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Ranchers.net

N.D. farmer fined over unlicensed seed


FARGO, N.D. -- A Milnor, N.D., farmer and elevator owner who paid nearly $11,000 in fees and penalties for illegally selling 186 bushels of wheat seed without a license says he was only trying to help a neighbor in a planting season time jam and that the incident has left a "sour taste" in his mouth.

North Dakota regulators and AgriPro, the seed company, say the enforcement against so-called "brown-bagging," is necessary to keep private investment in plant variety improvements.

Loren Ellefson, a farmer and owner of Milnor Grain Co. since 1999, says helping out a friend resulted in $7,250 in fines to the North Dakota State Seed Department and another $3,733 in a settlement to AgriPro, a division of Syngenta Seeds Inc.

An NDSSD random audit showed that Ellefson sold spring wheat seed to a neighbor, Don Wehlander, in a 2005 in violation of the federal Plant Variety Protection Act. The PVPA offers protection to a company similar to a patent.

"Isn't that something?" Ellefson says.

"I'm a farmer. A neighbor wanted to get started seeding, and I understood that a mobile conditioner hadn't gotten to his place to clean yet. He wanted a little wheat to start seeding. I didn't realize I was doing anything wrong."
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