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WASHINGTON -- Genetically engineered crops are soaring in popularity with U.S. farmers, exceeding levels the government predicted earlier this year. The growth comes despite the lingering international resistance to food biotechnology.
More than 51 million acres, or 68 percent, of the soybeans farmers are growing this year are genetically engineered, compared with 54 percent a year ago, according to an Agriculture Department survey.
The department had predicted in March that 63 percent of this year's soybean crop would be genetically engineered.
Sixty-nine percent, or 11 million acres, of this year's cotton crop is genetically engineered, compared with 61 percent last year.
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Plantings of biotech corn are up slightly -- 26 percent of this year's total acreage, compared with 25 percent last year.
"We've got a product that's safe, it's good for the environment, and it allows us to be even more efficient on the farm," said Tony Anderson, a farmer from Mount Sterling, Ohio, who is president of the American Soybean Association.
The biotech soybeans contain a bacterium gene that makes them immune to a powerful weedkiller, known by the trade name Roundup. In some cases, one application of the herbicide is all that is needed for an entire growing season, farmers say. Fields seeded for conventionally bred varieties can require many sprayings with different types of chemicals.
More than three-fourths of the soybean crop in four states is biotech this year: Kansas, South Dakota, Indiana and Nebraska.
In Louisiana, more than 90 percent of the cotton crop this year is gene-altered.
The popular varieties of biotech cotton are either Roundup-immune or else produce their own pesticide. Most of the biotech corn that farmers plant makes its own pesticide.
"I sense a greater optimism regarding the future of biotechnology," said Konstantinos Giannakas, an agricultural economist at the University of Nebraska who believes farmers are less concerned about consumer resistance to genetically engineered food.
An industry-funded study due out this fall is expected to warn that commercialization of other genetically engineered crops has been slowed by the controversy over agricultural biotechnology.
Farmers have shunned biotech versions of sugarbeets, potatoes and sweet corn because major processors, packers and food companies have told growers they are unwilling to buy the genetically engineered product, according to a preliminary summary of the study by the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy.
There also has been strong resistance to biotech food in Europe and Japan.
The biotech industry was embarrassed last year when a gene-altered variety of corn, known as StarLink, was found in the food supply without being cleared for human consumption. StarLink, which has been withdrawn from the market, was the only biotech crop available for commercial use that was not approved for human food.
Future growth of biotechnology in farming will depend on the development of crops that provide benefits to consumers, such as added nutrients, Giannakas said.
Virtually all of the gene-altered crops that have been developed are either resistant to pests or immune to the Roundup herbicide.
"In order to have growth in this sector, what needs to be done is to boost the demand. This will happen only if the consumers see benefits from these crops," Giannakas said.
Anderson, the Ohio farmer, can grow his own soybean seeds for half what it costs him to buy genetically engineered seed. But like farmers across the country, he cannot resist planting more of the biotech varieties. He is growing 1,100 acres of soybeans this year, about 60 percent of which is Roundup-tolerant. Last year, about half his crop was biotech.
In Ohio, 64 percent of the soybeans are genetically engineered this year, compared with 48 percent in 2000.
The biotech seeds cost Anderson about $12 to $13 a bushel, compared with the $5 or so it costs to raise his own conventionally bred seeds. Farmers are not allowed to grow their own seed from genetically engineered varieties because of patent protection claims by the seed companies.
Anderson plants the gene-altered seeds in fields where he expects the most problems with weeds.
"After planting every year I wish I was 100 percent" biotech. "It's just that much easier," he said.
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