the direct link to their reputation and brand as a seeds person.  CRS stewards breeders' brands, ensuring impressions of professionalism, high-quality, and their progressive organic ethos. 

 

CRS has been structured from the start to fulfill this need for serious freelance plant breeders, and the rest of the benefits have followed (for farmers, eaters, produce companies, larger seed companies, food companies, investors).

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