2025 Business Update

Those of you who follow events here closely will know most of this information already.  This is largely a recap.

Cultivariable started as a seed only business.  I quickly started selling tubers as well.  Tubers eventually became impossible to sell any longer because of the presence of soil borne diseases in our field that I cannot eliminate.  Managing diseases has, over time, become an extremely complex and time-consuming task.  In most cases, I have been spending great amounts of time and money dealing with diseases that are not any kind of impediment to my breeding work, in order to continue selling tubers, which is a much harder job than selling seeds to begin with.  I experimented for the past few years with offering in vitro plantlets as an alternative to tubers, but the conclusion of that experiment is that I can’t do it profitably.  I spent a lot of money, did a ton of work, and learned a tremendous amount of really interesting stuff that will continue to be useful, but it didn’t pay off.  So, I’m back to just seeds.  Seeds have always been the majority of the business, so this is not a huge problem, but it does affect the mix of things that I can offer.

Going forward, I expect to continue to have a great selection of true potato seeds.  I also expect to have an increasingly diverse selection of oca seeds, as I am getting better at selecting varieties that have both heavy tuber and seed production.  I will continue to have dahlia, skirret, and sea kale seeds and I expect that those offerings will increase a bit.  I am working very hard on making selections of mashua and sunchokes that reliably produce saleable quantities of seed.  The road to get there is a bit bumpy, but I expect to be offering some of each most years.  And I am still working at selecting varieties of ulluco that produce enough true seed that I can actually sell some.  There is progress on that front, but it isn’t going to happen right away.  There is one crop that I will no longer be offering and that is likely to be a disappointment to many of you.  That is yacon.  I don’t have the space or time to make a profit at selling yacon seeds.  I’ve really enjoyed breeding yacon, but if I can’t sell the crowns, it is just not a practical crop for me anymore.  I don’t think that yacon is likely to return to the catalog.

My breeding priorities have had to change to fit the limitations that I work under and I actually consider that to be a good thing.  In the past, I would tend to keep superior varieties even if they had relatively poor seed production, since I could offer those varieties as tubers or plantlets.  Seed production was always a priority, but I am now incentivized to be ruthless.  My new varieties have to be superior but also produce enough seed to make them profitable for me to grow and I am making good progress there.

Another side effect of these changes is that I will not be keeping such a large collection anymore.  More of my varieties will be dropped each year to make room for new ones.  As the customer, it will be your job to identify and preserve the varieties that you value the most, while I put most of my focus into the next generations.  This year will probably represent a low water mark for varieties in the catalog, but new varieties will be coming faster over the next few years as I have now dropped some heavy burdens and can move forward with a different focus.  Thanks, as always, for your interest and support.