What is left of a longstanding Corn Belt rite - detasseling - may end for good when Monsanto brings to market what it calls its "Roundup Hybridization System" for corn.
Cornfields also will lose much of their masculinity, too.
Detasseling, for the city folks, is the removal of the golden sprigs at the top of the plant that secrete the pollen that reproduces corn. Seed producers want selective reproduction of corn rather than self-pollination, so they remove the tassels from some plants so they reproduce with pollen from other plants that have the requisite traits.
The Monsanto system, the company said, "utilizes a transgenic corn trait created by Monsanto that exhibits high tolerance to glyphosate (herbicide) in all tissues except male productive tissues."
(Men may want to skip this next explanatory paragraph.)
"Carefully researched glyphosate application rates and timings will maximize glyphosate delivery to the developing male reproductive tissues, selectively eliminating male fertility and the need for manual or mechanical detasseling."
Oh!
Seed companies tried to eliminate male fertility before. In the pre-biotech era of the early 1970s, a strain of hybrid corn was developed that had no male fertility. But the strain proved vulnerable to Southern Corn Leaf Blight. About 15 percent of the 1971 corn crop was lost.
Monsanto said this new anti-male fertility technology is two to four years from commercial use.
Vilsack hopes to change Afghan farmers' thinking
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is headed to Afghanistan to look into the prospects for turning farmers there from opium poppies back to the food crops for which the country was once known.
His department has released few details of his travel plans. But Vilsack said at a State Department news conference last week that the Obama administration believes its development effort will help stabilize the country, "making opportunities outside of illicit activity more meaningful and of greater availability."
The department has 54 employees in Afghanistan and another 10 on the way, Vilsack said.
Afghan farmers need better access to irrigation, credit and transportation, he said.
The administration ended the policy of eradicating poppy fields and shifted its attention to stopping the drug traffic. The administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said that policy is improving relations with farmers, but he told reporters he was looking forward to getting Vilsack's impressions on the issue.
Holbrooke acknowledged that security is a major problem for the USDA personnel and the 1,000 people working there for the U.S. Agency for International Development. "There is a constant province-by-province negotiation on how much support the military will give" civilian government employees, he said.
Critics say Obama reneged on subsidies pledge
Advocates for small-scale farmers are accusing President Barack Obama of reneging on a pledge to tighten restrictions on who gets federal farm subsidies.
At issue is what it means to be "actively engaged" in farming, a requirement for receiving crop subsidies. In revising rules for subsidies, the U.S. Agriculture Department has failed to add the kind of measurable standards that critics of the rules wanted.
The USDA largely left intact rules proposed in December 2008 in the final days of the Bush administration.
"Like other administrations before, when push comes to shove, something is always more important to the White House politically than the fate of family farming, and they trade away subsidy reform in a heartbeat," said Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. "Once again, principle and sound public policy have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency."
Obama's 2008 campaign had promised to propose restricting subsidies to "active farmers who work the land, plus landlords who rent to active farmers."
The USDA published minor revisions in the rules in Thursday's Federal Register, along with responses to the more than 5,000 comments that the department received. Three-fourths of the comments wanted the rules tightened, the department acknowledged.
The USDA said it is still exploring the definition of what it means to be an active farmer to see if the rules could be changed in a way that would be "fair, equitable and enhance program integrity."
Critics of the rules say they are so lax that people can qualify for subsidies by doing little more than participating in an occasional conference call with farm managers.
USDA press secretary Caleb Weaver has put out a statement saying the department is "committed to targeting farm program payments to those who work the land and take the significant risks associated with agricultural production.
The recently announced rules and agreement with the IRS represent significant steps in enforcement of the payment limitation provisions of the 2008 farm bill, and build on our other efforts to support small and midsized farms."
Weaver went on to say, echoing the written explanation of the decision, that the USDA is "continuing to explore additional opportunities through legislation and/or regulation" to better target program payments.
Copyright ©2010 The Des Moines Register. All rights reserved.
