D22—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 17,1981
Seed spies , smugglers help build early farming
BY DICK ANGLESTEIN
LANCASTER COUNTY -
Lancaster County farmers
and their first county agent
played a prominent role in
seed development, whose
history features many
dramatic stories of spies,
smugglers and explorers.
Lancaster County’s
particular role centered on
the development of hybrid
com, which revolutionized
farming throughout the
country and ranks among
the greatest agricultural
developments of all tune.
Before the days of hybrids,
many varieties of open
pollinated com were grown
throughout the nation
A well-known variety in
Lancaster County and
eventually throughout the
East was Lancaster Sure-
Crop, one of the 18 original
ancestors of today’s hybrids
Sure-Oop was a success
story of the county and more
specifically its first county
agent, the late “Dutch”
Bucher
As Dutch once explained
‘I got all the farmers in
the county to furnish me with
seed samples,” he said
“Then we laid out test
plots for three or four years
and finally came up with the
Lancaster Sure-Crop
variety.”
Seed explorer
Dutch was also a local
explorer of sorts in search of
a better red clover.
‘Our farmers never had a
decent red clover crop,” he
explained
"I had seed shipped in
from all over the world -
Russia, Asia, Africa, Europe
and even Australia
‘We tried some 50 dif
ferent varieties and none of
it worked One day I heard of
a farmer in the southern end
of the county who always
had a good stand. I looked
mto it and found what 1 had
been looking for had been
here all the time ”
That seed later developed
into the Penn Scott variety of
clover, which was grown all
over the East
Thus for this type of work
during the early part of the
century, Dutch joined some
quite important people out of
American history who
served as seed spies,
smugglers and explorers.
Smuggled in coat
Among them was Thomas
Jefferson, who was a
champion of agriculture
during the early years of the
country
Perhaps, he said it best
when he cited the im
portance of seeds;
“The greatest service
which can be rendered to
any country is to add a useful
plant to its culture. ”
Jefferson practiced what
he preached, too.
While serving in an
overseas diplomatic post
before becoming president,
Jefferson emerged as one of
the first of famous
statesman seed spies and
smugglers
Northern Italy grew a
particularly good variety of
upland rice. But the Italian
provincial government
wanted to protect its
monopoly on this nee and
decreed the death penalty
for anyone caught
smuggling nee seed out of
the country
Jefferson, who was known
as a rather flashy dresser,
had some seeds sewn into the
lining of his coat and
smuggled them back to
South Carolina personally
Ben Franklin , too
Ben Franklin was another
of the seed spies As the
country’s leading am
bassador abroad, Franklin
also attended many
diplomatic functions and
was known to court the favor
of the wives of wealthy
gentleman farmers Often,
they rewarded him with
small packets of seeds
Franklin sent a steady
flow of seeds back home and
is credited with the in
troduction of such plants as
rhubarb and kale
But there were many more
lesser - known men who
played just as important
roles in the early history of
seed development
American Indians are
often popularly credited with
the development of corn But
the crop actually was
domesticated in the Andes
Mountains of Bolivia and
Peru and moved as seed up
through Central America
and Mexico into North
America
The oldest known
cultivation of corn in North
America was discovered in
Bat Cave of New Mexico
Remains of cultivated corn
there date back some 5,000
years
The types of northern
flints growi by these early
Indians in the East resemble
crops from the mountains of
Guatemala While corn
cultivation farther west
appeared to be patterned
after Mexican-like dents
Indians also had a hand in
distributing other types of
seeds Wild peaches found by
the first settlers in Penn
sylvania were brought here
from Spanish plantings a
century earlier in St
Augustine, Fla
Johnny Appleseed
And, there really was a
Johnny Appleseed, too His
real name was John
Chapman.
Chapman and the massive
thirsts that pioneer Penn
sylvanians had for cider and
applejack led directly to
many orchards in the
wilderness of Ohio and In
diana.
Chapman visited cider
pressses throughout colonial
Pennsylvania and collected
seeds from the pomice For
more than a half-century, he
carried these seeds by canoe
and backpack into Ohio and
Indiana, where he planted
countless thousands of apple
trees.'
