S&w Seed Co's Suppliers Performance

We had contracts with several hundred growers in the Western United States and Canada. Generally, we enter into contracts to produce alfalfa seed, which is typical industry practice. Our normal contracts with U.S. growers range from one to three years, include a price for the seed that is determined annually and that generally do not vary from grower to grower or variety to variety. Under these contracts, we pay our growers based on the weight of cleaned and processed seed. The growers' contracts that we acquired in connection with the DuPont Pioneer acquisition were primarily for production in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. The terms of these contracts are similar in substance to the contracts we have historically entered into with the S&W grower base. Because a key to our success as a business is to have the product mix required by our customers, aligning the growers' production plan to the anticipated purchase needs of our customers is a challenge on which management has focused considerable efforts in recent periods, with increasing success.

Alfalfa seed is an extremely demanding crop. Our network of growers has the expertise needed to successfully grow high quality alfalfa seed. We have worked with many of the same growers for much of the past 35 years, and we believe that we have strong relationships with them. We allocate our seed production among our growers so that we can purchase the proper mix of seed varieties each year. The growers incur the greatest cost in the first year of production, when they plant seed, eradicate weeds and pests and manage the pollination process; they then may be able to harvest seed from the same stands for several additional years, with the average alfalfa seed field producing for three years. With the added resources of the DuPont Pioneer alfalfa business, we believe we have expanded our production capabilities in the Western United States and Canada with both existing growers and by recruiting new growers in these regions.

Alfalfa seed is harvested annually in the Northern Hemisphere beginning in July for the southwest region of the United States and concluding in October in the Canadian provinces.