My husband and I are seventh-generation farmers raising corn, soybeans and seed corn in Illinois. We plant seeds that are genetically modified using biotechnology. However, biotechnology is one of the many tools in our farming toolbelt we use to produce food.
We recently visited Hawaii after winning an essay contest sponsored by the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association and the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation. We had the opportunity to share our farming experiences with government officials and community members on Oahu and Kauai. It’s important that the public hears from farmers who use the seeds Hawaii companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Pioneer and BASF help to produce.
Our success as farmers depends on our ability to manage our fields by keeping the soil fertile, growing a good crop, marketing that crop and planning for the future.
When determining which seeds to plant, we pore through research, talk to fellow farmers and study our farm’s historical data. Today’s farmers have so many choices when it comes to what they want to grow … be it organic, conventional or biotech crops.
We choose to plant different varieties because it allows us to use multiple modes of action or ways to control pressures on the seed. Modes of action could be a type of pesticide or a method of tilling the soil or cultivating a crop. Biotechnology has helped us eliminate two rounds of pesticide application from our plant care routine.
But why is biotech important beyond our farm gate? The world’s population is growing at an astounding pace, and we have fewer acres, less water and less people actually involved in production agriculture. For younger farmers and parents, like my husband and I, we are more aware than ever before of our responsibility to hone our skills as stewards of the land, water and air, and to judiciously embrace proven science.
Biotechnology is no stranger to the islands. In the 1990s, the papaya ringspot virus decimated Hawaii papaya farms. Thankfully, Dennis Gonsalves, a plant pathologist from Hilo, helped to develop a transgenic papaya resistant to the virus. In 1998, the variety was available to farmers and today the papaya industry thrives.
In spite of this, Hawaii is home to a fierce, loud and extreme anti-biotech movement. During our visit, anti-GMO activists burned two tractors on a Maui sugarcane farm. We also learned that many seed company employees receive threats against their families and properties. We understand that the arguments against the seed industry are steeped in the history of Hawaii agriculture, but it is also mired in the anti-Monsanto and anti-science rhetoric that grips so much of the food conversation today.
We know that biotechnology is not the solution to all agricultural problems, and we do not treat it as such. It offers farmers tools to manage our soil environments, not control it. Biotechnology must be used responsibly in order for the science to remain effective on our farms. Therefore, we plant acres of non-biotech seed and employ multiple modes of action.
Above all, having a healthy respect for nature and heeding what we’ve learned about the rain, sun, wind and soil from our grandparents who farmed before us plays a significant role in growing a crop. Science will never replace Mother Nature, but with challenges facing our growing world, we must learn to farm with both.
I, for one, am pleased that the seeds, both biotech and non-biotech, found in our fields have been researched in Hawaii by successful companies that choose to operate in the U.S., pay taxes and employ fellow Americans in an otherwise not so friendly, sometimes downright dangerous business climate. They could go elsewhere giving the jobs, the money and the innovations to another country. But they stay giving me one more chance to buy American.
