Growing sagebrush and other native seed: Crackpot idea or lucrative business venture?

Richard and Claire Dunne grow sagebrush on Absaroka Farm in northcentral Wyoming. The seeds are sold for use in land reclamation. Where some people see a weed, others see a gold mine... At least that’s the case in Richard and Claire Dunne’s Absaroka Farm in North Central, Wyoming. A farm that, if you drove past it, you might think was just another stretch of the prairie. Although sagebrush seed is in demand, growing it commercially is a niche marked… and some people think it’s crazy. Wyoming Public Radio’s Luke Hammons filed this report. [Sound of Richard Dunne working on a fertilizer injector in his greenhouse on the Absaroka Farm.] LUKE HAMMONS: That’s Richard Dunne, fixing a fertilizer injector in the greenhouse on his farm in Worland, Wyoming. But this isn’t just any farm… Outside his greenhouse, row after row of sagebrush line the prairie. RICHARD DUNNE: Sagebrush is the mainspring of the environment, of the ecology in Wyoming. There’s over a thousand species that depend upon