ABOUT FEDCO

Welcome to Fedco Seeds, your source for cold-hardy selections especially adapted to our demanding Northeast climate. Each year we observe hundreds of varieties, selecting only the best for inclusion in our catalogs. Through our product lines and cultural hints, we encourage sustainable growing methods. We offer a large selection of certified organic cultivars and regional heirloom varieties. We buy products from all over the world.

Fedco has five orders: Seeds, Moose Tubers, Organic Growers Supply, Trees, and Bulbs, and sends out three catalogs annually. We work out of two warehouses on the Bellsqueeze Road in Clinton, Maine, and out of our office in nearby Waterville. We do not have a retail store. We deal exclusively by mail order and internet orders except during designated pickup and public sale days, our annual excursion to the Common Ground Country Fair, and periodic visits to other special events. We do not take phone or fax orders.

Because frosts can occur in our location nine months of the year, and the ground remains frozen for five months from late November until mid-April, we have evolved a seasonal shipping schedule for perishable items.

• We ship trees and perennial plants only in the spring.
• We ship fall bulbs and garlic only in fall just before planting time.
• We ship seed potatoes and onion sets only in April and May.
• We ship seeds from January through September, then take a break to prepare next year’s catalog.
• We ship books, supplies and cover crops year round.

We have been in the seed business since 1978. We took on the Tree order from John Bunker in 1983, added fall Bulbs in 1984, picked up potatoes from Tom Roberts in 1985, and the Organic Grower Supply order from MOFGA in 1988. Beginning from a Maine base with 98 orders the first year, after 30 years we now serve growers in all 50 states, filling over 24,000 orders totaling $3 million annually.

We are a cooperative, one of the few seed companies so organized in the United States. Because we do not have an individual owner or beneficiary, profit is not our primary goal. Consumers own 60% of the cooperative and worker members 40%. Consumer and worker members share proportionately in the cooperative’s profits through our annual patronage dividends.

Our cooperative structure gives workers a real voice in running the company and a real stake in its success, enabling us to attract and retain talented workers. Year after year our staff turnover has been very low.

Our company culture derives from our history as a cooperative. Our first customers were other cooperatives and we developed many of our procedures specifically to serve them. Although we have diversified, a significant proportion of our business still comes from cooperative or group orders. Our dedicated group order coordinators are partners in our business. We encourage you to make cooperation work for you by forming ordering groups to take advantage of our generous volume discounts. It is easy to form a group: get together with friends, neighbors, co-workers or other members of your club, grange, county or state organic chapter, church or coop. Click here for more information about sending your group order in the mail or here for information about group ordering online.

The cooperative ethic recognizes that we are all in this together. What is good for our managers should be good for our workers and good for our customers and vice versa.