8 ms·

Whats an "approved list of varieties" for commercial crops? Sounds ominous.

• joshvm 7y ago
  You can find some more information here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lists-of-agricultural-and-vegetable-crops https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lists-of-agricultural-a... Note that there's no restriction on the buyer, you can buy whatever you like. But in order to sell seeds to the public you can only sell registered varieties. I would guess this is to prevent crops which are disease prone or invasive from spreading. For agricultural crops the fee includes mandatory testing. You wouldn't want the country's cereal crop to get decimated because someone started selling dodgy seeds. Having read a bit of the legislation it also looks like it's been heavily lobbied by businesses. It's not particularly hard to get stuff added to the list, but it's pretty expensive. An amateur heritage variety costs £100-175 to register. So someone like Fothergill's or Thomson and Morgan don't have any trouble, but a small retailer might struggle.