Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
tolerance (6,772 releases), insect resistance (4,809), product quality such as
flavor or nutrition (4,896), agronomic properties like drought resistance
(5,190), and virus/fungal resistance (2,616). The institutions with the most
authorized field releases include Monsanto with 6,782, Pioneer/DuPont with
1,405, Syngenta with 565, and USDA's Agricultural Research Service with
370. As of September 2013, APHIS had received 145 petitions for
deregulation (allowing GE seeds to be sold) and had approved 96 petitions: 30
for corn; 15 for cotton; 11 for tomatoes; 12 for soybeans; 8 for
rapeseed/canola; 5 for potatoes; 3 for sugarbeets; 2 each for papaya, rice, and
squash; and 1 each for alfalfa, plum, rose, tobacco, flax, and chicory.
Farmers.
Three crops (corn, cotton, and soybeans) make up the bulk of
the acres planted to GE crops. U.S. farmers planted about 169 million acres of
these GE crops in 2013, or about half of total land used to grow crops.
Herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops have traits that allow them to tolerate more
effective herbicides, such as glyphosate, helping adopters control pervasive
weeds more effectively. U.S. farmers used HT soybeans on 93 percent of all
planted soybean acres in 2013.
HT corn accounted for 85 percent of corn acreage in 2013, and HT cotton
constituted 82 percent of cotton acreage. Farmers planted insect-resistant (Bt)
cotton to control pests such as tobacco budworm, cotton bollworm, and pink
bollworm on 75 percent of U.S. acreage in 2013. Bt corn—which controls the
European corn borer, the corn rootworm, and the corn earworm—was planted
on 76 percent of corn acres in 2013.
The adoption of Bt crops increases
yields
by mitigating yield losses from
insects. However, empirical evidence regarding the effect of HT crops on
yields is mixed. Generally, stacked seeds (seeds with more than one GE trait)
tend to have higher yields than conventional seeds or than seeds with only one
GE trait. GE corn with stacked traits grew from 1 percent of corn acres in 2000
to 71 percent in 2013. Stacked seed varieties also accounted for 67 percent of
cotton acres in 2013.
Planting Bt cotton and Bt corn seed is associated with higher
net returns
when pest pressure is high. The extent to which HT adoption affects net
returns is mixed and depends primarily on how much weed control costs are
reduced and seed costs are increased. HT soybean adoption is associated with
an increase in total household income because HT soybeans require less
management and enable farmers to generate income via off-farm activities or
by expanding their operations.
Farmers generally use less
insecticide
when they plant Bt corn and Bt
cotton. Corn insecticide use by both GE seed adopters and nonadopters has
