Farmers unclear about biotech rules

Thursday, February 1, 2001
By Associated Press

Nearly 30 percent of farmers who grew biotech corn last year violated 
planting restrictions designed to keep insects from becoming resistant 
to the crop, a survey shows. 

The planting rules, which took effect last year, require 20 percent of 
a farmers' corn acreage to be of conventional varieties, and the 
conventional corn must be planted within a half mile of the biotech crops. 

Some 71 percent of farmers complied with both the size and distance 
requirements, according to the survey, which was filed Wednesday with 
the Environmental Protection Agency by the biotech industry. More than 90 
percent of the growers thought they had followed the rules, but many 
couldn't identify the correct restrictions when questioned for the survey. 

EPA imposed the restrictions a year ago and required the industry to do 
annual surveys of compliance. 

"The survey shows farmers want to do the right thing and we can help them 
do that by providing clear and consistent information," said Loren Wassell, 
a spokesman for Monsanto Co., a leading biotech company. 

The crop makes its own pesticide. The corn, known as Bt, contains a gene 
from a soil bacterium that makes the plant toxic to a moth larva. While 
the insects naturally develop resistance to the toxin as they are exposed 
to it, the trait won't be passed onto successive generations if they mate 
with moths that are susceptible to the poison. 

The requirements for farmers to plant conventional corn near Bt fields are 
designed to ensure that there are plenty of those nonresistant moths around. 

Farmers receive brochures explaining the rules when they buy the biotech seed. 

"The real test will come this year," now that biotech companies have seen the 
survey results and are trying to improve their education efforts, said 
University of Minnesota entomologist David Andow. 

Both the size and distance requirements for plantings of conventional corn are 
equally important to preventing insect resistance, he said. 

A critic of the biotech industry said the survey results were disappointing. 

"It appears to me that if they only got a collective compliance on the order 
of 71 percent then there is a lot of work that needs to be done. That's not 
good enough," said Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

More than 40 percent of the farmers surveyed didn't know the correct size of 
the conventional corn acreage and 60 percent of the farmers didn't know how 
close it had to be to the biotech crops. 

Fred Yoder, an Ohio farmer and a leader on biotech issues for the National 
Corn Growers Association, disagreed with Mellon's assessment. "The survey 
confirms that farmers are good stewards of technology and, when given 
appropriate information, they will do the right thing," he said. 

Some 501 farmers were contacted by telephone for the survey, which was 
conducted by an independent research firm, Market Horizons of St. Louis.