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  • From: "sals3" <sals3 AT cox.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Now......GMO sweet corn
  • Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:48:06 -0700

I read one time in Iowa a organic farmer who raised the same corn her dad raised for over 60 years got their organic crop contaminated by GMOs that year.  sure its easier now but wait till the supper weeds roundup ready start to grow and BT resistance makes that no good.  go ahead and keep up mixing genes from any thing and putting them anywhere and changing life on earth .  these GMO corn is  made to take over other corn   its the dominate gene.  they can not control it.  putting a eel gene in salmon putting human gene in rice.  and this stuff spreads like wildfire.  they cannot control their money making experiment and force us all to be genie pigs.  to bad Iowa sweet corn was the best.  that is were the tall corn grows. soon there will be no non GMO heirloom corn in the US in fact there may only be GMO corn in the US when the manure hits the fan.  remember star link corn not fit for humans yet we ate it because they can not control GMOs .  how do u uneat something after the truth comes out.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 7:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Now......GMO sweet corn

In addition to what Etienne said:

1) For anyone confused about it, organic systems do not use GMO's but may use hybrids, and many organic growers do. If the question has to do with the ability of a farmer with no money to save seed for the next year's planting, of course, then hybrid seed is also an issue.

2) A great deal of work has been done over the last century to increase yields. In corn in particular, almost all of this work has been done on hybrids. To compare yield from the results of this process to yields from heirloom varieties doesn't tell you much of anything.

3) What you've done is not a general comparison of open pollinated to hybrid varieties, but a specific variety trial. Kruggs Yellow, Boone County White, and Black Turtle are obviously not good varieties for your specific location. Heirloom varieties are often highly suited to specific locations, and may well do poorly elsewhere; they may, however, do better if grown in their correct location than varieties bred to be usable over a wide area.

4) There are people working with improved open pollinated corn varieties. I have flyers from open pollinated seed companies claiming equivalent yields for some of their varieties; as I don't grow field corn, I can't comment on the accuracy of this from my experience. Again, the varieties may be bred for specific areas, and may or may not do as well in your area.

5) You probably measured yield, as is commonly done, by weight of the harvested crop. Did you do any nutrition comparisons? Varieties bred for highest production by weight may have fewer nutrients than those bred for highest nutrition. If the question is actually feeding people, as opposed to getting the highest cash payment, then this becomes a critical issue. (Any given farmer, of course, may need to grow for the highest cash payment; I am in no way criticizing this. If the farmer goes out of business, that doesn't help anything: agricultural systems also need to be sustainable for the farmers.)



-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale



On Sep 20, 2011, at 8:09 AM, Richard Stewart wrote:

My experiences planting heirloom corn (Kruggs Yellow and Boone County white) and beans (Black Turtle) on three acres or more is that the yields are far less than conventional and much more highly prone to weather conditions, mainly because of weed and cultivation issues.  


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