Vegetable Seed Shortages Likely Amid Coronavirus Crisis
Homesteaders, backyard farmers, and hobby gardeners alike may have a harder time procuring the vegetable seeds they seek this year. Extremely high consumer demand that has resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic, both directly and indirectly, have already begun to cause seed shortages in the United States and abroad.
The explanation for this inordinate demand on vegetable seeds concerns a few interlinked factors:
Food Security
As exemplified by the rush on grocery stores and pretty much any place that sells toilet paper, people are experiencing some level of self-inflicted “survival mode”. Modern society has been so spoiled by the ceaseless machine of perpetual “supply” that when there is even a blip on that supply chain radar, society loses its collective mind. Even though stores are mostly stocked back up, most restaurants are still taking orders, and there are not really any food shortages to speak of, many people are still having varying levels of anxiety about food security in the coming months.
Maybe it’s from twenty years of post-apocalyptic television and film. Maybe it’s because of prepper websites like this. Maybe it’s because of innate human nature. For whatever reasons, a lot of people right now have almost instantly become aspiring homesteaders or survivalists. This means that people who have never grown vegetables before intend to try their hand at it, and those who already grow vegetables intend to expand their operation.
Home Hobbies
Not everybody is experiencing pangs of anxiety over fears of potential food supply interruptions. Lots of people are simply bored. They’re stuck at home. Every thing and every place they could go for entertainment, leisure, or recreation is shuttered and forbidden until further notice. This means an unimaginable increase in at-home activities. What better way to pass the time at home, feel some nice weather on your skin, and get a little exercise than a working a backyard garden? It’s a productive and family-friendly hobby for all ages!
And just as it does with the newbie Doomsday homesteaders, this all adds up to a major influx of seed purchasing across the land.
Availability of Starter Plants
Due to “stay at home” orders that are in effect throughout many states, many stores that would ordinarily sell vegetable starter plants are not open for business. These orders vary in severity and scope from state to state, but in certain locations the directive states that home improvement-type stores that are allowed to be open are prohibited from selling gardening supplies like starter plants. The reasoning behind such rules seems to aimed at reducing the number of people who are out in public, shopping for non-essential goods. In Michigan, for instance, hardware stores are no longer allowed to sell paint or flooring materials, because too many people are taking advantage of their “quarantine” to tackle home improvement projects. The same goes for garden centers, and garden supplies at otherwise-essential stores like Home Depot and Lowes. If such orders remain in effect past April, these starter plants will be practically impossible to get.
As if to add insult to injury for the already-overwhelmed suppliers and internet merchants, the absolute lack of common starter plants in many places will only drive demand for mail-order seeds higher. Countless people who have previously planted gardens but never use seeds will be forced to resort to doing it from scratch this year.
If you’re thinking, “But all of those seedlings and starter plants aren’t needed, so why not just sell the seeds that those come from?” consider that many (or most) of those starter plants are already…started. Companies that produce starter plants have greenhouses that are bursting at the seams with product that was just about to go to market.
So What Can I Do?
Simply put: Buy your seeds ASAP. If you’re already at your local hardware store for essential supplies and you spot a rack of seed packets, pick some out. If you have a specific breed or variety in mind, try to find them online right now. Several seed suppliers and sellers are already completely sold-out of certain varieties. In many cases, that’s it for the rest of the season. Some companies that show a current lack of seeds seem to be working on restocking, while stating expected delivery dates that extend well past ideal sowing times for most zones in the United States.
And if you aren’t having any luck finding seeds on the websites of major seed companies, or retail giants like Amazon or Walmart, consider searching for small “Mom & Pop” operations. A lot of these tiny businesses have old, unoptimized websites that don’t show up prominently in the search engines (and thus have a lower likelihood of being already stripped clean by the seed-hungry masses).
