Brooklyn Community Gardeners

Burpee Seeds

It is unknown as of yet what the Monsanto/Seminis buyout will do

http://www.idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2245

A recent merger now announced says that W.Atlee Burpee & Co. Seeds has accepted a deal to be bought out by Seminis. This will mean that from the beginning of 2007 onward, Burpee will be operated as a subsidiary of Monsanto (a.k.a. Monsatan) Co., which has already bought out Seminis. Seminis and Burpee were the two largest American seed companies not affiliated with Monsatan until both were recently bought out by the multi-billion-dollar corporation.
Burpee & Co. was started in 1876 when 18-year-old Washington Atlee Burpee started a small seed business with the help of his mother. The business took off like a space shuttle, and supplied money to buy a second seed-growing farm in California (in addition to the Burpee's famous Fordhook farm in Pennsylvania). They also built "The House" at Fordhook (which looks simply like a huge farmhouse but is a mansion inside), and converted the old family farmhouse to a seed-cleaning facility.

Behind the scenes, W.A. Burpee was an alcoholic. His drinking led to his untimely death in 1915, at the age of 49. His son David Burpee, aged 22, left Cornell University to take up the reins of the company.

David Burpee became the P.T. Barnum of the seed business, famous for his use of bells-and-whistles, smoke-and-mirrors advertising hype. He made hybridization mainstream in the seed industry, and helped develop chromosomal modification, a predecessor technology to genetic engineering.
In 1991 Ball Co. bought out Burpee seeds. The Ball leadership conflicted often with Jonathan Burpee (heir to the company fortune), so they fired him in 1993 and took away the money that he would have received after retirement. Burpee & Co. began to use Fordhook less for trials, and the California farm more.
It is unknown as of yet what the Monsanto/Seminis buyout will do to Burpee Seeds.

Follow-up / Feedback

If people are ordering from Burpee this year, it would be interesting to hear about whether the products are still as good as previously, how customer service is, etc. Email me, or discuss it in the discussion forum on the homepage for this site.

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emilyholiday@gmail.com