Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Farmers Abandoning GMOs

Record US Farmers Switching to Non-GMO Crops in 2015 Posted on February 25, 2015 Written by naturalsociety.com
Con­tinue to vote with your dollar “Non-GMO is More Profitable.”
This is the ris­ing sen­ti­ment among farm­ers of the US as a con­flu­ence of fac­tors urges them to become pro-organic. From falling GMO grain prices to a ris­ing tide of pub­lic dis­trust of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied ingre­di­ents, fail­ing GMO traits, higher GMO seed prices, and the pre­mium prices that peo­ple will­ingly pay for qual­ity food over toxic junk, the con­ven­tional farmer is chang­ing his tune when it comes to Big Ag practices.
Even if profit is the cor­ner­stone on which this change is based, it is still telling. After all, experts project over $35 bil­lion in sales for organic, non-GMO foods in 2015, and as GMO corn, soy and other GM grain prices rise, along with the costs to grow them (asso­ci­ated with more pes­ti­cide and her­bi­cide use to con­trol super weeds, for exam­ple) farm­ers are look­ing past the GMO pro­pa­ganda which promised higher yields and more cash for farm­ers who grew their poi­son crops.
This phe­nom­e­non is explained clearly in  “The Genetic Engi­neer­ing of Food and the Fail­ure of Sci­ence” (full text avail­able for down­load here) pub­lished in The Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Soci­ol­ogy of Agri­cul­ture and Food.
Gilbert Hostetler, pres­i­dent of Illinois-based Prairie Hybrids commented: “Our non-GMO seed sales are sig­nif­i­cantly higher than last year.”
Mac Ehrhardt, pres­i­dent of Minnesota-based Albert Lea Seed reports that he is sell­ing more con­ven­tional (he describes con­ven­tional corn as non-GMO) corn seed by the end of Novem­ber than he did all of last year. He says that farm­ers are turn­ing to non-GMO to cut costs and to earn more money for their non-GMO yields.
Ehrhardt says: “There is a con­tin­ued increased demand for non-GMO.”
His obser­va­tions are cor­rob­o­rated by Wayne Hoener, vice pres­i­dent of sales for eMerge, an Iowa-based seed com­pany, as well as Tim Daley, an agron­o­mist at Stone­bridge, Ltd., an Iowa-based buyer of non-GMO soy­beans who are also see­ing a marked demand for non-GMO seed by farmers.
Daley says: “Some com­pa­nies have seen a 50 per­cent increase in sales of non GMO seed, and some have said they’ve sold more non-GMO seed this year than in the last five.”
Oddly, Mor­rie Bryant, senior mar­ket­ing man­ager at Pio­neer Hi-Bred, which sells non-GMO corn and soy­bean seeds but sells more GMO seeds says he doesn’t see a big difference.
 “On (non-GMO) corn, we’ve got a slight increase on sales over last year,” he says. “Non-GMO has emerged as the new niche. It’s about 4–5 per­cent of total corn production.”
If con­sumer demand for organic is any indi­ca­tion, farm­ers would be smart to step up their organic seed pur­chas­ing, and ditch Mon­santo, Dow and Syn­genta seeds completely.
Non-GMO Eco­nom­ics
Farm­ers find non-GMO seed appeal­ing this year for sev­eral rea­sons, but mostly eco­nom­ics. Grain prices are low with corn sell­ing at about $4 per bushel and soy­beans aren’t goin g for much higher at around $10. Con­versely, a pre­mium is being shelled out for non-GMO corn and soybeans.
 “(Non-GMO) seed costs less, and there are pre­mi­ums for non-GMO corn and soy­beans in some areas,” Daley says.
“Some farm­ers don’t want to pay tech­nol­ogy fees (for GMO seeds) and non-GMO gives them a mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­nity,” Bryant says.
Fail­ing GMO Crops
Other farm­ers are con­sid­er­ing the switch because they are tired of super-weeds. One corn breeder who pre­ferred to remain anony­mous for a recent inter­view stated:
“The insect and her­bi­cide traits are los­ing effec­tive­ness with increased resis­tant root­worm and weed species. Grow­ers are tired of pay­ing for input costs that are reduced in effi­cacy and fund­ing addi­tional forms of crop protection.”
Iowa State Uni­ver­sity weed spe­cial­ist Bob Hart­zler sec­onds that sen­ti­ment in an inter­view with Iowa Farmer Today.“You have peo­ple ques­tion­ing the value of the Roundup gene. How many are doing it (mak­ing the switch) because of that con­cern, I don’t know.”
Non-GMO Out­per­form GMO Seeds
Non-GMO seeds are also pro­duc­ing more com­pet­i­tive yields. “The yield per­for­mance of non-GMO hybrids is sim­i­lar to or greater than traited (GMO) hybrids,” says the corn breeder.
Is this why mega com­pany, Gen­eral Mills, pur­chased organic food com­pany Annie’s Home­grown for nearly $1 bil­lion. And other large food cor­po­ra­tions are look­ing to swal­low up smaller organic food companies?
 “There is con­tin­ual and accel­er­at­ing growth in organic,” he says. “There has been more con­ver­sion to organic by farm­ers recently than I’ve ever seen.”
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