Port forwarding allows you to seed without revealing your IP address. If you seed on a VPN and you don't have port forwarding, your IP is revealed to those you seed to.
Edit -- I was wrong. You can technically seed securely behind a VPN connection, but since you can't be connected to directly behind a vpn without port forwarding, you would only be able to seed to ppl who port forward, or who can be connected to directly. You would only be able to leech from everyone else.
If everyone torrented like this (behind a VPN without port forwarding), all torrents would grind to a halt; nobody would be able to seed.