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Agribusiness Prove it and they will plant it

BY EVA ANN DORRIS
Special to the DBJ

Mechanized tractors began to roll across the fields, and naysayers said farming would never be the same. Then, herbicides took the place of cold, steel weed control. Pessimists said if you didn’t turn the soil, you just weren’t farming.

Scientists came to the turnrow and used words like biotechnology, transgenics and insect resistant. Almost everyone clung to the theory that if it appeared too good to be true, it probably was.

However, despite the skeptics, farming progressed. Row crops are planted with state-of-the-art mechanization that regulates seed depth and rates and measures chemicals to almost microscopic amounts. Equipment is guided by satellites. Insect populations are monitored by computers, and seed is going into the ground with a predisposition to control weeds and a trait that makes them inedible to some of the most detrimental of insect predators.

Times down on the farm aren’t just changing. They have changed.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s March planting intentions report, Mississippi row crop growers are planting as much as 81 percent of their soybeans and 78 percent of their cotton to varieties with transgenic traits such as herbicide tolerance or insect resistance. Less than a decade ago, none of the state’s crops were transgenic. The planting intentions represent an adoption rate that far outpaces the adoption of more proven innovations, including the tractor.

The new ways are easier
The reasons for the rapid adoption are numerous, but the surprising factor that pushed the technology to the forefront is the ease of growing varieties with transgenic traits.

“Farming with transgenic traits is just an easier way to farm,” says Walt Mullins of Memphis, Tenn., cotton technical manager with Monsanto, one of the largest developers and providers of transgenic traits.
The Roundup ready technology in soybeans and cotton allows growers to spray herbicides over the top of the crop without damaging the crop, which gives them a wider window for weed control.

Cotton plants with the Bollgard gene contain a protein from a common soil microorganism, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which protects cotton plants from specific caterpillar pests including the tobacco budworm and eliminates the need for chemical control of those pests.

“I think the use of the Roundup Ready soybeans has been predictable, but the adoption of the transgenic traits in cotton was more surprising,” says Mullins. “When we first started this, we said the Bollgard technology would be interesting to growers in Mississippi, Louisiana, south Georgia, south Alabama and southeast Arkansas, because they sprayed a lot. We thought the technology would be less interesting to a Tennessee grower that normally sprayed only once or twice for worms. We’ve been surprised to see about an 85 percent Bollgard adoption in Tennessee.

“With the transgenic traits, especially with the Bollgard cotton, growers found the control was there all the time not just when they sprayed. We introduced Bollgard in 1996 following a year when control of the tobacco budworm had been almost impossible for growers. The lure of Bollgard cotton to control the pests without spraying helped accelerate its adoption.

“We did not, however, anticipate the popularity of Roundup Ready cotton, because for the most part growers had the chemicals they needed to control weeds,” says Mullins. “We anticipated the value of the technology, but maybe we underestimated another value that the growers saw in the technology and that was their time. Everyone looks for ways to simplify.”

According to Mullins, growers looked at the Roundup Ready technology and said they might be able to use it where they were trying to get rid of perennial weeds, but growers didn’t just flock to it.

“What is interesting now is that if you talk to those same growers today, they say they tried some one year. The next year they tried more, and then here they are five or six years later and they don’t want to grow anything else.

“Growers try to make money farming a large number of acres squeezing out a thin margin and this simplicity helps them do that. If it’s simple, it’s easier for them to farm and they spend less time considering what and when to spray.

“They are getting weed control. It’s simpler, and that’s of value to them,” he says.
Mullins says with such a rapid adoption of biotechnology that science is advancing every day with more companies and players rushing to bring valuable technology to growers and consumers.

“The only thing you need to innovate is motivation and the financial incentive to do it. I think there is a world of promise in the future of transgenics either in input or output traits,” says Mullins. “There is a lot of discussion now about ethanol production. Through transgenics, it may be possible to determine what corn varieties will be the most efficient for producing ethanol.”

Mississippi man will help
chart future of biotechnology
When grain farmer and commercial elevator owner Jerry Slocum of Coldwater, Miss., began to hear about biotechnology and transgenic traits, he paid attention for several reasons. One, he was interested in technology that could enhance and simplify his farming operations, and two, he wanted to be sure the new technology wouldn’t complicate or interfere with normal marketing procedures.
“In 1996 when we started hearing so much about Roundup Ready soybeans, I was chairman of the United Soybean Board. I decided then that this would be an issue I wanted to stay informed about – as a farmer and as a service to my customers.
We grow it, and we sell it. My interest is broader than most.”
Slocum’s commitment to the issue of biotechnology resulted in his appointment to a national biotechnology advisory committee under the Clinton administration and most recently the appointment by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman to the new Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture. Slocum is one of 18 members from 14 states who serve on the committee.
“This committee will take a forward look at agriculture biotechnology and will serve as an important resource as USDA addresses emerging issues related to this field,” says Veneman. The committee is charged with examining the long-term impacts of biotechnology on the U.S. food and agriculture system and providing guidance to USDA on pressing individual issues related to the application of biotechnology in agriculture.
“I think the administration will use us as a sounding board on emerging issues with a particular vent toward food safety,” Slocum says. “It will not be a debate about whether or not biotechnology belongs in agriculture, because we know now that it clearly does.”
Slocum says he isn’t concerned about the safety of biotechnology, but he is concerned that individuals and companies have the prudence necessary to keep varieties out of the food supply until we have all the evidence needed to prove to our buyers that they are safe.
“We haven’t had any trouble marketing our transgenic soybeans, but corn has cost us some market, and if we try to market transgenic wheat before we have labels that every country in the world approve, we will lose some wheat market too,” Slocum says.
“I think the only way to overcome those market problems is to not plant any variety until its approval for export is accepted everywhere.
“We encourage our growers not to plant anything that isn’t approved for export. We like biotechnology. We are not afraid of it, but if some countries and importers are concerned, then we don’t need to be growing it until we know it can be sold.

More information on biotechnology in U.S. crops is available at http://www.usda.gov/gipsa/biotech/biotech.htm. DBJ (Eva Ann Dorris is an agricultural journalist and columnist from Pontotoc, Miss. She can be reached at 662-419-9176 or eadorris@aol.com.)

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