Here at Tubby Creek farm, we just planted sweet corn attempt #3. Our first two plantings this spring failed to germinate. Whether it was cold, wet weather, hungry crows, or a combination of the two we don’t know. Last year we learned the hard way that sweet corn will not set in hot weather. Temperatures above 90 degrees can render the pollen sterile. We think that our corn planted now will tassel in mid-September and be ready to harvest in early October – but it is a gamble. We have never grown fall corn. Our copy of the Southeastern US 2012 Vegetable Crop Handbook says that fall sweet corn is not recommended for Mississippi. But it also says fall tomatoes, peas, and carrots are not recommended, as well as any beets or spinach ever – so we generally ignore the Handbook anyway.
For the last couple weeks at the market, True Vine Farm had been selling conventional sweet corn grown on a neighboring farm that they advertised as non-GMO. That got me thinking…I knew GMO sweet corn existed, but I didn’t think it was on the market. How wrong I was! Syngenta introduced Bt sweet corn years ago, but starting in 2012 teamed up with Monsanto to make Roundup Ready Bt sweet corn available. I couldn’t find any information about what percentage of US sweet corn acreage is genetically modified, but it is definitely out there on supermarket shelves and farm stands.
Bt sweet corn accelerates the man versus bug arms race. We know that Roundup Ready crops have led to the emergence of “superweeds” and increased use of herbicides in general. Just the other day they were dousing the soybean field across the street via airplane. As an ecological farmer, I am concerned about Bt resistance in caterpillars. Bacillus thuringiensis is a bacterium that is toxic to Lepidoptera larvae when ingested. It is a safe, effective biological pest control that we use judiciously and in concert with whole systems planning for pest control. We apply Bt to the plant, the bacterium eventually dies or is washed off when it rains, the toxicity isn’t omnipresent in the plant as with GMO sweet corn.
A recent study suggests that I may have cause for concern from a health perspective as well. Researchers in Australia teamed up with farmers in the US to compare pigs raised for slaughter on GM or non-GM, but otherwise identical, diets of corn and soy. Pigs were used because of their physiological similarity to humans. The punch line is that after 90 days (the lifespan of a feeder pig) on an exclusively GM diet, pigs had a significantly greater incidence of severe stomach inflammation and enlarged uteri. I read the article, and I read a couple statements refuting its findings – and I found the rebuttals to be rather weak, which leads me to believe that the study may be rather strong.
All this makes me think about the acres and acres of corn and soy all around us, and how everyone here calls us “gardeners” instead of farmers (that is a rant for another newsletter) because we don’t grow row crops. And about the Farm Bill policies that pay my neighbors to grow acres and acres of GM corn and soy so Americans can eat too much cheap meat and processed foods to fuel our “obesity epidemic’ that we all have to pay for again as a public health issue.
And yet again, I have managed to turn this newsletter into a major downer. It is refreshing to be able to leave behind the tangled mess of the American food system simply by walking out the door into the garden where we are just trying to grow food that is real and good. In fact, I think I will do just that.
