Should you be afraid of GMO sweet corn? My family isn't.

We planted our sweet corn patch yesterday.  We generally plant about an acre and a half so we have plenty to share with our friends and neighbors.  For the past couple of years we have been planting Roundup Ready, BT sweet corn.  Let me tell you up front it is the sweetest corn we have ever had. 

 It's amazing how the technology keeps the corn worm and insect free!  There's quite a bit of misinformation floating around the internet being promoted by so called "food experts" about GMO technology in the crops we grow.  I even have people on a regular basis tell me as a family farmer I have no idea what I am talking about on the subject of GM technology.  People are convinced we are paid by Monsanto to promote technology on our farm.  Some even think we are coerced into using Biotech from the evil company Monsanto on our farm.    

When you google, GMO, images of people in full protective gear standing in a corn field or an image of a full PPE person handling chemicals appear.  That's a far cry from a five year old little boy holding a bag of GMO seed corn!  If a picture is worth a thousand words what does a picture of my little boy say about the man in the full protective gear?  It says PROPAGANDA to any rational person.   The irony in the propaganda pictures is the GM technology actually reduces the amount of chemicals applied to the crop.  We will spray this sweet corn with roundup a couple of times before the fruit (the ears) are made.  We won't have to apply any insecticide during the growing season because the corn defends itself naturally from the pests that like the taste of sweet corn.

American corn farmers have benefited from advancements in breeding and biotechnology, allowing us to grow plants with a beneficial built-in Bt protein found in Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) that protects the corn from many damaging insects.  The Bt protein was discovered in a naturally occurring bacteria that is often used by ORGANIC FARMERS to control certain pests.  You heard that correctly, the biotechnology in our corn field was developed from a bacteria that ORGANIC farmers SPRAY on their crops to KILL pests!  I don't know about you, but I would rather have the corn with the built in defense mechanism than corn that had the ears sprayed with bacteria while being grown organically.

When built into the plant, the Bt protein provides protection from certain insect pests that allows us as farmers to reduce pesticide applications as much as 85%.  With fewer trips across the field to apply insecticide we also reduce our carbon footprint by using fewer amounts of fossil fuels.     

But what about the farmer "dousing" the crop with Roundup herbicide?  If a quart of Roundup spread out over an area the size of a football field when mixed in 10 gallons of water for a fine spray mist application is "dousing" I would have to question your measurement skills.

How does Roundup work and does it affect consumers when eating food from crops that were sprayed with Roundup?

Roundup  is a non specific herbicide, meaning it kills most anything it is applied to.  Roundup Ready corn contains a modified EPSPS gene from corn.  When a corn plant expresses EPSPS and is treated with Roundup (glyphosate) it isn't affected.  These ESPS enzymes continue to provide the corn plant with aromatic acid.  Glyphosate (Roundup) stops this enzyme  EPSPS which is critical in the pathway for bio-synthesis of aromatic acids in plants (weeds) that are not resistant.  This leads to no growth in the weeds and they die.  Roundup isn't harmful to aquatic animals, birds, mammals or humans because we don't have aromatic amino acid bio-synthesis pathways.  Simply put our bodies cannot break down the material and active ingredients in Roundup.  IF there was a residue it passes through your body unabsorbed as is the case with many things we ingest.  Therefore Roundup has low human health and environmental risks.  Corn is never sprayed after the ears are there so there will not be any residue on sweet corn or field corn.

I will finish out this post with a few interesting facts and figures about  GMO and Biotech crops.  

Approximately 17.3 million farmers grew multiple biotech crops on 420 million acres in 28 countries in 2012.

Since farmers first began growing biotech crops in 1994, people around the world have eaten trillions of meals and snacks containing ingredients from genetically modified crops with no proven accepted scientific evidence of harm to humans or animals.

Locally, biotech crops have led to an increase in no-till farming and have had serious positive affects on our environment.  We have reduced erosion and protected surface and ground water.  Fewer to no trips across our fields for tillage reduce our carbon footprint greatly as we reduce the fuel consumption for growing crops. 

 No-Till farming sequesters carbon in the soil and combats global warming.   

Next generation biotech crops WILL further serve resource-limited areas of the world with answers to drought and famine.        

