"It's going well, a little too well right now. We didn't really anticipate that we'd get busier every time something happens," says Dustin Merritt, co-owner of Emergencyseedbank.com in American Fork, Utah.
After last month's earthquake in Japan, business spiked and hasn't subsided, says Merritt. He sells a $139 package of 37,000 broccoli, beet, corn, lettuce, and other vegetable seeds in a "military-grade" container that "is virtually indestructible" and, if wrapped in a garbage bag, "can be . . . buried for decades."
Merritt and a brother-in-law started the company in 2009 as the economy was falling apart. So far this year, he says, Emergencyseedbank.com is doing as much business in one month as it did in three months last year.
Merritt says he doesn't believe "seeds are the be-all and end-all of preparedness. If you can't stay alive for four or five months, till the seeds are growing, it doesn't matter how many seeds you have."
But "I think people's fears are based on real possibility."
Others are dismissive.
They ask: If disaster struck, how would anyone be able to even start a garden, let alone keep one going for 10 or 20 years? Gardens don't produce instant food, anyway, and can be wiped out by pests, disease, or extreme weather.
And what's the point of buying thousands of seeds? Chester County master gardener Elizabeth Alakszay can fill a letter-size envelope with lettuce seeds by shaking one stalk from a single spent lettuce plant.
"You don't need to buy thousands of seeds unless you're going to feed the whole country," she says.
