Reuters | October 8, 1999 | By Julie Vorman
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Agriculture Department was cited as saying Friday that more than half of the U.S. soybean crop this year was planted with genetically modified (GM) seeds, and corn and cotton were not far behind in its first attempt to measure how American farmers have adopted the controversial technology.
The story notes that with the 1999 harvest now in full swing, American farmers are starting to assess whether to plant bio-engineered crops next year.
Rich Allen, associate administrator of USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, was quoted as saying, "Until this year, we weren't hearing much of anything on the farm level about genetically modified varieties except, 'will this crop be economical?'"
The story says that the new USDA data, collected from interviews with farmers during the summer, were in line with seed companies' estimates of how much land has been planted with bioengineered crops.
USDA said 30 percent of U.S. corn planted in 1999 was the Bt variety, in which the gene for bacillus thringiensis is engineered into the corn to fight a harmful insect. About 27 percent of U.S. cotton was also planted with a Bt-engineered variety.
Some 57 percent of U.S. soybeans were planted with herbicide-resistant varieties, the USDA said. Virtually all were Roundup Ready soybeans, a USDA spokesman said.
But USDA said its data for other herbicide-resistant crops also included a small number of varieties derived from conventional plant breeding techniques. Exact figures were not available, a USDA analyst said.
U.S. Genetically Enhanced Crops (percent of acre Herbicide resistant-A Insect resistant (Bt) 1998 1999 1998 1999 Corn 9 8 26 30 Soybeans 42 57 - Upland cotton 33 38 23 27 USDA Data. A-includes some genetically enhanced varieties achieved through traditional plant breeding techniques
