It's long been a common practice for Kansas wheat growers to save wheat at harvest for planting in the fall.

But being a common practice doesn't make it a good one for a lot of reasons, says Daryl Strouts, executive director of Kansas Wheat Alliance, the commercialization and marketing arm for varieties developed by breeders at Kansas State University.

The law does allow farmers to save the seed from their own production for planting, but buying wheat from another farmer to use as seed wheat is illegal under the Plant Variety Protection Act, a federal law passed in 1970. In December, Syngenta reached a settlement with a Belleville producer who offered for sale non-certified AgriPro SY Monument and SY Wolf wheat seed.

Strouts says that the intent of the PVP was to establish a way to encourage investment in new varieties.

"Back then, the U.S. patent office had said that an individual or a company could not obtain a patent for a living plant, so researchers had no way to protect their intellectual property and maintain the integrity of a variety," he says.

"They also had no way to recoup any of the cost of developing a new variety, and as a result, companies were reluctant to engage in that research," he adds.

The PVP provided a way to correct that, making it illegal to sell, or offer for sale, uncertified wheat seed of varieties that fall under the PVP.

The act allows for legal action against all parties to a transaction that violates the law: the seller, the buyer, the cleaner, grain elevators or any other party involved.

It protects the owner of the variety, and gives the owner the right to designate who can grow or sell the seed, which is usually done under contract. It also protects the integrity of varieties by requiring that certified seed growers follow a strict protocol and that the seed be tested to meet standards of things like germination.

But the PVP also protects the farmers who buy that certified seed, Strouts says.

"When you buy certified seed, you get a guarantee that it is the variety you want and it will perform like you expect it to perform," he says. "If you buy illegal seed that someone simply claims is SY Wolf, you may or may not get what you expect from SY Wolf. The same is true of other protected varieties."

If you buy certified seed and save the proof, you can avoid being slapped with some pretty heavy penalties for legal violations, he adds.

Penalties vary case by case, but the industry standard is about $30 per 50-pound unit, he says, or about $34 per bushel.

It can be a lot more, however.

A violation allows enforcement to go back six years to check records, and knowingly violating the PVP can result in triple damages and attorney fees.

"If you go all the way to a court trial, the legal fees alone will be well into six figures," Strouts says.

The biggest price farmers pay for not buying certified seed year after year is the loss of research and the pipeline of new varieties.

"It's an investment in the future," he says. "Seed is one of the cheapest inputs there is. I look it at this way: You can't control the weather, you can't control the price, but you can control yield potential and performance. You have to manage for success. If you manage for failure, you are sure to meet your goal."