The Post-GMO Economy [View all]

[DeSwiss]

December 12, 2013
Elizabeth Royte, Modern Farmer



*snip*

While consumer demand will ultimately propel more non-GMO grain into the market, more proximate factors can also influence what kinds of seeds farmers plant. For example, geography. Does the grower live close to the river systems that send the vast majority of the nation’s conventional grain to GMO-averse markets in Japan, South Korea and the EU? Wyatt Muse, a merchandiser for Clarkson Grain, which buys conventional and organic corn and soybeans, pays farmers a premium — up to $2 extra per bushel over the base commodity price of soybeans, $1 for corn — to not only grow the crop but also preserve its identity. (That is, keep it separate from genetically modified grain all the way from planting through harvest, storage and transportation.)

Huegerich doesn’t live near a dry mill that would pay him a premium for conventional corn, or a river that can move his product out into the world. But he does live within trucking distance of Blair, Nebraska, where a Cargill-owned plant converts his crop into plastic for customers who want a bio-based product but can’t get behind GMO corn. “I get a fifty-cent-per-bushel premium,” Huegerich says.

[center]THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR CONVENTIONAL CORN

According to analysis by Aaron Bloom, a farm consultant with a business called AgriWize, planting conventional corn seeds can make great economic sense. When a variety of GMO corn called SmartStax was plotted against conventional seeds, Bloom found the conventional corn farmer saved an average of roughly $81 per acre per season. For a farm of 1,000 acres, a farmer would pocket a difference of almost $81,000. (Bloom’s model assumes farmland in western Iowa/southern Minnesota but would be applicable throughout the Midwest.)
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Aaron Bloom doesn’t farm near an outlet that pays a premium, but he still comes out ahead with conventional corn. A crop consultant, Bloom has been experimenting with non-GMO varieties for five years on land he works around Cherokee, Iowa. “We get the same or better yields, and we save money up front,” he says. And yet when he first suggests conventional seeds to clients, he sometimes gets pushback. “Guys think that you have to get out the cultivator” — which pierces the soil between rows of crops — “and kill your weeds by hand. No! You’re going out there with the planter anyway, just add your insecticide and your conventional herbicides.” Last year, not one of the roughly 30 farmers to whom Bloom sold non-GMO seeds had a bad harvest — despite unprecedented drought. “And I’ve got another 20 trying this year.”

MORE

- Losing money? That could start a stampede. I hope there's enough conventional seed to go around or we could have Black Fridays in seed stores all over Iowa.....