Hopefully, this information will clear the air a bit about how we raise corn on our family farm. We are all smiles about the prospect of a safe, wholesome, delicious and abundant sweet corn harvest this year.  Stop by for a visit and a free sample this summer!              

How does a no-till corn planter work?

The calendar turned the page to April, the sun came out, soil temperature headed to 50 degrees F, the red bud trees started blooming and the corn planter started rolling.  The dry conditions the last couple of weeks have given way to great corn planting progress in our area.  We have about 2/3 of the corn in the ground.  The cooler temps have slowed germination but we expect some corn to start "spiking" through the ground any day now.  Jake Mitchel is pictured below on the opening day of corn planting.

All of our corn is planted no-till.  Specialized attachments to the planter allow us to plant the corn directly into the residue from last year's wheat and double crop soybean crops.  The field shown in the pictures had a 5 way cover crop mix planted to keep the rolling landscape green through the winter to help reduce soil erosion.  The cover crop was killed about 2 weeks prior to the planting of the corn crop.  No-till ground is generally somewhat harder than conventionally tilled ground.  The planter is equipped with a pneumatic down-force system that holds pressure on the row unit to keep it in the ground and provide an even "ride" to optimize the performance of each row unit.

The picture above shows the row unit of the planter.  The spike wheels on the front of the unit are "Martin Row Cleaners" they gently sweep wheat straw and soybean stubble out of the way of the wavy no-till coulter blade (between the black frame).  Getting the residue out of the row keeps the no-till blade from "hair-pinning" the stubble into the row furrow.  If "hair-pinning" occurs in the row furrow it can reduce seed to soil contact and hinder germination of the corn seed.  Cleaning the row off allows the sunlight to warm the soil directly in the row furrow to speed up germination.

Following the no-till coulter is a set of "double disc openers."  These openers create a V slot for the seed tube that's directly between the two openers to drop the seed in.  The large black wheels on either side of the row unit are called "gauge wheels."  They are used to set the depth of the unit when planting.  They ride up to a point and will raise the unit up if the depth goes past a desired set point.  We generally try to plant the seeds about 1 & 1/2 " to 1 & 3/4" deep.  If you plant too deep the seeds won't germinate evenly and may have trouble pushing through the crust of the soil.  Plant too shallow and the corn may suffer from "shallow root syndrome" and not be able to get established because the root system may have trouble developing.  Shallow planted corn may also have a greater tendency to blow down before harvest since the roots aren't as deep and sturdy in the ground.  

At the back of the row unit are the closing wheels.  One is spiked and the other a cast iron wheel.  These wheels are spring loaded and "close" the seed furrow up covering the planted seeds.  If the ground is too wet the ground won't close over the furrow leaving the seed exposed and can cause problems for the young plants as they grow.  In ideal planting conditions the ground crumbles over the top of the furrow as the closing wheels work the soil over the row furrow as pictured below.  

The only way to determine the planter performance is to dig in the seed furrow to gauge the soil moisture and the depth of the seeds.  It usually takes a day of planting to get all the planting metrics dialed in the way we want them.  The technology on the planter makes the adjustments fairly quick but old-fashioned know how and technique are still keys to getting a "picket fence stand" of corn!  My youngest son points out the seed in the V trench furrow below.

All the planter settings and metrics I have discussed in this post are displayed to the operator in the cab of the tractor pulling the planter.  We use yield zones to determine how much fertilizer to place in different areas of the fields as I have discussed in previous posts.  We build seeding prescriptions for these same zones with higher and lower seed populations according to the productivity in a zone in the field.  The more productive zones get higher rates of fertility and seed.  The lesser productive, thinner soils receive less fertility and seed.  This keeps us from over applying  nutrients and seed where they won't yield an increased return.  This makes us better stewards of the soil and water in the environment and makes us more efficient producers.  The prescriptions for the seed are loaded to the tractor controller via Wireless Data Transfer from a desktop computer to the screen on the left.  The iPad on the right logs all the different data as we plant a field.  The different population zones as applied, seed variety, date, down pressure target and margin, ride, elevation, speed, direction of each pass and many other metrics about the planting operation are logged wireless through the Climate Field View app and sent to the cloud for storage.  We can later access all the data in the MyJohnDeere or Climate Field View platforms for analysis and later use.