December 27, 2000

Profitability plays a major role in Wisconsin farmers' decisions to plant or quit planting genetically modified crops, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study has shown.

Researchers with the Program on Agricultural Technology Studies found that cash grain operations and large farms were most likely to plant genetically modified crops, and that smaller farms were more likely to de-adopt GM crops between 1999 and 2000.

These smaller Wisconsin producers seem to be taking a pragmatic approach - they're dropping GM crops because these varieties aren't making money for them, according to PATS associate director Fred Buttel, a rural sociologist at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Buttel and doctoral candidate Lucy Chen surveyed Wisconsin producers on their use of Bt corn (which contains a protein that's toxic to cornborers), HT (herbicide-tolerant) corn and HT soybeans. They collected data from the same producers over three years, surveying farmers who adopted, continued to use, or de-adopted GM crops, along with farmers who never planted GM
varieties.

Use of all three GM crop varieties has tended to be most common among cash grain producers and producers with large acreages of cropland, Buttel says. The data also showed a trend toward producers with small cropland acreages becoming less likely to employ GM crops from 1999 to 2000.

"While there was a de-adoption trend in Wisconsin for Bt corn from 1999 to 2000, there were actually small increases in the Bt corn adoption rate among the two largest size classes based on cropland acreage. This suggests that de-adoption has been a selective process which is most common among the smaller operators," he says.

About one-fifth of Wisconsin producers planted Bt corn in 1998-2000. Adoption declined slightly,  from about 20 percent to 18.5 percent, between 1999 and 2000 (the percentage of large farms growing Bt corn increased slightly during this time). About 3 percent of producers planted HT
corn in 1998, rising to 10 percent in 2000.

Wisconsin growers showed a steady increase in HT soybean use, from 26 percent in 1998 to 49 percent in 1999 and 53 percent in 2000.

In the PATS survey, respondents evaluated the performance of GM and conventional crop varieties in terms of yield, expense, pest damage, and profit per acre. More than half reported higher profits from BT corn and HT soybeans. Farmers who were satisfied with Bt corn were most
impressed with reductions in pest damage, while HT soybeans were valued for their reduced production costs.

On the other hand, nearly half the respondents reported no difference or a decrease in profits from Bt corn and HT soybeans, and more than 60 percent reported unchanged or lower profits from HT corn. Not surprisingly, those who didn't see improved profits were more likely to drop genetically
modified varieties, the researchers found.

"There were a wide variety of reasons reported by farmers who had discontinued GMO use from 1999 to 2000. Those who disadopted Bt corn and HT soybeans tended to stress the high cost of inputs, while HT corn disadopters reported concerns other than crop performance and marketing,"
Buttel says. "The expectation that there could be marketing difficulties played some role, primarily with respect to disadoption of Bt corn and HT soybeans, though in all cases concerns about marketing were subordinate to performance factors such as input costs and profitability."

The PATS study did not focus on the adoption of Aventis' StarLink corn, a variety of genetically modified corn that has not been approved for human consumption. Foods that may have contained StarLink corn have been recalled in the United States, and Japan, a major corn importer, sharply cut its imports of U.S. corn after tests revealed traces of StarLink corn
in domestic food and animal feed products. However, the small role that marketing problems played in the PATS study suggests that the StarLink controversy may not have much impact on BT corn adoption in Wisconsin in 2001, Buttel says.

The Wisconsin researchers' statistics differ somewhat from USDA data, which are based on crop acreage. GM adoption expressed as a percent of acreage may not be a good indicator of the number of individual farmers who are adopting these technologies.

"The fact that our data show a continued increase in the percent of soybean growers using HT soybeans, while national data show little change in HT soybean acreage, suggests that national trends reported by USDA serve to mask major differences in the dynamics of adoption and de-adoption at a regional level, as well as by size of farm," Buttel says.

"Our data also show that the size distribution of GMO users has become more scale-biased and more selective over the 1999-2000 period," he continues. "Thus, we find that the percentage of large farmers using Bt corn continued to increase from 1999 to 2000, albeit very slightly, even
though there was a pronounced decrease in the Bt corn adoption rate in Wisconsin."

In 1999, Wisconsin farmers harvested more than 400 million bushels of corn for grain from 2,850,000 acres of cropland; and nearly 60 million bushels of soybeans from 1,300,000 acres, according to the Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service.

For a copy of the full report, The Adoption and De-Adoption of GMO Crop Varieties in Wisconsin, contact Nancy Carlisle at (608) 265-2908, nlcarlis@facstaff.wisc.edu 

Science Report
Agricultural and Consumer Press Service College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
440 Henry Mall Research Division
Madison WI 53706 (608) 262-1461 University of Wisconsin-Madison

For More Information:
Fred Buttel (608) 262-9536 
fhbuttel@facstaff.wisc.edu 

UW-Madison news release
N3219