Jun 04, 2006 - 09:31:33 CDT
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP)Iowa and Minnesota still are "Field of Dreams" territory for corn, but now so is a good chunk of North Dakota, which once was considered too chilly for raising corn and soybeans. Ditto Minnesota's Red River Valley.
And Kansas, which features wheat on its license plates, now grows more corn than wheat, despite its hot and dry summers.
What's changing the Midwest is plant genetics. High-tech varieties of corn and soybeans are letting farmers reliably grow row crops where they never could before, and the results are confounding the grain trade. The change has been building for several years, but the magnitude of the shift finally hit home last fall, when a severe summer drought wracked the eastern Corn Belt, yet the crop flourished, to the astonishment of many.
"I thought there was no way (corn could do well), given the heat we had," recalls Joe Victor, vice president of marketing at Allendale Inc., a grain-trading firm in Illinois. "Every day was 98 degrees, no rain. I thought, this crop is in trouble."
Amazingly, it wasn't. A new generation of super-plants had changed the game and redrawn the map. While genetically modified crops remain controversial overseas, they've become commonplace in the United States.
"North Dakota has gone from hardly any soybeans to one of the leading soybean-production states in the United States," says Mike Vande Logt, a vice president at Shoreview-based Croplan Genetics. Now changes are coming so fast that, "Over the last five years, you could say (the growing region) is moving 60 miles north every year."
Spring planting recently began for corn farmers in Minnesota. In the state's Otter Tail County, farmer Dave Johnson was out on his tractor, "probably the earliest I've ever planted corn in my life.
"When I started growing corn almost 40 years ago, we weren't considered in the Corn Belt at all," Johnson says. "We were considered too far north, so the seed companies weren't breeding any corn for this region. Things have changed a lot."
Now those changes are accelerating, shattering old patterns and raising new questions. With genetic engineering, is drought such a big threat anymore? Or weeds? Or bugs? Will more corn growers lead to overproduction? Or will a booming ethanol industry crave the crop?
Agriculture still is sorting out the answers. Even President Bush noted the changing dynamics during a recent speech praising ethanol.
"It's a good thing when a president can sit there and say, 'Gosh, we've got a lot of corn,'" Bush says. "That means we're less dependent on foreign sources of oil. Years back, they'd say, 'Oh gosh, we've got a lot of corn' and worried about the price."
Of course, people still worry about the price, which hasn't been too good for farmers lately. Nevertheless, in 2005 Minnesota farmers grew $2 billion worth of corn, and $1.6 billion worth of soybeans. That enormous output also served as a foundation for Minnesota's livestock, grain processing, energy and food industries.
People worry about subsidies, too, which kick in when prices are low, and multiply when production expands. U.S. taxpayers paid nearly $1 billion to Minnesota farmers in 2005, with the lion's share of that going to corn growers.
Part of that was because of Minnesota's amazing corn yields. Farmers didn't just set a record, they shattered it, with the statewide corn yield rising 15 bushels to 174 bushels an acre. Excellent weather gets some credit. But Minnesota has had good weather before, agronomists note; what's new are today's high-tech crops, modified to do things their ancestors never could.
A decade of biotechnology has allowed crop breeders to change a plant's genetic instructions, like a chef changes a recipe.
By engineering insect resistance, corn breeders have created ways to fend off destructive pests like the corn borer and corn rootworm. And by protecting plants against insects, scientists have realized a second benefit - better drought tolerance.
When plants are desperate for water, insects go crazy. "They feed much more voraciously," says Vande Logt of Croplan Genetics, a part of Land O'Lakes. The mixture of drought and insects not only doubles the plant stress, but it also can destroy a plant's ability to recover once the rain returns.
In North Dakota, frost-free days are so scarce that growing a decent corn or soybean crop has long been difficult.
"There have always been short-season varieties, but they had such poor yields that they weren't profitable," says Dwight Aakre, extension farm management specialist at North Dakota State University in Fargo. But now, seeds are better engineered to pop out of chilly ground and start growing. "They're more cold-tolerant, and they emerge earlier in the spring, rather than sitting around in the ground and rot," Aakre says.
This spring, North Dakota farmers are boosting their soybean acreage by a whopping 41 percent, and corn by 17 percent, as the reliance on wheat, which is less profitable, fades. In some North Dakota counties, "Wheat is almost gone, and corn and soybeans are dominant there," Aakre says.
Dave Nicolai, a University of Minnesota extension educator in Hutchinson, notes that now more plants can be crowded on every acre, increasing yields and potential revenue.
"You have plants that are able to withstand a higher population," Nicolai says. "We have 30,000 to 32,000 (plants per acre), whereas before you have might have 26,000 ... . There's higher levels of efficiency, with the plant being able to convert water and sunlight and nutrients into carbohydrates."
These magic traits, however, do not come cheaply, and not every farmer wants to pay the price. Moreover, genetically modified crop varieties, while becoming commonplace in the United States, face considerable resistance abroad.
If the past decade has brought seeds with protection against insects, weeds and cold, "The next big frontier is going to come down to one thing, and that's water," Vande Logt says. Drought protection is "probably going to be the most valuable trait of them all."
Comments are reviewed for taste, tone and language before posting.
Some comments may be used in the Tribune's print edition.
We value and respect your privacy, but The Bismarck Tribune might
disclose certain information to governmental entities if served with subpoena.