Immigrant farmers also
were important in the
development of seed
One of them was a man
named Wendehn Grimm,
who emigrated from Baden,
Germany in 1857. One of the
most prized possessions he
brought along to his new
home in Carver County,
Minnesota, was a few pounds
of alfalfa seed.
He planted the seeds and
each year saved those few
which survived the tough,
cold Minnesota winters
Gradually, he developed the
first hardy alfalfa that could
survive winter-kill His
Grimm alfalfa seeds were
passed out to friends and
neighbors without any
fanfare or compensation
Columbus began the in
troduction of Old World
crops with his second voyage
in 1493. He carried seeds of
barley, wheat, sugarcane
and grapes on the second
voyage
The first organized effort
at collecting seeds began in
1817 when Elkannah Watson,
one of the founders of the
Berkshire Agricultural
Society in Massachusetts,
sent a letter to U S consults
in Europe asking them to
collect and forward seeds
Consuls recruited
Two years, later, William
H Crawford, Secretary of
the Treasury, officially
directed consuls and naval
officers to send seeds home
But still Congress didn’t
appropriate any funds tor
the seeds The Agricultural
Society of South Carolina
began to allot $2OO a year in
1823 for naval officers to
cover their costs of
correspondence
Some of these unknown
naval officers made real
contriouiions to early
agriculture in places like
Lancaster County
Farmers in this area,
other sections of the state
and New York, had par
ticular trouble with a wheat
pest, called Hessian Fly,
beginning as early as the
mid-1700’s It devastated
wheat crops
Finally, a New York
farmer got some seed from a
friend on naval duty in the
Mediterranean that proved
to be resistant Thus,
Hessian Fly was no longer a
problem
Seeds were vital and in
dispensable m nine out of 10
households in Colonial
America Field and garden
crop seeds were saved with
the utmost care from year to
year Seeds were more
valuable than money and
were widely traded Thus,
the best of the seeds were
distributed
Finally in 1839, Congress
responded to the request of
Henry L Ellsworth, Com
missioner of Patents, to
appropriate funds for the
collection and distribution of
seeds The program began
with an initial allocation of
$l,OOO that first year
Seed packages
The seen program con
tinued through 1923
Perhaps, some area farmers
and gardeners can recall
receiving packages of seeds
through their Congressmen
Billions of packages were so
distributed
Here in Lancaster County,
the town of Lititz is known as
the final home of General
Sutter, on whose land gold
was discovered in Califor
nia
Well, the ‘Forty-niners”
who responded to that
discovery also carried seeds
to the West Coast Seeds of a
Chilean alfalfa were m-
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<*W
Lancaster Sure-Crop, still found growing in some demonstration plots, was
one of the 18 original ancestors of today's corn hybrids It was developed from
seed collected throughout Lancaster County.
troduced to the West Coast
by gold seekers passing
through Cape Horn
borne three decades after
the U S Department of
Agncultgure was formed in
1862, Secretary James
Wilson launched a federal
piogram ot sending seed
explorers throughout the
world
It was these exploi ei s who
provided the red clover seed
to Dutch' Bucher, which
didn t help in improving the
local variety
Carloads of seed
See explorers traveled
for thousands ot miles
through countries like
Russia One such explorer
collected some five carloads
of seeds and had them sent
back to the U S Often, they
traveled by mule, sleigh or
even walked
Thus, out of these unusual
and unique efforts of early
seed collector md
distributors literally D i c
the agriculture of the
country and the modern seed
industry
Today, countless
thousands ot acies of seeds
are harvested annually
throughout the country
And many individuals still
save the best of their seed
from one year to the next In
this way they join plant
breeders at state ag ex
periment stations and
private seed companies in
selective plant improvement
programs of all types
But as area farmers and
gardeners survey the seed
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■ «i ■A-
catalogs during a long thodox places as the coat
winter s evening, they tails ot Thomas Jefferson,
should lemember that the spectacle case ot Ben
today’s seeds have historical Franklin or the boolcase ot
beginnings in such unor- Dutch Bucher s motoi cycle
itch Bucher, Lancaster's first county agent, was
instrumental in the collection of seed corn and the
development of Lancaster Sure-Crop, a popular
variety of many years ago important in the eventual
development of hybrids.
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