This is so true
@Pulsegleaner. When I first started gardening I wanted maximum sized packets as some kind of default setting in my mind, I don't know why. I suppose for bush beans and peas that still makes sense for me, but I used to wonder with some seed companies why only 10 -15 seeds for a tomato or pepper? It seemed too little. Then after a few years of saving seeds I realized exactly what you've written here. I have never grown 25 tomato plants of a single variety! And I almost never grow the same variety of anything year to year unless I struggled somewhat with it. Same with most beans. I didn't really need that much seed, and I'd prefer a surplus of my own seed anyway for future plantings. It's always nice to have a little cushion of extra seed in the packet in case you do need to try again, but generally I bet there are thousands of gardeners with seed packets that they never fully used in their storage compartments.
Lets put it this way
My cousin (the one whose home I am going to be at this afternoon), fell in love with the sweetcorn variety Hooker's Heirloom. He bought his initial packed from Seeds of Change probably ten or so years ago. He grows it every year. And, as far as I know, he's STILL using seed from that ORIGINAL packet! (I'm not even sure if Seeds of Change still EXISTS anymore.)
With the tiny amount of space I have, the seed I get back is usually WAY more than I need for the next year, at least for a while (since I had such a low level of seed survival before the cold frame, it was quite possible for directly planted things to disappear quite quickly, If, out of 100 seeds you plant, only two or three even GET to the reproductive stage, and even those only manage to pull off one pod or fruit with maybe 5-10 seeds, you very quickly get to a point where you get a year with ZERO, becuase nothing made it through.
Plus, there are some heirloom cops that just don't WORK for the casual backyard gardener, like corn and the other grains (here I'm keeping "grains" to the grass ones, and I don't have enough experience with things like buckwheat and quinoa to know if it applies to them.) A backyard gardener may grow a few stalks of sweetcorn for their own corn on the cob, but they generally don't have the ROOM for the 200 or so plants needed to keep the diversity up to variety preservation. And DEFINITELY not to do it the best practices way and leave a 2 mile buffer zone on each side to prevent cross pollination from other patches. That kind of stuff needs rural people with actual FARMS. And running a farm outside the industrial agriculture system with its commercial hybrids is now very hard to pull off financially. Going full homesteader is a commitment most modern people are not going to do.
It's a big part of why I abandoned the wrinkled soybean project (well, that and I stopped being able to find material). I realized that, even if I COULD create a strain that was all wrinkled and even if it DID result in sweeter tasting edamame, it really wouldn't get anywhere. No commercial setup would adopt it, becuase it wouldn't be compatible with the hybrid pesticide ready soybean their system was based on. On the boutique level, it would be only one shot before someone with more space produced enough to out compete me on sales. And if it DID become popular, some corporation would simply take it (everything in it genetically would be taken from natural sources, so probably unpatentable.) And if I COULD patent it, every seed grower on earth would turn against me. In theory, every breeder and saver should be doing what they are doing for the good of all and be content with that, but when the system becomes you giving everything and getting nothing (even the right to a livelihood) you begin to wonder when selflessness has turned into self destruction.
Granted, big seed packets DO sometimes have their advantages. For diverse crops, they give one the opportunity to pre-select which seeds in the pack best suit what you are looking for (same as with the bags, which, if you think about it, really are ENORMOUS seed packets.) But, usually, it's just excess.
