agriculture

The day after the Bayer/Monsanto agreement was announced this week, The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled " Behind the Monsanto Deal, Doubts About the GMO Revolution " (subscription required or article can be purchased). The paragraph that best summarizes the article was, "Today, farmers are finding it harder to justify the high and often rising prices for modified, or GMO, seed, given the measly returns of the current farm economy. Spending on crop seeds has nearly quadrupled since 1996, when Monsanto Co. became the first of the companies to launch biotech varieties. Yet major crop prices have skidded lower for three years, and this year, many farmers stand to lose money." The article contained a graphic that showed that since 1996, the year GM soybeans were introduced on a commercial scale, soybean seed prices have risen 305% to $60.75 per acre, but commodity prices have risen only 31% to $9.79.  It is a bit puzzling why the Wall Street Journal did not c...

2016 has been a challenging year for our Bt crops. Cotton bollworms did an unusually high amount of damage in many fields of Bt cotton, and corn earworms (which are bollworms by another name) caused a significant amount of damage to corn crops from Texas through Kansas. Western bean cutworm caused severe damage in fields of Cry1F corn in the Midwest and Canada where once the toxin provided a reasonable level of control. Fall armyworm is known to be resistant to Cry1F corn in parts of the country. Corn rootworm is resistant to toxins that once did a good job of control. One question this fall is whether we have resistance to our Bt toxins targeted at caterpillars and, if so, how far it has spread. Field observations suggest that we do have resistance, but we will have to wait for the results of the laboratory tests on the progeny of the insects collected from the field. We don't have a magic genetic test to detect resistance, so we do things the old fashioned way by crossing field c...

If you are growing soybeans or alfalfa on the Texas High Plains it would be a good idea to scout for green cloverworms. I was in a soybean field near Ralls earlier in the week that had approximately 8 larvae per plant, and I just got a call about soybeans near Clarendon that were heavily infested. In both cases the people making the reports thought the worms were soybean loopers. It is easy to tell the two caterpillars apart because loopers have two pairs of prolegs on the abdomen while the green cloverworm has three pairs. Loopers are fairly lethargic, but green cloverworms hop around quickly when disturbed. Green cloverworm larvae near Ralls Typical defoliation in soybean caused by green cloverworm Fortunately the green cloverworm is only a leaf feeder in soybean and it does not damage pods. For alfalfa here is a quote the Oklahoma guide, "These defoliators are rarely a significant problem in established alfalfa, although seedling stands can be heavily damaged by their feeding....