Syngenta – Biofortified

Written by Steve Savage

We Americans love sweet corn – our uniquely national vegetable. We consume ~9 lbs of sweet corn per person per year (see how that compares to other vegetables in the graph above). The farmers that grow this crop for us do so on a much more local basis than for most fruit or vegetable crops. There are significant sweet corn acres in 24 states and a total of >260,000 acres nation-wide for the fresh market and >300,000 for canned and frozen corn (see graph below). Sweet corn can be difficult to grow for many reasons, and is often sprayed with insecticides. A biotech solution to this problem exists, but it is under-utilized, in part, due to campaigns by anti-GMO activists. In the end, the people most hurt by this are the American sweet corn growers. Continue reading “The Frustrating Lot Of The American Sweet Corn Grower” →

Written by Steve Savage

The graph above shows the relative production of these major US row crops comparing the years 1993-1995 (just prior to the introduction of biotechnology enhanced crops) and 2008-10 (the most recent available data which covers a a span which comes 12-15 years after biotech. Soybean production has expanded 47% in this time-frame while corn is up 58% (far more than the quantity now being diverted for biofuel). Both of those crops are predominantly planted to “GMO” varieties, while the various segments of the wheat crop remain non-GMO. Until 2004 it looked as if North American growers would also get to plant biotech wheat, but a vigorous campaign led by Greenpeace succeeded in blocking the technology. Many major European and Japanese grain buyers were concerned about potential consumer push-back (based on Greenpeace efforts), so they made a coordinated threat to boycott all North American wheat exports if any commercial GMO wheat was planted in the US or Canada. This was based on the “precautionary principle.”
The wheat industry, particularly the Canadian Wheat Board, asked Monsanto and Syngenta not to go ahead with their plans to sell the improved wheats, and so those often vilified companies put their programs on the shelf at the request of their customer base. GreenPeace then declared Victory. Continue reading “The Cost Of Precaution” →