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What obstacles did your company have to overcome
in the early
years?
In Israel many farmers welcomed the emergence of a new
industry and were ready to shift to organic seed growing. My
colleague Dr. Nir had the job of training them to adapt to the
organic way of seed production. He set up a production
research facility to show them the correct methods for growing
seed organically. The backbone of our efforts has been establishing a high level of trust and confidence with this
community of seed growers.
On the sales and marketing side, the idea of organic seeds was
becoming more
acceptable, though this evolution was faster in Europe than in the US.
In the US the organic market was very fragmented. There were
many small growers who were very loosely associated with each other.
There was no uniformity in the laws of individual states. What exactly constituted something organic was
different
from state to state. The common wisdom was that organic food
was a fad, very expensive, of poor quality and only for the
wealthy few. The idea of using organic seed was considered a
joke. The market was such a small niche that it was not
getting much attention at all. |
