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GM Backlash Tilting the Balance in Illinois

PETER KENDALL / The Guardian (UK) 2feb00

Last spring, Terry Wolf planted half of his central Illinois farm with GM soya seeds and they gave him, he says, an edge in the never-ending battle with weeds. This year, he'll plant none of the hi-tech beans. As Wolf and other farmers across the state prepare for spring planting, many are turning away from GM for the first time since the crops stormed the market in 1995. They fear that the crops they sow might be hard to sell if controversy over GM organisms grows along with their corn and soybeans. "The issue is going to be too volatile to take that risk," Wolf says.

Farmers in the US are pinned in a scientific, political and emotional debate. The crops have raised environmental and health concerns, leading to a backlash against GM foods in Europe and Japan. No one can now predict whether a similar, though currently much smaller, backlash might grow into something big in the US.

The seed companies have staked their futures on the technology and say sales are on par with last year, and in some cases are stronger. But across Illinois, grain elevators, mills and corn processors are telling farmers there is no guarantee the crops grown from the seeds will fetch top dollar in the autumn.

Some, including Frito-Lay Inc, have begun telling their Illinois farmers not to plant any GM crops at all. Last year, 168 million lb of corn - some of it genetically engineered - was processed through Frito-Lay's main plant. This year, none of it will be GM.

"There is some consumer confusion out there, so we thought it was an appropriate time to step back and wait and see," says Lynn Markley, a spokeswoman for Texas-based Frito-Lay. Illinois Cereal Mills, owned by Cargill Inc, is increasing its contracts for non-GM crops. And Decatur's Archer Daniels Midland Co, one of the world's largest grain buyers, is paying premiums on every bushel of certain varieties of corn and soybeans that aren't GM.

The Illinois Corn Growers Association surveyed river terminals, processors and mills to see if companies had set policies for buying or handling GM grain. Many declined to respond, others wouldn't commit one way or the other. Mark Lambert, a spokesman for the association, says: "That is not what farmers want to hear. That sent a pretty strong message. We have definitely gotten the impression that, compared to last year, you are going to see less [GM] corn."

The federal government, too, is signalling that regulations might tighten on engineered crops. The Food and Drug Administration has been holding hearings on GM foods, and this month, the Environmental Protection Agency, in consultation with seed companies, placed new restrictions on plantings.

Farmers are seeing plenty of indicators that the marketplace might have a bias against GM crops by the time the harvest comes in. "We plant in April and May, but the marketplace has until October or November until it has to decide," says Ken Dalenberg, a farmer in Mansfield, Illinois. He will plant about half as much GM corn as last year.

Doug Whittaker, a seed dealer in Peoria county, says that farmers are buying about half as much genetically engineered corn as they did last spring. "They don't want to be stuck with a crop the market doesn't want," he says. Instead, the farmers are going back to varieties that have been bred and developed through more traditional means.

To some extent, Illinois farmers are a special case. Illinois is hooked into international markets more than many other Corn Belt states, exposing the state's farmers to the vagaries of the European and Japanese markets. "They are reading the tea leaves and seeing that there are not many advantages to genetically engineered crops, so they will perhaps go the other way," says Emerson Nafziger, a crop scientist at the University of Illinois.

• Peter Kendall is a reporter with the Chicago Tribune