GUAEANTEES IN THE TRADE IN SEED 



ACREAGE UNDER ROOT SEED, IN ACRES. 1 



79 



The system, long established in Great Britain, by which the 

 production of seed is divided between seed merchants or seed 

 improvers on the one hand who produce stock seed of improved 

 strains, and farmers, seed growers, on the other hand, who grew 

 this stock seed, generally on contracts with the owners of the 

 strain, was gradually introduced into Denmark, and is now 

 quite commonly practised there. Experts visit these growers 

 to see that the roots are grown in a proper way, sufficiently 

 far from other kinds of plants to avoid cross-fertilisation, in 

 clean fields and under the proper agricultural conditions. 

 These experts, or roguers, as they are called, also go over the 

 fields and pull up all plants of suspicious characters. The total 

 quantity of seed produced has to be delivered, in specified 

 degree of purity, and is paid for according to analysis. Only 

 in this way can seed merchants be sure of the kind of seed 

 they offer for sale, and only in this way are they enabled to 

 give that special guarantee which has now become not only 

 commonly accepted but quite necessary in the Danish seed 

 trade. 



The history of the seed grower, Jens Hvidberg, reads like 

 a fairy tale. Beginning life as a poor boy tending cattle, he 

 was later on employed as a gardener to a farmer, and in 1893 

 started growing seed on one acre of land lent him by his em- 

 ployer. The next year he grew seed on four acres, and on one 

 and two- thirds of an acre he harvested 18 cwts. of carrot seed 

 which were sold for 150 a very substantial encouragement. 

 In 1896 the acreage under seed was increased to 24 acres, and 

 in 1898 Jens Hvidberg bought the farm " Pajbjerg," of 185 

 acres, from which the large firm, to which the business has now 

 grown, derives its name. A few years before Hvidberg moved 



1 Statistiske Meddeklser, 4 Rsekke, 57 Bind, No. 3, p. 76. 



