In addition, Thursday the Food and Drug Administration signaled it is considering changes in its oversight of GM crops. Almost certainly, food companies in the U.S. would rather remove any genetically modified ingredients than carry a label announcing the presence of such ingredients. Indeed, many U.S. food companies are scrambling to find nonmodified ingredients for the products they export to Europe. All this is clearly weighing on the Farm Belt. This past growing season, more than half the cropland in Nebraska was sprouting genetically modified crops.
Farmers feel like they're caught in the middle.
That's the case across the Midwest, home of the vast majority of the world's land planted to genetically modified crops. The retreat is so big that seed executives are worried about a possible shortage of conventional, unmodified seed. We see a big rollback next spring. DuPont hopes to stem this reversal. A handful of farmers accepted Mr. Johnson's invitation to a catered lunch on the campus of Wayne State College.