Seed company has local roots

Dana Richards is racking-up the frequent-flyer miles.

Five or six times a year, the Lompoc resident travels to Kunming, in western China, north of Laos and Cambodia.

Richards is bilingual, but it's English and Spanish - not Chinese.

“I have a vocabulary of about 60 words and building to get by on,” he said.

But Richards is fluent in the language of flower-seed production.

“I gave him his first job, at Bodger seed,” said David Lemon, plant-breeding director at Oglevee Ltd. in Lompoc and a 40-year veteran of the flower -seed industry.

“I was the research director there and hired him as greenhouse manager. I always tell people he is probably one of the best people I ever hired. He is very knowledgeable; he has lots of experience.

“He has had lots and lots of experience now in the international production of flower seeds. He spends quite a bit of time in China and he is experienced in other countries - he is quite international.”

A 1985 graduate of Cal Poly with a degree in horticulture, Richards has worked in the flower-seed industry since college.

He joined Bodger Seeds Ltd. of Lompoc after college and worked there for eight years before joining Waller Seed Co. in Guadalupe. He was with Waller for another eight years before the company was sold to Chicago-based Ball Horticulture Co. and became Pan American Seed Co.

At Waller and Pan American, Richards worked with Jagan Sharma, Ph.D., a plant breeder and another 40-year veteran of the industry.

“Dana Richards ... is a top-notch guy in his industry,” Sharma said. He knows his craft. He knows his science and art. In my opinion, he was the best flower-seed production person in ornamental flower seeds in our industry.

“His background is in growing. He can identify diseases and any growing problems ... There are not many people who have those kinds of qualities. He is a perfectionist.”

After two years with the Ball subsidiary, Richards went out on his own. Today, Richards is a self-employed production consultant for Danhua Group Ltd. Monday, he is off for Kunming, where Danhua maintains flower-seed production operations for bedding and landscaping plants.

“I got into the industry by chance,” Richards said. “There's no family background in agriculture. But I always had an interest in plants and I had a green-thumb. I've grown orchids as a hobbyist for about 30 years. They can be difficult.”

Danhua started in China in about 1996-97, and first came to Richards' attention in about 1998 when he went to Kunming while with Waller Seed. The company is a contract producer of flower seeds that come from seed-breeder companies.

Richards explained the flower-seed business: A seed-breeder company develops a seed that will produce a different color flower, or a larger flower or an earlier-blooming flower. The seed-breeder gives the seeds to Danhua or a similar company to grow, and Danhua sells the seeds it harvests back to the seed-breeder company. The seed-breeder then sells the seeds wholesale to professional seed distributors who sell to professional growers, he said.

The professional growers sell the plants grown from seeds that companies like Danhua harvest to nurseries and stores such as Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot and others with gardening departments. The once-common seed retail business - like Burpee seed packets that were ubiquitous a century ago - is dying out, replaced by the plant retail business, Richards said.

“Danhua is given stock seed and produces the final product,” Richards said. “It is not a breeder. The seeds ... go back to the breeder-producer company. That seed is sold through the distribution chain.

“It's cost-prohibitive to grow in the U.S. Companies (like Danhua) go to China, Chile, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Indonesia, India to grow ... where costs are lower.”

The China trips are business-only, so Richards' wife Susan, also a Cal Poly horticulture graduate and a teacher at Miguelito Elementary School in Lompoc, and their children, Graham, 6, and twins Meredith and Bennett, 21 months, have to stay at home.

During his China trips, Richards goes to the Danhua flower-seed farms and helps with seed production, troubleshooting and training staff, he said.

“It's a routine trip, sort of during the peak activity over there,” Richards said of this month's trek. “There's a lot of detailed work in this type of business; from growing the plants at the proper time, to harvesting the seeds at the proper time; to drying the seeds correctly ... seed cleaning or processing, seed storage.

“The purity of the seeds must be 100 percent correct for type and color. There are a lot of control measures that have to be put in place.

“It's a relatively new industry in China. Many areas overseas have been in the industry for 20 to 40 years. Domestic seed production in the fields goes back more than 100 years.”

Kent Miller can be reached at

739-2221 or kentmiller@santa

mariatimes.com.

March 7, 2006