Big increases seen in 2003 US bio-corn, soy crops

Thursday, January 23, 2003
By Christopher Doering, Reuters

WASHINGTON - American farmers are poised to boost plantings of biotech corn by nearly 10 percent this year amid growing U.S. pressure on the European Union to lift a ban on imports of genetically modified crops, according to a Reuters survey released Wednesday.

The straw poll of 340 growers, conducted at the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual meeting, found U.S. farmers want to plant more gene-spliced corn despite opposition from large customers such as the E.U. and Japan. Consumers in those countries have expressed concerns about long-term health and environmental impacts.

U.S. 2003 plantings for Roundup Ready corn will jump by 9.9 percent and Roundup Ready soybeans by 8.4 percent, according to growers surveyed at the meeting of the nation's largest farm group. Roundup Ready crops are engineered so that growers can use a single herbicide to kill weeds.

However, Bt corn plantings posted the only decline among the five major biotech crops included on the survey, falling 3.8 percent. Bt crops contain a gene that repels a destructive pest while the young plant is growing. Bt corn acreage fluctuates with European corn borer infestations.

Gene-altered cotton plantings will also rise in 2003, according to the survey.

Roundup Ready cotton plantings will be up 4.0 percent, while Bt cotton will rise by 5.2 percent, according to farmers polled at the meeting.

The Reuters survey was based on random, personal interviews at the meeting, and does not weight responses by state, size or other criteria. The results provide an early indication of whether farmers will plant more or less genetically modified crops than the previous year.

TOTAL BIOTECH PLANTINGS RISE

In recent years, growth in some biotech plantings have begun to slow as many U.S. farmers have already adopted the new technology.

Overall, biotech plantings across all U.S. crops will rise by 2.3 percent, according to farmers surveyed in the Reuters poll. That marks a slowdown from the rapid increases logged in the first years after the new crops were introduced to U.S. farmers in 1996.

According to U.S. Agriculture Department data, 34 percent of corn in 2002 was grown with biotech seeds, up from 26 percent a year earlier. Biotech soybeans rose to 75 percent of the total U.S. soybean crop in 2002, up from 68 percent in the previous year.

Biotech cotton accounted for 71 percent of the crop in 2002, up 2 percent from 2001, according to the USDA.

The U.S. government has repeatedly endorsed the safety of biotech crops now on the market. But despite American farmers' embrace of gene-spliced crops, questions remain whether the world will be eager to buy them.

The discovery that 1,200 tons of U.S. corn shipped to Japan last month may have been contaminated with StarLink has rekindled Asian concern. In 2000, taco shells and other corn-based foods were recalled after StarLink, a biotech corn variety approved only for animal feed, was discovered in the U.S. food supply.

E.U. ON THE HOT SEAT

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said this month Washington was prepared to ask the World Trade Organization to pressure the E.U. to lift its moratorium blocking imports of biotech foods.

"Our patience has worn thin," echoed Bob Stallman, president of the Farm Bureau. "Until you take a case to the WTO, there isn't any other way to solve this issue."

U.S. farmers surveyed said the E.U. moratorium has cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

"When it affects prices it affects your bottom line," said Kendell Culp, an Indiana corn and soybean farmer. The E.U. needs to "get a better policy" that is not dependent on consumers' unfounded worries, he added.

The European Union has banned the approval of gene-spliced crops since 1998, when France and other members demanded that there first be tougher rules in place for testing and tracking biotech products.

Some U.S. farmers contend such rules would be costly and unnecessary.

The Reuters poll found that 43 percent of farmers said they could not comply with new rules requiring more record-keeping. However, some growers surveyed said that kind of paperwork would add a few cents a bushel to their production costs.

"It would be cost prohibitive, and there is no incentive [for farmers] to do that," said Delmer Keiser, a Kansas corn, soybean, and wheat farmer.

The survey also showed that 58 percent of farmers interviewed would plant biotech wheat crops when it becomes available. More than half of those who do not plan to grow biotech wheat said it is because they do not reside in a wheat-growing basket of the country.