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Iowa Prairie Seed Market Study Completed

As part of a project funded by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, a Market Study was undertaken to determine the present and potential future market for prairie seed. The Nature Conservancy in Iowa contracted with Strategic Marketing Services (SMS) at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) to conduct the study.

The project included the following objectives:

  1. Identify the size of the market for native Iowa prairie seed among the largest purchasers/potential purchasers of prairie seed.
  2. Identify past, current, and future practices, trends & issues that impact the use of Iowa native prairie seed.
  3. Determine what percentage of the market from purchasers is price driven versus other motivations.
  4. Determine the percentage of the market that is likely to purchase native Iowa prairie seed versus other seed. Identify motivations & price sensitivity.

To achieve the project objectives the following five distinct research tasks were established:

  1. Conduct a self-completion survey among Iowa County Conservation Offices, Iowa city park directors, and corporate campus managers to identify market potential for native Iowa prairie seed.
  2. Interview 38 seed producers & distributors to identify their product offerings, production methods/costs, customer buying preferences/motivations (clean seed, certified seed, diverse seed), market size, sales volume, growth projections, opportunities, and threats.
  3. Interview representatives of Department of Natural Resources, Department of Transportation, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Pheasants Forever, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, & Trees Forever to determine market potential.
  4. Interview (telephone) representative of Grinnell Foundation to learn about their motivations and benefits of becoming a designated prairie city.
  5. Interview (telephone) Ion Exchange to gather information about their 1,000 private individual customers to create a profile of the motivations and experiences of these customers.

Results for three of the five research tasks are available as the following Adobe Acrobat files: 

ReportTask1.pdf – Task #1 significant finding and results 

 SignificantFindingsTask1.pdf – Task #1 significant finding

ReportTasks2&5.pdf – Tasks #2&5 significant finding and results

SignificantFindingsTasks2&5.pdf – Tasks #2&5 significant finding