As global pressures mount and a new generation enters the fray, AOSCA is building momentum with fresh tools, tighter standards, and a deepening relationship with its Canadian counterparts.
South Carolina’s Sarah Adams Wilbanks has seen firsthand how fragile the foundations of modern agriculture can be. As chief executive of the Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies (AOSCA), she’s spent the past four years pulling one of North America’s most arcane systems into the 21st century. Her message to Canadian seed growers in Victoria, B.C., this summer was blunt: we ignore the quiet crisis in seed certification at our peril.
“Canada makes up about a third of all certified seed acres in North America,” she told the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association (CSGA) annual meeting. “That’s a staggering number. And it underscores why our partnership with the CSGA is so critical.”
Seed certification isn’t cocktail-party material. But it is the plumbing of the global food system — ensuring that the seed traded across borders is genetically pure, disease-free and verifiable. It’s the difference between orderly markets and chaos. And right now, Wilbanks argues, the system is under strain.
In the U.S., certified acres are in decline. The reasons are murky — biotech advances, shifting economics, and a regulatory culture slow to adapt. In Canada, where certification is more tightly embedded in policy, participation is stronger. But Wilbanks warns that neither side of the border can afford complacency. “Challenges cross borders — and so must the solutions,” she says.
AOSCA has long been notorious for its dense “standards book”, she says — a manual of rules so thick with jargon that even seasoned inspectors get lost in it. Wilbanks has made simplifying that labyrinth her signature project. A new inspector credentialing program, launching this year, will establish a professional benchmark for inspectors and bring younger professionals into a system facing a looming retirement cliff.
“In an industry that lives in acronym soup, clarity matters.”
Speed Becomes a Survival Trait
Perhaps the most striking shift is how fast AOSCA is moving on innovation. When Corteva Agriscience pushed for certification standards for nuclear male-sterile hybrid wheat — a technology with big implications for U.S. grain markets — AOSCA delivered in less than a year. “Something like that used to take years,” Wilbanks says.
It’s a reminder that certification isn’t just a bureaucratic function. It’s a gatekeeper for whether new technologies get traction — and whether North America stays competitive in global markets where Europe and Asia are moving aggressively.
Wilbanks also points to a new, publicly available variety description database. It sounds like small-bore paperwork, but it solves a big problem: until now, there was no central source to track varieties across borders and regulatory systems. Transparency is the currency of global trade, and AOSCA’s move inches North America closer to it.
Why It Matters Now
With climate shocks battering yields and geopolitical tension making food security a national priority, the underpinnings of agriculture — the rules, records, and trust that come with certified seed — are no longer niche. They’re strategic.
“We do a lot of work behind the scenes,” Wilbanks says. “But it’s work that keeps agriculture moving forward — and keeps markets open.”
Canada will host AOSCA’s annual meeting in 2027, a symbolic move that underscores how much Ottawa’s partnership matters in shaping the next chapter of seed certification. By then, the question won’t be whether certification has modernized. It will be whether it modernized fast enough.
