Good News for Wildlife and Habitat: Non-GMO Corn Hybrids Smash GMO Varieties in Illinois Trials

NOTE: Post Originally appeared on Sustainable Pulse November 21, 2013

Corn hybrid trials in Illinois have been harvested, and results are showing Non-GMO corn hybrids performing as well or better than GMO corn hybrids.

Spectrum Premium Non-GMO hybrids, used in the testing, produced 3 to 10 more bushels per acre when compared to nationally known GMO corn hybrids. Trial details:

These regional data summaries are evidence that farmers now have the opportunity to lower input costs and effectively increase profitability with the use of Non-GMO corn hybrids.

“In addition to competitive yield performance, our aim is to exceed seed purity demands from grain producers as well as grain users across the country who are trying to reach a fast growing consumer market for food products derived from Non-GMO sources,” says company Sales Manager Roger Rudolph.

Spectrum Premium Non-GMO™ is an independent brand of genetically improved corn seed sold in 38 states. The company is based in Linden, Indiana.

Spectrum obtained license agreements in 2008, produced hybrid seed thereafter, and is now in the company’s fourth sales season.

For 2014, Spectrum offers a robust line-up of 20 premium corn hybrids optimized for Non-GMO production systems. Yield, plant health, standability, and drydown are on par with, if not improved, to their GMO counterparts from the major companies.

Hybrids are carefully selected to provide an alternative for growers striving to become more profitable and more sustainable.

As this report on corn production demonstrates, the proposition that we must poison the land that supports civilization in order to feed a hungry world is completely bogus. The Circle Ranch website was started to promote sustainable ranching and wildlife practice.

These are inextricably linked to agriculture, which in the last 60-years has undergone a revolution that has dramatically increased food supplies, but it has also led to:

•  extensive farm, ranch and rural depopulation;
•  elimination of small producers , suppliers and processors throughout the food production chain, replacing these with monopolies which raise prices, lower wages, and reduce product and service quality; 
•  widespread destruction of the environment including fertility of the croplands and ranges that support civilization;
•  destruction of wildlife populations, diversity, and habitat;
•  contamination of food with agrochemicals, antibiotics, and bacteria;
• a national diet so unhealthy that 1/3 of what should be the world’s healthiest population instead suffers from chronic obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke, and whose life expectancy is falling;
•  unconscionable and inhumane treatment of domestic and wild animals;
• and the undermining of Third World economies, livelihoods and social stability through unfair trading systems.

Taken individually, the aforementioned might be rationalized as a necessary price for increased food quantity. Viewed together, they are a growing social, economic and environmental catastrophe that if allowed to continue could threaten the survival of our civilization, and even our species.

Ignoring common sense and human self-preservation, healthy and sustainable agriculture is dismissed as a pipe dream by the agrochemical giants and their political, agency and university cronies, who together subsidize, teach and profit from this inefficient and destructive system.

Please click on tags and topics for many other examples of workable, profitable alternatives to the industrial model of cattle, wildlife and habitat management.

I would like to acknowledge the prescient work  The Politics of Industrial Agriculture which I have used as a source in the comments above.